Juno News - Former mayor alleges corruption in Chestermere

00:00:00.000 hey everyone welcome back to the alberta roundup i'm your host rachel emmanuel we are doing

00:00:15.120 something a little bit different today we are looking into a situation over in chestamere

00:00:19.280 where the city mayor along with three city councillors and three administrative officers

00:00:24.320 were dismissed by the provincial government they were dismissed by municipal affairs minister rick

00:00:29.440 mciver today i am joined by the former mayor jeff colvin as well as one of the city councillors

00:00:35.360 stephen hailey gentlemen thanks so much for joining me today thank you thank you very much rachel so

00:00:42.160 jeff we spoke on the phone a little bit earlier and i asked you what's going on in chestamere a lot of my

00:00:47.600 members of my audience have reached out to me and they've asked me to look into this story they said

00:00:51.600 something strange is going on in chestamere when i started looking into it i was a bit confused as

00:00:55.200 well i have to admit i've never heard of a mayor and city councillors being dismissed by the

00:00:59.360 government before i know it has happened but it's used in very rare circumstances you said that the

00:01:05.360 municipal government began looking into your council just about two months after you were elected and

00:01:10.880 after you and your fellow councillors spent some time digging into the finances and finding things

00:01:16.800 that didn't add up can you share a little bit about what happened when you were elected and how

00:01:20.960 quickly the municipal government began investigating you sure thank you very much rachel um what what

00:01:26.240 happened is that basically there was a group of us that were interested in in running for council

00:01:32.640 um we had all had various time frames of living in chestamere myself i had lived in chestamere for about

00:01:38.880 25 years and i decided that there were some things that i could help the city with um there's a lot of

00:01:45.520 growth here in my background is in development of of subdivisions and water and sewer and pipelines and

00:01:51.200 sidewalks etc and so it had appeared on the outside that the city was getting taken advantage of

00:01:57.280 their contracts were seeming to be very one-sided to the developer or slash to the construction company

00:02:03.680 and i thought that i could come in and help with how to make sure that you know didn't happen anymore

00:02:10.080 there was some questionable tactics that we saw from the outside the way that the council was being

00:02:14.720 treated by the cao at the time before we got into office and so i didn't feel comfortable with the

00:02:20.560 way that they were being talked down to and the way that they were being controlled and it felt like

00:02:26.000 from what my experience was they weren't getting the whole story and um the way that counselors are

00:02:32.320 brought in they're they're often brought in on not just their resume but they're brought in on

00:02:37.040 because their desire to contribute to the community so it doesn't mean that they're experts in these

00:02:41.680 fields and so they're relying entirely on that cao giving them enough information to make somewhat of

00:02:48.000 an informed decision so when we got into office we were successful i was successful in in in winning

00:02:54.800 my position which was the mayor of chestamere we noticed it to be very confrontational with the

00:03:01.840 existing senior staff as well as the existing cao which i mentioned before had had some issues

00:03:07.840 um a lot of the things that we identified i knew very well what they were talking about because it

00:03:12.480 was infrastructure based and development construction etc and he didn't like the fact that i knew what i

00:03:19.680 was talking about or at least i knew what they were talking about and um very quickly we had looked into

00:03:26.080 how do we get more transparency with um our city so that our counselors can get access to more information

00:03:33.680 and then ultimately so our constituents or our public can get access to more information so they

00:03:38.480 can know what's going on um and so we started looking at a model called a tri cao model which

00:03:44.880 was basically bringing in three caos instead of one um and and what we found very quickly when we did

00:03:52.480 that is is it it massively increased the transparency factor um we brought in private sector skilled people

00:04:00.560 in their areas so one of our areas for example was corporate services which is more like your

00:04:05.360 internal operations so your accounting your marketing your communications um and then your

00:04:10.400 other department was your your community's operations which is more of your roads and fleet

00:04:15.040 so more of a blue collar type work um and then you're looking at your engineering and development

00:04:20.240 which is more of a professional and engineer for example so we hired those people with those

00:04:26.000 specific skills and so that actually reduced what you pay these caos because these caos

00:04:32.080 i don't i just don't believe that they know everything i don't follow that idea that you know

00:04:36.400 the city is a big company it operates a lot of different things compared to a normal company which

00:04:41.360 operates you know three or four main product lines and is very laser focused um and the city is is just

00:04:47.440 not that um but it doesn't mean you don't want high levels of expertise and so that's one of the

00:04:52.480 things that we brought in and in that situation of bringing these experts to the table it not only

00:04:58.080 provided massive transparency to council it also allowed the those people to have a direct connection

00:05:04.880 to council and a direct connection all the way through their staff rather than having a cao where

00:05:10.400 people come to him and he determines what's important to bring to council and so when i first got

00:05:16.320 into my into my office um the first day uh which was unfortunately about eight days after the election

00:05:23.280 because they wouldn't they were kind of playing games with us on getting our orientation done

00:05:28.640 usually it's done the next day ours wasn't done till uh the 26th of october 2021 and when i came into

00:05:35.760 my office my office was completely clean so what i mean by that is not a piece of paper not a pen

00:05:41.920 not a paper clip not a notepad not some files in the drawers that that what was the past projects

00:05:47.600 the mayor was working on there was nothing not a thing i looked in the computer not an electronic file

00:05:53.600 not an email everything had been deleted everything had been erased so that kind of gets

00:05:59.360 your spidey senses a little bit uh going as to you know what's going on where's the continuity of

00:06:04.240 service our city is obviously older than a day old so we we've been there needs to be stuff that

00:06:09.760 we were working on and so what we soon found out is they had deleted all of the emails of the cao

00:06:15.840 and of the past mayor um off the server off their laptops off everything um we then further found out

00:06:24.800 that uh you know we were in office about less than a month and the cao the interim cao that we hired

00:06:33.520 to replace the cao that we had let go before we were bringing in our tri-cao model um excuse me came

00:06:41.120 to the three of us being two counselors and myself and asked me if i was willing to provide a mia copa

00:06:49.120 and i said what's the mia copa um i was like is that where you want me to forgive some kind of crime

00:06:56.000 and he said yes yes if staff come forward are you willing to forgive their crime if they come

00:07:04.000 forward and i said i'm not i'm a mayor i'm not a judge i can't i don't have that authority i don't

00:07:09.840 have that i mean we could bring in the rcmp and i'm sure if these people come forward with something

00:07:14.400 i'm sure they'd get a lesser sentence or something um but they should definitely come forward and he

00:07:19.840 wasn't too impressed with that but without skipping a beat he then asked is it okay if i pay out some

00:07:24.560 or sorry i plan to pay out some hush money and i kind of chuckled i said what do you mean by hush

00:07:31.280 money i said i think i know what you mean by hush money you want to pay somebody out so that they

00:07:35.120 don't tell something that's that's not been done properly and you want to you're trying to get rid

00:07:40.320 of them or something um and he had indicated that was the case and i said no i said we ran on uh the

00:07:46.560 three of us at the table ran on transparency and cleaning up corruption the last thing we want to do is

00:07:52.240 sweep it under the carpet um and so we wanted to make sure that if there's something to talk about

00:07:57.760 we want that information coming out to the public never mind of course coming out to council and so

00:08:02.720 he was quite quite visibly upset that we weren't prepared to agree to something so simple and we just

00:08:11.680 thought that was just terrible now maybe he was trying to make us complicit with something so they

00:08:16.080 had something on us i don't know but steven hanley was in the meeting as well with me and and it was

00:08:22.080 it was just shocking like steve what was your recollection of the event yeah no i think you

00:08:27.520 described it perfectly uh i was just as shocked as anyone else um we had found a lot of things in

00:08:32.880 that very short period uh you know issues with the utility company with uh confidentiality agreements

00:08:40.320 uh you know the land sales around the lake uh every time we turned around and we had a question

00:08:46.320 it usually led to something very nasty and then to just be asked you know uh for me a copa and you

00:08:53.520 know if they come forward you know will they be forgiven uh and uh and i remember my first thoughts

00:08:59.120 was you know if people were just doing if it's staff and they're just doing what they were told to do

00:09:05.200 they have no culpability right it's whoever instructed them but that should go off to the

00:09:10.720 appropriate authorities it's not our place we we don't have all of the detail uh and you know then

00:09:17.120 you the other thought occurred to me about you know the destruction of all of the the information by

00:09:22.400 the city right could you even get to that level of detail uh and then just i had um we had council

00:09:29.520 had passed a motion to have a forensic audit done and um what so we said that that you know nothing

00:09:36.960 needs to be thrown out no shredding nothing um and well i came to work early one morning and i show

00:09:43.120 this on on some of the slides that we show at our presentations i came to work early one morning and

00:09:47.920 there was a shredding truck sitting there in the morning uh before anybody had got there and i took

00:09:52.640 pictures of it and i took pictures of the work order and this and then i said you can't shred anything in

00:09:57.120 this building i said this has been frozen there's nothing allowed to be shredded and um and funny

00:10:03.680 enough this had been called ordered by an ex-employee that um was the returning officer who had been

00:10:12.480 promised a job during our election as the ea to the cao that was let go and you're like yeah that

00:10:20.080 sounds like a conflict of interest if there ever was one um and so you know we just found that what

00:10:26.000 stephen was mentioning about um we had a company our utility company was called cui and which did

00:10:33.040 which stood for chestamer utilities incorporated um that corporation was a wholly owned company of

00:10:39.840 the city of chestamer and so it had its own board though it's a separate company so it's a real entity

00:10:45.840 and the city would not share the financial data of that company and you're like well what do you mean

00:10:51.280 it's owned by the city no it's a private entity we don't have to share it uh what so we were upset

00:10:58.000 with that comp that that perspective when we were running for office we wanted information on the

00:11:02.880 utility because there was a lot of there was a lot of issues that had happened with utility in the past

00:11:08.320 um and we had actually had 5500 residents over the age of 18 sign a petition to have the utility

00:11:16.880 investigated and the council investigated in 2016 for corruption and sent to municipal affairs and

00:11:23.520 municipal affairs did nothing so just taking a look at some of your you know earlier claims with

00:11:29.760 this meeting that you had with the former cao when he came and asked about the hush money you two were

00:11:33.760 both in that meeting was there anyone else present in that meeting uh councillor mel phone he was the

00:11:38.080 deputy mayor at the time and unfortunately mel has some technical difficulties today and he can't

00:11:43.040 get on but yeah no he was there at the time and and we're we're actually in the process of signing

00:11:48.320 an affidavit to that effect of this information that that we had all witnessed um from this interim

00:11:55.280 cao and the kind of stuff that was going on in there right and you mentioned just in the first few

00:12:01.120 weeks you guys were looking into things and finding things that didn't really add up one of the

00:12:04.320 things you said was with sales uh around the lakefront property there as many of my viewers will

00:12:09.680 know chestamere has a beautiful freshwater lake one of the nicest in alberta that i've experienced i

00:12:15.120 often talk to people about how i miss the fresh water from ontario so i do really love chestamere

00:12:19.360 can you explain a little bit stephen about what went on with those sales there that seems so irregular

00:12:24.000 uh i believe residents initially contacted the mayor because the mayor actually lives on the lake as

00:12:29.760 well and in you know i guess around 2009 2010 the city forced the sale of land they acquired it

00:12:39.440 from the western irrigation district and the section of the land just uh that borders on the

00:12:44.720 water where their docks are they acquired it it was illegally subdivided because in order to subdivide

00:12:51.280 property you need road access which there was none they forced the sale to all of the homeowners around

00:12:57.200 the lake and in some instances they gave mortgages to some of the residents where other residents they

00:13:04.480 didn't give them any mortgages the one that had contacted us i believe her husband had a heart

00:13:10.640 attack or had some health difficulties at the time and couldn't pay for it at that point in time the city

00:13:16.720 came in with equipment destroyed her dock destroyed her shed destroyed her electrical and erected a six 1.00

00:13:24.400 foot fence between her and the lake so and this went on for numerous years a year later she went back and

00:13:33.360 she said now we're in a position to buy it and they increased the price 300 percent uh and when you say

00:13:40.320 that that they were giving mortgages the city was giving mortgages the city was giving mortgages we had

00:13:45.760 asked the questions initially and then we got uh you know uh a response from the the cfo at the time

00:13:53.520 uh and uh it was like pulling teeth for information uh that would be illegal or we're we've corrected it

00:14:00.880 now we're no longer in an illegal position uh it was it was very very odd uh the more questions we asked

00:14:09.040 the more evasive they got uh i've never heard of the city giving mortgages before is that a regular

00:14:15.280 practice uh under the mga you're not allowed the city is not allowed to lend to a private individual or

00:14:21.760 give a mortgage to a private individual they can do it to a non-profit uh in which they case they did i

00:14:27.280 believe they did with the yacht club uh where it's got a 35-year mortgage from the city uh with very

00:14:34.240 good terms but you cannot do it to individual residents you can't loan them money right okay

00:14:41.280 gentlemen i just want to dive into what the province is arguing here so municipal affairs minister rick

00:14:46.080 mcgyver he said the city was being governed in an improper irregular and improvident manner he has also

00:14:52.720 ordered a financial inspection of the city's booked as you know and deloitte is expected to finish that

00:14:58.240 report by mid-april and you guys were elected in october 2021 as you mentioned and dismissed in december

00:15:04.880 2023 so one of the matters of contention is documents filed by yourself jeff colvin in court show that you

00:15:11.440 ranked up around 8 500 on charges in a city issued credit card while dining out 84 times between march and

00:15:19.200 june 2023 i'll let you address that in a second as well the city filed its past two years of audited

00:15:25.840 financial statements late now that was partly due to a falling out in late 2022 with the city's former

00:15:32.240 auditor so those are the two issues of contention i could find obviously we have the statement from

00:15:36.880 mciver there but you know there seems to be lacking some specifics but jeff let's get started

00:15:41.760 can you address the charges on the city issue credit card with dining out because it does seem

00:15:45.600 a very high cost to taxpayers yeah so we so what we were doing is that um in order to keep things

00:15:52.560 organized we basically when we came into office we found out that they had over 60 credit cards

00:15:58.720 and uh we asked them if they had been uh reconciled and they indicated yes and we said great show us the

00:16:04.640 last six months and they couldn't because they didn't reconcile the visa statement so we said listen

00:16:11.760 we're going to cut these down to six so we cut down to six visa cards so that they could be 0.99

00:16:16.640 reconciled one of those visa cards was the mayor's and so what we did is we wanted to keep everything

00:16:22.640 so that it was tracked on easy to track and easy to follow so any of the any of the times that we'd had

00:16:28.880 um dinners uh any of the times we were working any times we were working over lunch or dinner with

00:16:34.720 council um all of that would go on the on the mayor's credit card um anytime that we had meetings

00:16:41.840 that were um with uh city business business people etc which would include caos which would include

00:16:48.720 councillors again we were told that when we were in our orientation that we cannot let people buy us lunch

00:16:58.160 or dinner because that could be perceived as a as some kind of a bias

00:17:02.000 um and so we made sure that we didn't do that then so we followed exactly what we were told so

00:17:08.080 anytime that we were working over lunch and over dinner um part of the part of the process is the

00:17:14.080 city is is covers the cost of that lunch or dinner um and that's really it so when we were working um

00:17:20.800 along with fighting of course fighting minister mckiver over this um silly inspection that he had that he

00:17:26.800 had started two months into our term um we were working 12 hour days and so we only because we

00:17:34.160 were we had a very tight agenda of trying to save money in the city and trying to restructure the

00:17:41.520 staffing and the attitude around our taxpayers um with our staff and so we didn't want to let up on

00:17:49.200 anything we were trying to accomplish just because minister mckiver was trying to frustrate us with tons and

00:17:54.720 tons of work um which he did which i do feel bad for some of our staff as well because they had to

00:17:59.920 put in extra time to try and make these um these things that minister mckiver had requested be done

00:18:06.640 but we did accomplish that so all of the things in relation to our our visa charges and whatnot those

00:18:12.560 are only for situations where we're working um or we're at the business meeting for example and so

00:18:18.160 we're not we're not going to dinner at any fancy restaurants or anything like that um you know we're not

00:18:22.800 going to i don't know high steakhouse or something like that like a lot of these times it's you're

00:18:28.240 ordering in subway um you're ordering in uh you know we have harvey's we're going to lunch at

00:18:34.000 wherever uh in chestamere so you know as much as it seems like if as you suggested that uh it's often

00:18:42.320 that is because of the schedule we were working uh and so part of the city's policy is that as our for

00:18:49.120 example as our council is working over lunches or dinners then food is brought in uh during our

00:18:54.720 period that we're working so it's nothing fantastic but they definitely are trying to blow that up into

00:19:00.000 more and quite frankly um eighty five hundred dollars i would suggest that we were probably

00:19:05.920 spending closer to um you know because that includes like hospitality so when we would go on

00:19:12.000 conferences um that would be our hotel rooms um when we were in edmonton or regina you know we would

00:19:17.920 be eating at a restaurant in edmonton or regina uh while we were on city business so that would

00:19:22.880 include all of those kinds of things and so um likely it was closer to probably two thousand dollars

00:19:28.240 a month or fifteen hundred dollars a month i would think um but again that's that's covering off um

00:19:34.880 uh food for um three four or five people at a time um so depending on what's happening so it's

00:19:41.840 it's it's nothing dastardly behind it there's no there's no um you know other it's it's very simple

00:19:49.600 what it was and and all it was was was us working over these time periods um and what ended up happening

00:19:56.240 as i'd mentioned earlier is that our focus around our staff was was focused around changing the concept

00:20:02.960 of how we waste money and and really focusing on how we can accomplish um serious performance goals and

00:20:11.200 targets and so what we felt is our is our public had to be dealt with and had to be thought of like

00:20:17.600 uh investors or shareholders and so one of the things for example my staff had come to me i'd asked

00:20:24.320 for a boardroom tv in our in our council boardroom and so they were going to get me something like a 70

00:20:30.880 or 80 inch tv and whatnot and i said make sure you don't waste money um because there's lots of tvs out

00:20:36.800 there i just needed for presentations whatnot they came back with a quote for a hundred thousand dollars

00:20:42.640 and i said you know i know we had the conversation you were here and i was here about don't waste money

00:20:48.720 so uh with the cao uh we went to best buy and we bought a 1300 80 inch tv and that's what we used on

00:20:56.560 our boardroom wall for presentations and and whatnot that we have and so you know our philosophy was that

00:21:04.960 was saving money and that's how we were able to save so much money like we saved in our very first

00:21:10.160 year we saved over uh over 10 11 million dollars in our very first year which is when we got in you

00:21:17.520 got to understand i mean it might not sound like a lot of money but in our city um our residential taxes

00:21:24.400 are were 20 million okay our budget was 50 but our residential tax portion was 20 million dollars

00:21:32.240 so for us to cut we cut four million dollars in our first year uh which put us down to 16 million

00:21:38.480 so for us to find another 10 million dollars that's on that's unheard of um and at the same time we were

00:21:44.960 able to then cut taxes the next year by 25 so it's you know it's it can be done and this is one of the

00:21:51.840 things that you know we're trying to show other municipalities and other people in their in their cities

00:21:58.480 that government and staff have have a typical apathy feeling towards residents they see their money as

00:22:09.440 they don't respect it um and they they have no problem spending it significantly

00:22:15.120 uh and i i just think that it's a commercial operation so yes there is money spent and it has

00:22:20.800 to be on quality product and as long as you're you know going about the job that you need to go about

00:22:26.400 yeah there is a cost of doing work there is um and it needs to be done at a high quality level and

00:22:31.520 on purpose but all companies want that all companies in the private sector want quality

00:22:38.000 product and quality return but they don't want wasted money and that's one of the things that we proud

00:22:43.760 prided ourself on was was doing that and i can speak to you know things around that um but it was

00:22:50.800 really important that like when we as i mentioned before around you know how to you know how to focus

00:22:57.280 on staff on saving money for residents we had a situation where our cao um interim cao had paid out

00:23:05.200 some hush money of six hundred thousand dollars and that was paid out to two people almost four

00:23:10.960 hundred thousand dollars to an ex-cfo and all and just over two hundred thousand dollars to an ex-director

00:23:16.400 of hr and why that's so important is that that anything over seventy five thousand dollars has

00:23:23.120 to come to council a cao is allowed to spend up to seventy five thousand dollars that's an unbudgeted

00:23:29.840 item and without coming to council then that's okay that's allowed so that's allowed but if it's over

00:23:36.640 that they need to come to council because we are the stewards of those funds and so um our budget in

00:23:42.400 council for example was um i'm trying to remember it exactly i don't know if you know steven but it

00:23:46.320 was over a hundred thousand dollars in council and so we we got nowhere near to spending that kind of

00:23:53.200 money um and i mean i imagine that sounds like that's a lot of money but a lot of other cities

00:23:58.800 would spend you know significantly more than that but we prided ourselves on making sure we didn't

00:24:05.040 and so it was it was good right so just to go back you know the 85 i think is a bit closer to

00:24:09.920 eighty six hundred dollars a month you're saying that wasn't just me out whining and dining that

00:24:14.800 was meals for city council as a whole and the caos when we were working late or when we were working

00:24:20.240 over lunch we would order and food sometimes go out so that's just uh you know you were spending

00:24:24.640 somewhere between probably just over two thousand two thousand bucks a month and over four months to

00:24:28.800 get to that just over eight thousand there and then for the second claim that i mentioned the city

00:24:34.480 filed its past two years of audited financial statements late and that was partly due to

00:24:39.040 um falling out with the former auditor is was there anything there that was of concern or

00:24:44.080 why is that issue being brought up now um i'll let steve jump into that but it was a huge concern

00:24:48.880 for us because we were bringing irregularities to that auditor and and they would put their pins

00:24:54.160 down when we brought concerns and they would not do any more work which is very very odd and then

00:25:01.120 that's what led to at least one of the years the report actually being filed late steven would you

00:25:05.040 care to speak to this yeah yeah um i guess you one of the things to consider is is the the year that

00:25:10.960 the k that the kpmg audit uh ended up being delayed uh and then they resigned at the end that was 2021

00:25:18.160 that was the year we were elected we basically had nothing to do with that year it was all of the prior

00:25:24.160 council but when we did come in uh and my background did it was as a senior financial partner for the

00:25:30.000 railway uh so i know a thing or two about budgeting capital planning asset management internal financial

00:25:36.560 controls uh in publicly traded companies their socks controls uh which you know uh allowed uh

00:25:44.480 investors to have confidence in the information they're getting uh what i saw in the city was a

00:25:49.520 a big lack of controls uh a lot of the ability to move money in and out uh restricted surplus accounts

00:25:56.720 uh to you know change the financial statements as they they uh as they decide and i think the common

00:26:05.040 perception problem is financial statements are created by the city and are the city's documents

00:26:11.360 right they're not created by the auditors what the auditors do is the auditors get an understanding of

00:26:17.440 your controls they won't give you an opinion on your controls whether they're good bad or indifferent

00:26:22.480 but they verify that the statements you produce uh followed the controls that you said you had

00:26:29.840 and the disclosures is entirely up to you as the the owner of the document so an audit really doesn't

00:26:37.600 tell you a lot of information uh and during that same audit with kpmg uh they as jeff said they tried

00:26:45.120 to put down their pens numerous times because we had concerns uh we heard about people having bank time

00:26:51.120 and we wanted to ensure that on the liability side that that was recognized in the financial

00:26:56.320 statements so we had all of these questions uh and it may also have been tied back to the fact of

00:27:02.560 the prior council's information was deleted the emails the files all that information was not

00:27:09.040 available to us or at the same time it could not have been available to the auditors or it may have

00:27:15.600 been provided to the auditors but then there was a problem how do you explain the council that you

00:27:20.880 told them that it didn't exist right okay well thank you for explaining that just before we get

00:27:27.040 into sort of the last issue i want to cover before i'm going to let you guys go today you know we've

00:27:30.960 covered some of the issues that have been arisen some of the allegations for my audience i have not

00:27:35.120 independently verified any of these allegations i did send a request to minister mciver's office to

00:27:40.640 let them know we were going to be doing this show today i have not received a response to include

00:27:44.480 as of this time if i get one before we post this i'll be sure to include it but we're just kind of

00:27:48.400 doing a snapshot of this issue right now because there are so many allegations and there's so many

00:27:52.240 things that we're waiting through i'm sure that we'll get back to this story and that kind of leads

00:27:55.840 me into the last thing i wanted to talk to you about is this is now hopefully before the courts i

00:27:59.680 know that you guys have filed an injunction you're hoping to get this resolved in the courts jeff can you

00:28:04.160 give us an update what does that look like right now so what we're in the process of doing is um is

00:28:09.680 we have a judicial review which is like a lawsuit um and we're just in the process with the chief

00:28:14.880 justice having deciding a date that that can be heard before a by-election and so that was recommended

00:28:23.040 by the judge um to indicate that this should be heard before the by-election and in the municipal

00:28:28.480 world um in order to get a judicial review approved the judge that you have to approach has to determine

00:28:35.600 if you have a likelihood of success and so the judge if the if it's if it's frivolous for example the

00:28:41.360 judge won't waste the court's time and so the judge felt that we did have a high degree of success

00:28:47.040 and would allow us to proceed with that judicial review so you have to pass that first test which

00:28:51.600 is which is important we did pass so we're now just waiting for a date from the chief justice to

00:28:57.360 allow us to come to court uh before uh um the by-election which we believe would be somewhere

00:29:03.040 possibly in june of this year right and you and i chatted about this on the phone earlier and for a

00:29:08.400 minute i thought that the lawsuit had been cancelled because there's some headlines in the news that

00:29:12.400 says the city of chastamere has abandoned the lawsuit and you explained to me no the city the

00:29:17.600 lawsuit is still ongoing it's our lawsuit but the city has had its name taken off of the lawsuit so

00:29:23.360 i'm wondering in terms of you know who's covering the cost of this are you guys paying for this out

00:29:26.800 of pocket is this something the city will be required to cover yeah so the city unfortunately

00:29:32.320 every time the government comes out with something um it's never it's never truthful

00:29:36.400 uh so what they did when they said that statement that we've cancelled the lawsuit that's not true

00:29:41.680 they can't do that because on the lawsuit the city is named as they and the four of us counselors are

00:29:49.440 named the mayor and three counselors so if the city wants to withdraw its name it can it has that choice

00:29:56.160 just as we would have that choice individually as well and so the city did withdraw their name but

00:30:00.960 they cannot cancel the lawsuit so unfortunately they released a statement to the public that said

00:30:05.520 yeah we cancelled the lawsuit it's all over and that's that's just flagrantly not true

00:30:10.320 um in regards to costs and whatnot no yes that is something that the four of us are funding and so

00:30:16.400 um the city does not fund the the cost of it uh going forward well i'm sure that we'll be

00:30:22.720 following this case with interest as i mentioned my viewers have asked me to cover this there's a lot

00:30:27.120 of interest in it right now thank you so much for joining my show today and we'll definitely have an

00:30:31.200 update i'm sure in a couple weeks or a couple months thank you very much um it's it's really

00:30:36.880 crucial that people understand the conflicts that are are part of this um one of the things that

00:30:43.200 really why we're so critical of minister mckiver is that he should have recused himself because it's

00:30:48.400 unethical that he's involved because he's the brother-in-law for the previous mayor that was under

00:30:53.360 investigation by us for some alleged uh contraventions i guess and minister mckiver in a letter that i wrote to

00:31:01.040 him about his conflict and in breach of the alberta conflict act indicated that he would did not feel

00:31:07.360 that he was in breach and he was not going to recuse himself um and so the test of that is not for the

00:31:14.560 person who's in conflict to recuse themselves and make that decision it's for the person who's making

00:31:18.960 the allegation of it and so minister mckiver doesn't understand that and and just so just as a one final

00:31:24.800 point municipal affairs remains in breach of a court order to provide us with the evidence against us

00:31:32.560 and we've been claiming that for the last two years when they did this inspection

00:31:36.640 what is the evidence that you have against us you are supposed to give it to us in a proceeding in

00:31:42.240 court as part of judicial fairness they're supposed to tell you what are you being accused of and

00:31:46.880 here's the evidence so you have an opportunity to say uh that wasn't me i wasn't there here's the

00:31:52.720 evidence that supports my my statement we've never been given anything like that and that's very very

00:31:59.680 very unfair thank you very much for your time rachel if you have more questions we'd love to

00:32:05.920 you know answer more of course that's what we're here for absolutely we'll be keeping a close look

00:32:09.840 at this story and to see if we can get some of that evidence put forward to really weigh what's going

00:32:13.360 on here and see both sides of things jeff steven thanks so much for joining my show today as for the

00:32:17.760 rest of you i'll be back on saturday with my regular programming please let me know in the

00:32:22.080 comments below if you guys are interested in following this chestamere case and what do you

00:32:26.000 think is going on and i'll be sure to read some of your comments on saturday's episode hey everyone

00:32:30.160 and just a quick update for you guys i had mentioned during the show that the minister's

00:32:33.360 office had not responded in time for us to include that in the show and get a response from

00:32:37.760 the former mayor and former counselor however he did respond before the show went live so i'm just

00:32:42.480 gonna include that response now so that you all have it and are able to hear his side of things

00:32:46.880 a spokesperson for minister mcivor said that concerns about the chestamere government were

00:32:51.440 brought to the province's attention beginning in january 2022 and an independent inspector

00:32:56.960 appointed by minister mcivor conducted a municipal inspection of the city of chestamere

00:33:02.000 that resulted in 12 binding directives from the previous minister the response says quote these

00:33:07.120 directives represent the bare minimum that any citizen of alberta should expect from their

00:33:10.960 municipal government the city's failure to comply with some of the directives and with the

00:33:15.600 supervision of the official administrator appointed to supervise the municipality and its council

00:33:20.320 resulted in the dismissal of four elected officials and three chief administrative officers

00:33:25.360 the minister's decisions in this matter are supported by the independent inspector's report

00:33:29.840 minister's directives and the reasons for dismissal all of which have been released

00:33:34.080 published publicly and remain available online

Juno News - March 21, 2024

Former mayor alleges corruption in Chestermere

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