[URBAN NOTE] On Hazel McCallion, Mississauga, and conflicts of interest

[rfmcdonald]

The Globe and Mail's Dakshana Bascaramurty wrote in the article "McCallion testifies she was unaware of son's stake in project" about the legal travails of Hazel McCallion, charged with violating the same Ontario conflict of interest laws that Toronto mayor Rob Ford was charged with.

One very notable difference between the two cases is that there seems to be more sympathy for McCallion, who has been a popular mayor since her 1978 election.

Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion may have signed a document that named her son as principal of a development firm that proposed a $1.5-billion hotel and convention centre in downtown Mississauga, but pleaded ignorance in court to knowing he had an ownership stake in the project.

The document she signed is a key piece of evidence against her in a conflict-of-interest case being heard in Ontario Superior Court this week. Mississauga’s mayor of 34 years is accused of voting in favour of amendments to a development by-law in Peel regional council that would have saved her son millions of dollars – an act that could constitute a conflict of interest.

The document, it turned out, transferred ownership of World Class Developments, Mr. Couprie’s company, to Mr. McCallion. Ms. McCallion said she had no idea.

Through her line of questioning, Ms. McCallion’s lawyer, Liz McIntyre, made the case that her client was in a dark restaurant, did not read the words in the document and likely did not wear her reading glasses before she signed. Later in questioning, the mayor said she only learned that her son had been identified as the principal of World Class Developments at the time of her judicial inquiry in 2011 (in it, Ms. McCallion was found to have been in conflict of interest for promoting the hotel and convention centre project in which her son was involved, though she has remained in office because she did not actually break conflict-of-interest law).

[. . . She said in 2007 – when she voted in favour of the amendment – the country was in the midst of an economic downturn. Because neighbouring regions such as Halton and Kitchener-Waterloo were also courting industrial/commercial development, Ms. McCallion said she supported the lower fees in order to give developers an incentive to build in Mississauga.