NEWS RELEASE
SOS STRATFORD
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A new free speech group, SOS Stratford, has formed to battle actions at city hall it says are impinging on free speech and undermining democracy.
SOS Stratford, which stands for Save Our Speech Stratford, says it is committed to tackling an epidemic of assaults on free speech at City Hall as manifested by the now well-publicized banning of three citizens from the council chambers for several weeks.
What is less known is that two more citizens are now being probed under the city’s Respectful Workplace Policy for alleged verbal violations.
“This viral attack on free speech in Stratford is spreading faster than COVID-19,” said SOS Stratford spokesperson Robert Roth, a retired newspaper editor, “and it’s time to start a vaccination campaign before democracy ends up in the emergency ward.”
Stratford resident Tim Forster has just revealed that the city has hired a law firm to investigate him under the workplace policy for comments he made at a public council meeting on May 13.
SOS Stratford has also been made aware of the workplace policy being used against another citizen who is a volunteer member of one of the city’s own advisory committees. That person is currently working to have the accusations withdrawn before determining whether to go public.
In the Forster case, the legal firm retained by the city has been mandated to investigate a staff complaint against him and report its findings to the city.
Forster was told in writing to keep the investigation “confidential” – a request for secrecy that he has rejected as totally unacceptable. While not questioning the integrity of the firm, Forster is nevertheless “uncomfortable with a process where the city pays the ‘judge.’ ”
SOS Stratford contends the workplace policy should not be applied against Forster as he is not an employee and his statements were made at a public meeting, giving him protection under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a letter to Forster, the law firm outlines several allegations made against him by the city clerk concerning comments he made at the public meeting. These include that Forster “attacked and disparaged staff members publicly” and “accused the CAO of not following the policy and acting without oversight, which the complainant regarded as being defamatory.”
Roth argues “every citizen has a democratic right to question city hall processes, even vigorously, and to hold the city accountable for its actions.”
First and foremost, he points out, the Ontario Court of Appeal in Bracken vs. Fort Erie has ruled that citizens can use tough, even hostile, language at public meetings in challenging political actions. Moreover, that same court ruled that workplace policies only apply to employees, not members of the general public.
“In our view, the workplace policy is being weaponized against free speech,” Roth said. “Public meetings are not workplaces. People don’t elect their workplace. Council and committee chambers are halls of democracy with moral, legal and traditional obligations that soar far above the parameters of a simple workplace. Public meetings are sacred forums where free speech reigns and vigorous debate is allowed to flourish. Being able to hold public officials to account is the lifeblood of democracy.”
Workplace policy words such as “inappropriate,” “unreasonable, “offensive,” or “vexatious” are so subjectively far-reaching that they can be used to ban virtually anything councillors do not want to hear, Roth says.
“Someone at a public meeting feeling offended by tough talk is not a justification for muzzling people.”
In the Bracken vs. Fort Erie case, for example, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that strong, hostile language is permitted under the charter. In that incident, Fort Erie issued a trespass order after city staff said they felt “unsafe” in the presence of a particularly noisy, hostile, disgruntled taxpayer, but the court ruled that the staff’s “subjective feelings of disquiet, unease, and even fear" do not override freedom of expression.
“Unfortunately,” Roth says, “we live in an age where contrived timidity allows anyone to shut down speech they don’t like by simply calling it ‘unsafe’ or ‘harmful’ or ‘traumatizing’ or ‘triggering.’ ”
City council has also devised another mechanism to avoid accountability, SOS Stratford says. In the complaint against Forster, he is also accused of deviating from his speech by talking about the city’s banishment of the three people from the council chambers for several weeks.
Roth notes that “people, including myself, have been told in writing that we are forbidden to come to a council meeting to ask questions about the banning of the three citizens, as this is an ‘administrative matter.’ Since when is a city hall decision beyond public scrutiny?”
He said councillors have “erected a deplorable, anti-democratic shield against accountability that allows them to simply slap the label of “administrative matter’ on anything they want to keep out of public reach. The public should be very, very alarmed at this poorly veiled attempt to take away the people’s right to criticize government.”
SOS Stratford also contends that these new mechanisms for hiding from public criticism stem from the Xinyi glass plant debacle when city councillors were caught red-handed holding closed meetings during 2020-2021 while trying to surreptitiously slip through a massive factory development plan on prime farmland without the public’s knowledge. Public outrage finally halted the scheme.
Recently, an independent 120-page report by the law firm, Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP concluded that nearly a third of Stratford council votes during closed-door meetings between 2018 and 2023 broke the Municipal Act.
One of the residents banned by the city had referred to those secret sessions at a February council meeting immediately prior to his banishment.
“They are trying to find new ways to avoid criticism,” Roth said. “You would think that council would feel chastised by this independent, third-party ruling on closed-door meetings and apologize to the citizenry,” Roth said. “But instead of opening the doors wider, they are slamming them shut on our knuckles.”
SOS Stratford laments that city hall has even put security guards at the doorways to the council chambers to keep banned people from peacefully and quietly sitting in the public gallery.
“Only tyrannies need that kind of protection from their own citizens,” Roth says.
“People are being banned from the council chambers, others are being subjected to secret quasi trials, palace guards are being stationed at the doorways as if we live in a banana republic, and council meetings are screeching to a halt because councillors are shutting down council meetings when they see faces in the public gallery they don’t like. This city is truly out of control. Somebody has to rein in this runaway horse.”
SOS Stratford has learned that at this Monday’s council meeting, Coun. Cody Sebben will announce his intention to submit a motion, to be debated at the July 22 council meeting, that the workplace policy be suspended and reviewed.
“We fully support Councillor Sebben’s motion,” Roth said. “The use of the workplace policy against citizens at public meetings is immoral, illegitimate and inexcusable. It is undermining free speech, discouraging citizen involvement in the democratic process and turning City Hall into a dysfunctional quagmire.”
For further information, contact Robert Roth at 519-275-7199 or at [email protected].
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