A councillor with a track record of aggressiveness and bullying towards staff and council has been docked 15 days of pay by the Township of the North Shore for breaching its code of conduct.
The latest sanction against Ward 1 Coun. Richard Welburn (Algoma Mills) — recommended by integrity commissioner Tony Fleming — was approved during a Feb. 5 council meeting.
In his report to council, Fleming said he received a staff member's complaint stemming from a Nov. 27, 2024 closed session of council where it was alleged that Welburn acted inappropriately by saying that he “did not want to receive a copy of a lawyer’s letter written on behalf of a staff member.”
“The member stated that he was concerned what could happen in the future if the staff member were upset with him, and could be accused by the staff member of spreading the information contained in the letter, as he was now aware of it,” Fleming wrote in his report.
Fleming concluded there was “no dispute as to what was said at the closed session,” after reviewing a recording of the meeting, according to his report.
“The member questioned why the letter was provided and asked if township legal counsel had been consulted about whether members of council needed to be provided with the letter,” Fleming wrote.
“These were reasonable questions to ask.”
If the council member had stopped there, “no breach of the code of conduct would have occurred,” Fleming wrote.
Welburn, however, did not stop there.
“What happens six months down the road and [staff member] is upset with me, and now I get a letter — not saying they will or won’t — are we not setting ourselves up?” Welburn reportedly said during the closed session.
“Don’t think it can’t happen to anyone in that room.”
Later on in the closed session, Welburn said he was merely trying to “protect himself,” and that he did not trust that he would not be accused of spreading the information contained in the letter.
Fleming concluded that accusing a staff member of “being likely to falsely accuse” a member of council of improper actions “falsely injures that person’s reputation,” and constitutes a breach of section 8.1 of the township’s code of conduct.
The latest complaint against Welburn follows a “similar pattern of behaviour exhibited in other reports that the integrity commissioner has brought to council” involving the Ward 1 councillor, Fleming determined.
“The councillor has stated a number of times to the integrity commissioner that he does not like certain staff members and does not trust them,” he wrote.
“The member needs to respect his role as a representative of the township and appreciate that regardless of his personal views, he cannot continue to be disrespectful and abusive towards staff,” said the report.
“Councillors must put aside their feelings and act professionally at all times.”
The integrity commissioner recommended that Welburn be docked 15 days of pay due to a pattern of repeated behaviour by the council member.
Welburn openly admitted that he breached the code of conduct after Fleming presented his findings to council.
“This was a tough one for me to swallow, to the point where I went to my lawyer to discuss this,” Welburn said, before proceeding to admonish Township of the North Shore Mayor Tony Moor.
“I’ve reached out to you several times: Protect me from derogatory statements — and you refused to do anything about it,” Welburn told the mayor.
“You’ve also told me, your worship, in town conversations that you should never have allowed this to come to council.
“But by you doing that, you’ve put me in this position. That is my fair warning; that until you stand up and start protecting me — like you protect everyone else — I’ll have to protect myself, and that’s under advice from my lawyer.”
Council eventually voted to approve the recommendations of the integrity commissioner, but not without some reluctance from councillor-at-large Robin Green.
“We seem to have an imbalance on council here. I hate to say it, but it’s quite often we know who’s going to vote a certain way by a group of three other councillors in here that agreed to having some discussions so that we can better, as a council, better perform our duties . . . for this township,” Green told council prior to the vote.
“We don’t seem to be able to get around to that. We’re always going from one crisis to another, and this is a good example.
“I don’t want to be a participant in this.”
As previously reported by SooToday, Welburn has a history of repeatedly breaching the township’s code of conduct.
Last month, Welburn was docked 60 days’ pay over numerous complaints related to “aggressive and bullying” communications via email with staff over the past year, with the integrity commissioner making note of how those emails appeared to be “intentionally provocative.”
He was also docked 15 days’ pay in August of last year after the integrity commissioner found eight code of conduct breaches stemming from a closed session of council in February 2024, where Welburn was reportedly "exhibiting an angry and agitated demeanour" while making comments towards staff and council that were "disrespectful and uncivil" in nature.
In December, a variance report revealed the township went nearly $30,000 over budget on the integrity commissioner because of a series of complaints related to the conduct of council members.