The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - Former mayor alleges corruption in Chestermere

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

00:00:14.080 we are doing something a little bit different today we are looking into a situation over in

00:00:18.520 chestamere where the city mayor along with three city councillors and three administrative officers

00:00:24.160 were dismissed by the provincial government they were dismissed by municipal affairs minister rick

00:00:29.560 mcgyver today i am joined by the former mayor jeff colvin as well as one of the city councillors

00:00:35.320 stephen hailey gentlemen thanks so much for joining me today thank you thank you very much rachel

00:00:39.860 so jeff we spoke on the phone a little bit earlier and i asked you what's going on in chestamere a lot

00:00:46.780 of my members of my audience have reached out to me and they've asked me to look into this story

00:00:51.400 they said something strange is going on in chestamere when i started looking into it i was a bit confused

00:00:55.240 as well i have to admit i've never heard of a mayor and city councillors being dismissed by the

00:00:59.540 government before i know it has happened but it's used in very rare circumstances you said that the

00:01:05.440 municipal government began looking into your council just about two months after you were elected and

00:01:10.900 after you and your fellow councillors spent some time digging into the finances and finding things

00:01:16.680 that didn't add up can you share a little bit about what happened when you were elected and how

00:01:21.060 quickly the municipal government began investigating you sure thank you very much rachel um what what

00:01:26.340 happened is that basically there was a group of us that were interested in in running for council

00:01:32.160 um we had all had various time frames of living in chestamere myself i had lived in chestamere for about

00:01:38.980 25 years and i decided that uh there were some things that i could help the city with um there's a lot of

00:01:45.660 growth here and my background is in development of of subdivisions and water and sewer and pipelines and

00:01:51.340 sidewalks etc and so it had appeared on the outside that the city was getting taken advantage of

00:01:57.140 um their contracts were seeming to be very one-sided to the developer or slash to the construction company

00:02:03.160 and i thought that i could come in and help with um how to make sure that you know didn't happen

00:02:08.720 anymore um there was some questionable tactics that we saw from the outside the way that the council was

00:02:14.620 being treated by the cao at the time before we got into office and so i didn't feel comfortable with the

00:02:20.700 the way that um they were being talked down to and the way that they were being controlled and it felt

00:02:25.720 like from what my experience was they weren't getting the whole story and um the way that

00:02:31.860 councillors are brought in they're they're often brought in on not just their resume but they're

00:02:36.620 brought in on because their desire to contribute to the community so it doesn't mean that they're

00:02:40.940 experts in these fields and so they're relying entirely on that cao giving them enough information

00:02:47.020 to make somewhat of an informed decision so when we got into office we were successful um i was

00:02:53.400 successful in in in winning my position which was the mayor of chestamere um we noticed it to be very

00:02:59.400 confrontational with the existing senior staff as well as the existing cao which i mentioned before had

00:03:06.440 had some issues um a lot of the things that we identified i knew very well what they were talking

00:03:12.200 about because it was infrastructure based and development construction etc and he didn't like

00:03:18.020 the fact that i knew what i was talking about or at least i knew what they were talking about

00:03:22.360 and um very quickly we had looked into how do we get more transparency with um our city so that our

00:03:31.220 councillors can get access to more information and ultimately so our constituents or our public can get

00:03:37.180 access to more information so they can know what's going on um and so we started looking at a model

00:03:42.620 called a tri-cao model which was basically bringing in three caos instead of one um and and what we found

00:03:51.100 very quickly when we did that is is it it massively increased the transparency factor um we brought in

00:03:58.580 private sector skilled people in their areas so one of our areas for example was corporate services which is

00:04:04.520 more like your internal operations so your accounting your marketing your communications

00:04:08.740 um and then your other department was your your community's operations which is more of your roads

00:04:14.540 and fleet so more of a blue collar type work um and then you're looking at your engineering and

00:04:19.920 development which is more of a professional and engineer for example so we hired those people with

00:04:25.920 those specific skills and so that actually reduced what you pay these caos because these caos

00:04:31.680 i don't i just don't believe that they know everything i don't follow that idea that you

00:04:36.520 know the city is a big company it operates a lot of different things compared to a normal company which

00:04:41.400 operates you know three or four main product lines and is very laser focused um and the city is is just

00:04:47.560 not that um but it doesn't mean you don't want high levels of expertise and so that's one of the

00:04:52.640 things that we brought in and in that situation of bringing these experts to the table it not only

00:04:57.800 provided massive transparency to council it also allowed the those people to have a direct connection

00:05:05.000 to council and a direct connection all the way through their staff um rather than having a cao where

00:05:09.920 people come to him and he determines what's important um to bring to council and so when i first got into

00:05:16.640 my into my office um the first day uh which was unfortunately about eight days after the election

00:05:23.200 because they wouldn't they were kind of playing games with us on getting our orientation done

00:05:27.360 usually it's done the next day ours wasn't done till uh the 26th of october 2021 and when i came

00:05:35.700 into my office my office was completely clean so what i mean by that is not a piece of paper not a pen

00:05:41.940 not a paper clip not a notepad not some files in the drawers that that what was the past projects

00:05:47.700 the mayor was working on there was nothing not a thing i looked in the computer not an electronic

00:05:52.900 file not an email everything had been deleted everything had been erased so that kind of gets

00:05:59.520 your spidey senses a little bit uh going as to you know what's going on where's the continuity of

00:06:04.320 service our city is obviously older than a day old so we we've been there needs to be stuff that we

00:06:10.000 were working on and so what we soon found out is they had deleted all of the emails of the cao

00:06:15.660 and of the past mayor um off the server off their laptops off everything um we then further found out

00:06:24.860 that uh you know we were in office about less than a month and the cao the interim cao that we hired

00:06:33.340 to replace the cao that we had let go before we were bringing in our tri-cao model um excuse me came

00:06:41.180 to the three of us being two counselors and myself and asked me if i was willing to provide a mia copa

00:06:47.920 and i said what's a mia copa um i was like is that where you want me to forgive some kind of crime

00:06:56.120 and he said yes yes if staff come forward are you willing to forgive their crime

00:07:02.640 if they come forward and i said i'm not i'm a mayor i'm not a judge i can't i don't have that

00:07:09.200 authority i don't have that i mean we could bring in the rcmp and i'm sure if these people

00:07:12.620 come forward with something i'm sure they'd get a lesser sentence or something um but they should

00:07:17.480 definitely come forward and he wasn't too impressed with that but without skipping a beat he then asked

00:07:22.800 is it okay if i pay out some or sorry i plan to pay out some hush money and i kind of chuckled i said

00:07:29.080 what do you mean by hush money i said i think i know what you mean by hush money you want to pay

00:07:33.960 somebody out so that they don't tell something that's that's not been done properly and you want

00:07:39.560 to you're trying to get rid of them or something um and he had indicated that was the case and i said

00:07:44.520 no i said we ran on uh the three of us at the table ran on transparency and cleaning up corruption

00:07:51.200 the last thing we want to do is sweep it under the carpet um and so we wanted to make sure that

00:07:56.300 if there's something to talk about we want that information coming out to the public never mind of

00:08:00.460 course coming out to council and so he was quite quite visibly upset that we weren't prepared to

00:08:08.620 agree to something so simple and we just thought that was just terrible now maybe he was trying to

00:08:14.040 make us complicit with something so they had something on us i don't know but steven hanley

00:08:19.040 was in the meeting as well with me and and it was it was just shocking like steve what was your

00:08:23.980 recollection of the event yeah no i i think you described it perfectly i was just as shocked as

00:08:30.140 anyone else um we had found a lot of things in that very short period uh you know issues with

00:08:36.300 utility company with uh confidentiality agreements uh you know the land sales around the lake uh every

00:08:44.480 time we turned around and we had a question it usually led to something very nasty and then to just

00:08:50.700 be asked you know uh for me a copa and you know if they come forward you know will they be forgiven

00:08:55.760 uh and uh and i remember my first thoughts was you know if people were just doing if it's staff and

00:09:02.620 they're just doing what they were told to do they have no culpability right it's whoever instructed

00:09:09.000 them but that should go off to the appropriate authorities it's not our place we we don't have all of the

00:09:14.200 detail uh and you know then you the other thought occurred to me about you know the destruction of all of the

00:09:21.420 the information by the city right could you even get to that level of detail uh and then just well i

00:09:28.280 had um we had council had passed a motion to have a forensic audit done and um what so we said that

00:09:36.040 that you know nothing needs to be thrown out no shredding nothing um and well i came to work early

00:09:42.200 one morning and i show this on on some of the slides that we show at our presentations i came to work

00:09:47.340 early one morning and there was a shredding truck sitting there in the morning uh before anybody had

00:09:51.840 got there and i took pictures of it and i took pictures of the work order and this and then i said

00:09:55.740 you can't shred anything in this building i said this has been frozen there's nothing allowed to be shredded

00:10:01.580 and um and funny enough this had been called ordered by an ex-employee that um was the returning

00:10:11.280 officer who had been promised a job during our election as the ea to the cao that was let go

00:10:18.000 and you're like yeah that sounds like a conflict of interest if there ever was one um and so you know

00:10:25.180 we just found that what steven was mentioning about um we had a company our utility company was called

00:10:31.080 cui and which did which stood for chestomere utilities incorporated um that corporation was a wholly owned

00:10:38.920 company of the city of chestomere and so it had its own board though it's a separate company so it's a

00:10:44.300 real entity um and the city would not share the financial data of that company and you're like

00:10:50.400 well what do you mean it's owned by the city no it's a private entity we don't have to share it

00:10:54.640 uh what so we were upset with that comp that that perspective when we were running for office we

00:11:01.920 wanted information on the utility because there was a lot of there was a lot of issues that had

00:11:06.400 happened with utility in the past um and we had actually had 5 500 residents over the age of 18

00:11:13.680 sign a petition to have the utility investigated and the council investigated in 2016 for corruption

00:11:20.940 and sent to municipal affairs and municipal affairs did nothing so just taking a look at some of your

00:11:28.140 you know earlier claims with this meeting that you had with the former cao when he came and asked

00:11:32.440 about the hush money you two were both in that meeting was there anyone else present in that meeting

00:11:36.140 uh councillor mel phone he was the deputy mayor at the time and unfortunately mel has some technical

00:11:41.940 difficulties today and he can't get on but yeah no he was there at the time and and we're we're

00:11:47.020 actually in the process of signing an affidavit to that effect of this information that that we had

00:11:52.700 all witnessed um from this interim cao and the kind of stuff that was going on in there

00:11:57.780 right and you mentioned just in the first few weeks you guys were looking into things and finding

00:12:03.100 things that didn't really add up one of the things you said was with sales uh around the lakefront

00:12:07.760 property there as many of my viewers will know chestamere has a beautiful freshwater lake one of

00:12:12.420 the nicest in alberta that i've experienced i often talk to people about how i miss the freshwater from

00:12:17.640 ontario so i do really love chestamere can you explain a little bit stephen about what went on

00:12:21.360 with those sales there that seems so irregular well i believe residents initially contacted the mayor

00:12:27.860 because the mayor actually lives on the lake as well uh and in you know uh i guess around 2009

00:12:34.800 2010 the city forced the sale of land they acquired it from the western irrigation district

00:12:41.280 and the section of the land just uh that borders on the water where their docks are

00:12:45.980 they acquired it it was illegally subdivided because in order to subdivide property you need road access

00:12:52.620 which there was none they forced the sale to all of the homeowners around the lake

00:12:57.780 and in some instances they gave mortgages to some of the residents where other residents they didn't

00:13:04.860 give them any mortgages the one that had contacted us i believe her husband had a heart attack or had

00:13:11.400 some health difficulties at the time and couldn't pay for it at that point in time the city came in

00:13:17.520 with equipment destroyed her dock destroyed her shed destroyed her electrical and erected a six-foot fence 0.99

00:13:25.140 between her and the lake so and this went on for numerous years a year later she went back and she

00:13:33.640 said now we're in a position to buy it and they increased the price 300 percent uh and when you say

00:13:40.500 that that they were giving mortgages the city was giving mortgages the city was giving mortgages we had

00:13:45.840 asked the questions initially and then we got uh you know uh a response from the the cfo at the time

00:13:53.220 uh and uh it was like pulling teeth for information uh that would be illegal or we're we've corrected it

00:14:01.020 now we're no longer in an illegal position uh it was it was very very odd uh the more questions we asked

00:14:09.100 the more evasive they got uh i've never heard of a city giving mortgages before is that a regular

00:14:15.260 practice uh under the mga you're not allowed the city is not allowed to lend to a private individual

00:14:21.640 or give a mortgage to a private individual they can do it to a non-profit uh in which they in case

00:14:26.940 they did i believe they did it with the yacht club uh where it's got a 35-year mortgage from the city

00:14:33.180 uh with very good terms but you cannot do it to individual residents you can't loan them money

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00:15:07.700 right okay gentlemen i just want to dive into what the province is arguing here so

00:15:14.700 municipal affairs minister rick mcgyver he said the city was being governed in an improper

00:15:19.580 irregular and improvident manner he has also ordered a financial inspection of the city's booked as you

00:15:26.180 know and deloitte is expected to finish that report by mid-april and you guys were elected in

00:15:32.120 october 2020 as you mentioned and dismissed in december 2023 so one of the matters of contention

00:15:37.300 is documents filed by yourself jeff colvin in court show that you ranked up around 8 500

00:15:43.020 on charges in a city issued credit card while dining out 84 times between march and june 2023 i'll let you

00:15:51.400 address that in a second as well the city filed its past two years of audited financial statements late

00:15:57.120 now that was partly due to a falling out in late 2022 with the city's former auditor so those are

00:16:04.080 the two issues of contention i could find obviously we have the statement from mcgyver there but you know

00:16:08.820 there seems to be lacking some specifics but jeff let's get started can you address the charges on

00:16:13.780 the city issued credit card with dining out because it does seem a very high cost to taxpayers yeah so we

00:16:18.980 so what we were doing is that um in order to keep things organized we basically when we came into

00:16:25.080 office we found out that they had over 60 credit cards and uh we asked them if they had been

00:16:31.120 reconciled and they indicated yes and we said great show us the last six months and they couldn't because

00:16:37.940 they didn't reconcile the visa statement so we said listen we're going to cut these down to six

00:16:43.560 so we cut down to six visa cards so that they could be reconciled one of those visa cards was the mayor's

00:16:49.340 and so what we did is we wanted to keep everything so that it was tracked on easy to track and easy to

00:16:55.520 follow so any of the any of the times that we'd had um dinners uh any of the times we were working

00:17:02.100 any of the times we were working over lunch or dinner with council um all of that would go on the

00:17:07.940 on the mayor's credit card um any time that we had meetings that were um with uh city business

00:17:15.280 business people etc which would include caos which would include counselors um again we were told

00:17:21.920 that when we uh we're in our orientation that we cannot let people buy us lunch uh or dinner because

00:17:29.220 that could be perceived as a as some kind of a bias um and so we made sure that we didn't do that then

00:17:35.820 so we followed exactly what we were told so anytime that we were working over lunch and over dinner

00:17:41.240 um part of the part of the process is the city is is covers the cost of that lunch or dinner um and

00:17:48.440 that's really it so when we were working um along with fighting of course fighting minister mckiver

00:17:53.380 over this um silly inspection that he had that he had started two months into our term um we were

00:18:01.120 working 12 hour days and so we only because we were we had a very tight agenda of trying to save money

00:18:08.860 in the city and trying to restructure the staffing and the attitude around our taxpayers um with our

00:18:16.200 staff and so we didn't want to let up on anything we were trying to accomplish just because minister

00:18:21.580 mckiver was trying to frustrate us with tons and tons of work um which he did which i do feel bad for

00:18:28.380 some of our staff as well because they had to put in extra time to try and make these um these things

00:18:33.440 that minister mckiver had requested be done but we did accomplish that so all of the things in relation

00:18:39.540 to our our visa charges and whatnot those are only for situations where we're working um or we're at

00:18:46.300 the business meeting for example and so we're not we're not going to dinner at any fancy restaurants or

00:18:51.360 anything like that um you know we're not going to i don't know high's steakhouse or something like

00:18:56.620 that like a lot of these times it's you're ordering in subway um you're ordering in uh you know we have

00:19:02.420 harvey's we're going to lunch at wherever uh in chestamere so you know as much as it seems like

00:19:08.760 if as you suggested that uh it's often that is because of the schedule we were working uh and so

00:19:16.480 part of the city's policy is that as our for example as our council is working over lunches or

00:19:22.280 dinners then food is brought in uh during our period that we're working so it's nothing fantastic

00:19:27.580 but they definitely are trying to blow that up into more and quite frankly um eighty five hundred

00:19:33.040 dollars i would suggest that we were probably spending closer to um you know because that

00:19:39.040 includes like hospitality so when we would go on conferences um that would be our hotel rooms um

00:19:45.520 when we were in edmonton or regina you know we would be eating at a restaurant in edmonton or regina

00:19:49.980 while we were on city business so that would include all of those kinds of things and so

00:19:55.080 um likely it was closer to probably two thousand dollars a month or fifteen hundred dollars a

00:19:59.920 month i would think um but again that's that's covering off um uh food for um three four or five 0.92

00:20:08.520 people at a time um so depending on what's happening so it's it's nothing dastardly behind it there's no

00:20:15.320 there's no um you know other it's it's very simple what it was and and all it was was was us

00:20:22.100 working over these time periods um and what ended up happening as i've mentioned earlier is that

00:20:28.000 our focus around our staff was was focused around changing the concept of how we waste money

00:20:34.100 and and really focusing on how we can accomplish um serious performance uh goals and targets and so

00:20:42.760 what we felt is our is our public had to be dealt with and had to be thought of like uh investors or

00:20:49.040 shareholders and so one of the things for example my staff had come to me i'd asked for a boardroom tv

00:20:55.960 in our in our council boardroom and so they were going to get me something like a 70 or 80 inch tv and

00:21:02.040 whatnot and i said make sure you don't waste money um because there's lots of tvs out there i just needed

00:21:07.700 for presentations whatnot they came back with a quote for a hundred thousand dollars and i said you know

00:21:14.800 i know i know we had the conversation you were here and i was here about don't waste money so

00:21:19.180 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

00:21:26.740 our boardroom wall for presentations and and whatnot that we have and so you know our philosophy was that

00:21:34.900 was saving money and that's how we were able to save so much money like we saved in our very first year

00:21:40.540 we saved over uh over 10 11 million dollars in our very first year which is when we got in you got to

00:21:47.960 understand i mean it might not sound like a lot of money but in our city um our residential taxes

00:21:54.120 are were 20 million okay our budget was 50 but our residential tax portion was 20 million dollars

00:22:01.760 so for us to cut we cut four million dollars in our first year uh which put us down to 16 million

00:22:08.640 so for us to find another 10 million dollars that's un that's unheard of um and at the same time we

00:22:14.980 were 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

00:22:21.920 the things that you know we're trying to show other municipalities and other people in their in their

00:22:27.580 cities that government and staff have have a typical apathy feeling towards residents they see their

00:22:38.100 money as they don't respect it um and they they have no problem spending it significantly uh and i i

00:22:46.360 just think that it's a commercial operation so yes there is money spent and it has to be on quality

00:22:51.800 product and as long as you're you know going about the job that you need to go about yeah there is a

00:22:57.360 cost of doing work there is um and it needs to be done at a high quality level and on purpose but

00:23:02.480 all companies want that all companies in the private sector want quality product and quality

00:23:09.020 return but they don't want wasted money and that's one of the things that we proud prided ourself on

00:23:15.040 was was doing that and i can speak to you know things around that um but it was really important that

00:23:22.080 like when we as i mentioned before around you know how to you know how to focus on staff on saving

00:23:28.680 money for residents we had a situation where our cao um interim cao had paid out um some hush money of

00:23:36.180 six hundred thousand dollars and that was paid out to two people almost four hundred thousand dollars

00:23:42.000 to an ex-cfo and all and just over two hundred thousand dollars to an ex-director of hr and why

00:23:48.700 that's so important is that that anything over seventy five thousand dollars has to come to council

00:23:54.380 a cao is allowed to spend up to seventy five thousand dollars that's an unbudgeted item

00:24:00.280 and without coming to council then that's okay that's allowed so that's allowed but if it's over

00:24:06.740 that they need to come to council because we are the stewards of those funds and so um our budget in

00:24:12.580 council for example was um i'm trying to remember it exactly i don't know if you know steven but it was

00:24:16.640 over a hundred thousand dollars in council and so we we got nowhere near to spending that kind of money

00:24:23.620 um and i mean i imagine that sounds like that's a lot of money but a lot of other cities would spend

00:24:29.540 you know significantly more than that but we prided ourself on making sure we didn't

00:24:34.760 um and so it was it was good right so just to go back you know the 85 i think is a bit closer to

00:24:40.140 eighty six hundred dollars a month you're saying that wasn't just me out whining and dining that was

00:24:45.240 meals for city council as a whole and the caos when we were working late or when we were working over

00:24:50.600 lunch we would order and food sometimes go out so that was just a you know you were spending

00:24:54.760 somewhere between probably just over two thousand two thousand bucks a month and over four months to

00:24:59.060 get to the just over eight thousand there and then for the second claim that i mentioned the city filed

00:25:04.980 its past two years of audited financial statements late and that was partly due to um falling out with

00:25:10.340 the former auditor is was there anything there that was of concern or why is that issue being brought up

00:25:15.520 now um i'll let steve jump into that but it was a huge concern for us because we were bringing

00:25:20.340 irregularities to that auditor and and they would put their pens down when we brought concerns

00:25:25.860 and they would not do any more work which is very very odd and then that's what led to at least one

00:25:32.560 of the years the report actually being filed late steven would you care to speak to this yeah yeah um i

00:25:37.560 guess one of the things to consider is is the the year that the k that the kpmg audit ended up being

00:25:44.400 delayed uh and then they resigned at the end that was 2021 that was the year we were elected we

00:25:50.220 basically had nothing to do with that year it was all of the prior council but when we did come in

00:25:56.680 uh and my background did it was as a senior financial partner for the railway uh so i know a thing or two

00:26:02.860 about budgeting capital planning asset management internal financial controls uh in publicly traded

00:26:09.320 companies their socks controls uh which you know uh allowed uh investors to have confidence in the

00:26:16.500 information they're getting uh what i saw in the city was a a big lack of controls uh a lot of the

00:26:23.520 ability to move money in and out of restricted surplus accounts uh to you know change the financial

00:26:30.400 statements as they they as they decide and i think the common perception problem is financial

00:26:37.420 statements are created by the city and are the city's documents right they're not created by the

00:26:43.140 auditors what the auditors do is the auditors get an understanding of your controls they won't give

00:26:49.080 you an opinion on your controls whether they're good bad or indifferent but they verify that the

00:26:54.860 statements you produce uh followed the controls that you said you had uh and the disclosures is

00:27:01.560 entirely up to you as the the owner of the document so an audit really doesn't tell you a lot of

00:27:08.640 information uh and during that same audit with kpmg uh they as jeff said they tried to put down their

00:27:15.900 pens numerous times because we had concerns uh we heard about people having bank time and we wanted

00:27:21.880 to ensure that on the liability side that that was recognized in the financial statements so we had all

00:27:27.520 of these questions uh and it may also have been tied back to the fact of the prior council's information

00:27:34.440 was deleted uh the emails the files all that information was not available to us or at the same

00:27:41.380 time uh it could not have been available to the auditors or it may have been uh provided to the auditors

00:27:48.380 but then there was a problem how do you explain the council that you told them that it didn't exist

00:27:52.580 right okay well thank you for explaining that just before we get into sort of the last issue i want

00:27:58.820 to cover before i'm going to let you guys go today you know we've covered some of the issues that have

00:28:02.640 been arisen some of the allegations for my audience i have not independently verified any of these

00:28:06.900 allegations i did send a request to minister mc iver's office to let them know we were going to be

00:28:11.640 doing this show today i have not received a response to include as of this time if i get one

00:28:16.060 before we post this i'll be sure to include it but we're just kind of doing a snapshot of this issue

00:28:19.760 right now because there are so many allegations and there's so many things that we're waiting

00:28:23.120 through i'm sure that we'll get back to this story and that kind of leads me into the last thing i

00:28:26.920 wanted to talk to you about is this is now hopefully before the courts i know that you guys to file an

00:28:30.980 injunction you're hoping to get this resolved in the courts jeff can you give us an update what does

00:28:35.400 that look like right now so what we're in the process of doing is um is we have a judicial review which

00:28:41.220 is like a lawsuit um and we're just in the process with the chief justice having deciding a date

00:28:47.740 that that can be heard before a by-election um and so that was recommended by the judge um to

00:28:54.900 indicate that this should be heard before the by-election and in the municipal world um in

00:29:00.040 order to get a judicial review approved the judge that you have to approach has to determine if you

00:29:05.980 have a likelihood of success and so the judge if the if it's if it's frivolous for example the judge

00:29:11.820 won't waste the court's time and so the judge felt that we did have a high degree of success

00:29:16.680 and would allow us to proceed with that judicial review so you have to pass that first test which

00:29:21.780 is which is important and we did pass so we're now just waiting for a date from the chief justice to

00:29:27.500 allow us to come to court uh before uh um the by-election which we believe would be somewhere

00:29:33.060 possibly in june of this year right and you and i chatted about this on the phone earlier and for a

00:29:38.700 minute i thought that the lawsuit had been cancelled because there's some headlines in the news that

00:29:42.560 says the city of chastamere has abandoned the lawsuit and you explained to me no the city the

00:29:47.880 lawsuit is still ongoing it's our lawsuit but the city has had its name taken off of the lawsuit so

00:29:53.560 i'm wondering in terms of you know who's covering the cost of this are you guys paying for this out

00:29:57.040 of pocket is this something the city will be required to cover yeah so the city unfortunately every

00:30:02.680 time the government comes out with something um it's never it's never truthful uh so what they did

00:30:08.660 when they said that statement that we've cancelled the lawsuit that's not true they can't do that

00:30:12.740 because on the lawsuit the city is named as they and the four of us councillors are named the mayor

00:30:20.440 and three councillors so if the city wants to withdraw its name it can't it has that choice just

00:30:26.580 as we would have that choice individually as well and so the city did withdraw their name but they

00:30:31.340 cannot cancel the lawsuit so unfortunately they released a statement to the public that said

00:30:35.500 yeah we cancelled the lawsuit it's all over and that's that's just flagrantly not true

00:30:40.020 in regards to costs and whatnot no yes that is something that the four of us are funding and so

00:30:46.260 the city does not fund the the cost of it going forward well i'm sure that we'll be following this

00:30:53.500 case with interest as i mentioned my viewers have asked me to cover this there's a lot of interest

00:30:57.740 in it right now thank you so much for joining my show today and we'll definitely have an update i'm

00:31:01.820 sure in a couple weeks or a couple months thank you very much um it's it's really crucial that

00:31:07.680 people understand the conflicts that are are part of this um one of the things that really why we're

00:31:14.160 so critical of minister mckiver is that he should have recused himself because it's unethical that

00:31:19.360 he's involved because he's the brother-in-law for the previous mayor that was under investigation

00:31:24.060 by us um for some alleged uh contraventions i guess and minister mckiver in a letter that i wrote

00:31:31.080 to him about his conflict and in breach of the alberta conflict act um indicated that he would

00:31:36.640 did not feel that he was in breach and he was not going to recuse himself um and so the test

00:31:43.180 of that is not for the person who's in conflict to recuse themselves and make that decision

00:31:47.540 it's for the person who's making the allegation of it and so minister mckiver doesn't understand that

00:31:52.940 and and just so just as a one final point municipal affairs remains in breach of a court order

00:31:59.140 to provide us with the evidence against us and we've been claiming that for the last two years

00:32:05.020 when they did this inspection what is the evidence that you have against us you are supposed to give

00:32:10.540 it to us in a proceeding in court as part of judicial fairness they're supposed to tell you

00:32:15.640 what are you being accused of and here's the evidence so you have an opportunity to say uh that

00:32:20.920 wasn't me i wasn't there here's the evidence that supports my my statement we've never been given

00:32:26.560 anything like that and that's very very very unfair but thank you very much for your time rachel

00:32:33.600 if you have more questions we'd love to you know answer more of course that's what we're here for

00:32:38.480 absolutely we'll be keeping a close look at this story and to see if we can get some of that

00:32:41.460 evidence put forward to really weigh what's going on here and see both sides of things

00:32:44.980 jeff steven thanks so much for joining my show today as for the rest of you i'll be back on

00:32:49.200 saturday with my regular programming please let me know in the comments below if you guys are

00:32:53.600 interested in following this chestamere case and what do you think is going on and i'll be sure to

00:32:57.620 read some of your comments on saturday's episode hey everyone and just a quick update for you guys

00:33:01.720 i had mentioned during the show that the minister's office had not responded in time for us to include

00:33:06.120 that in the show and get a response from the former mayor and former counselor however he did

00:33:10.580 respond before the show went live so i'm just going to include that response now so that you all

00:33:14.820 have it and are able to hear his side of things a spokesperson for minister mciver said that concerns

00:33:19.760 about the chestamere government were brought to the province's attention beginning in january 2022

00:33:24.880 and an independent inspector appointed by minister mciver conducted a municipal inspection of the

00:33:31.260 city of chestamere that resulted in 12 binding directives from the previous minister the response

00:33:36.340 says quote these directives represent the bare minimum that any citizen of alberta should expect

00:33:40.820 from their municipal government the city's failure to comply with some of the directives and with

00:33:45.680 the supervision of the official administrator appointed to supervise the municipality and its

00:33:49.560 council resulted in the dismissal of four elected officials and three chief administrative officers

00:33:55.340 the minister's decisions in this matter are supported by the independent inspector's report

00:33:59.520 minister's directives and the reasons for dismissal all of which have been released publicly and remain

00:34:05.120 available online

The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - March 20, 2024

Former mayor alleges corruption in Chestermere

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