A former administrator for municipalities in the Algoma District believes more needs to be done in order to hold elected township officials in Ontario accountable.
Mary Lynn Duguay says her career — in which she assumed the roles of chief administrative officer, clerk and treasurer in three rural municipalities — was cut short “unfairly” at the hands of council members she had encountered over the course of her stint in municipal administration.
“It’s a very, very frustrating line of work which I will never go back to now,” she said.
A “very triggered” Duguay reached out to SooToday after reading a recent article about the Township of the North Shore going nearly $30,000 over budget due an increase in reports by the township’s integrity commissioner.
The former clerk, treasurer and CAO for the townships of Prince and Hilton and the Township of the North Shore says that taxpayers’ money is being “totally wasted” with the amount of investigations conducted by integrity commissioners, who Duguay believes were placed in their roles without adequate guidelines and mandates put in place by the province.
“They make the recommendations, and then what happens? Most of the time, they [members of council] don’t even take the recommendations,” Duguay said.
“Since I’ve been involved in municipal politics, it’s happened so many times.”
As previously reported by SooToday, Duguay was terminated — without cause, by her own account — by Prince Township in March 2022, sparking a backlash among residents there. A subsequent ombudsman investigation later revealed the township broke Ontario's open-meeting law when members of council held a secret meeting that resulted in her firing.
At the time, Duguay attributed her firing to raising the issue of pay equity with an all-male council, after producing a report that showed women at Prince Township were paid below average of all the municipalities in the area, while the men on council and the roads department were being paid above average.
“I know how much they can hide at the municipal level, so it really bothers me what goes on,” said Duguay.
“I feel that staff end up with the short end of the stick, because elected officials, no matter what they do . . . there are no repercussions: They can do whatever they want, and there’s no way you can remove them from their seat.”
Last week the Ontario government introduced the Municipal Accountability Act, a piece of proposed legislation that would establish a new, standardized municipal code of conduct and integrity commissioner framework if passed.
The legislation would require members of council and local boards to undergo mandatory code of conduct training while creating a regulation-making authority for municipal integrity commissioner investigations.
Members of council and local boards would also be removed and disqualified for a period of four years for serious violations of the code of conduct under the bill.
The new legislation effectively replaces two previous bills dealing with municipal accountability and enforcement — Bill 5 (Stopping Harassment and Abuse by Local Leaders Act, 2022) and Bill 207 (Municipal Accountability and Integrity Act, 2024) — that have since been defeated at Queen’s Park.
Duguay agreed that more severe penalties need to be handed out for an elected official who breaks any municipal code of conduct.
“You should be able to get rid of them,” she said.
“If that person is not following the rules, and is in there costing the taxpayers how much — I mean, if you added up the integrity commissioner costs . . . it’s staggering.”
After facing sanctions of her own during her time in the municipal realm — which include being fired, placed on administrative leave and handed non-disclosure agreements by townships — Duguay says the pay she received along the way for working in three distinct roles wasn’t worth all of the stress she endured due to a lack of accountability and enforcement at the township level.
“So much could just be avoided with a little bit of integrity and working together — and respect,” she said.
The province has pledged to work with the municipal sector in order to develop the necessary regulations in support of the Municipal Accountability Act, which would go into effect for the new term of councils in 2026 if passed.