The integrity commissioner for the City of Kingston has recommended that Councillor Jeff McLaren be issued a formal reprimand by Kingston City Council as a consequence for comments he made that Kingstonist published in October 2024.
Meghan A. Cowan of Aird & Berlis LLP published her recommendation in a report dated April 29, 2025, which will now be presented to City Council for consideration. Council may accept the recommendations in full, modify them, or reject them entirely.
The specific comments by McLaren were published in an article by Bill Hutchins in Kingstonist on October 1, 2024, titled “City Views: Did financial risk kill housing co-op’s bold vision, or something else?” A formal complaint about the comments was received by the Integrity Commissioner on October 2, 2024. The complainant is not named in the report, which is titled “Integrity Commissioner Report On Code Of Conduct Complaint 2024-06.”
Cowan writes that the complaint alleged that Councillor Jeff McLaren contravened the City of Kingston Member Code of Conduct when he made comments to Kingstonist that “contained negative sentiments about members of Council.”
As part of her investigation, Cowan writes, “We provided the Councillor with the Complaint and offered him an opportunity to respond to the allegations. The Councillor provided a response, which was shared with the Complainant,” following the Code’s requirements. “The Complainant was allowed to submit a reply to the Councillor’s response, which they did.”
Cowan further states that the complainant’s response “prompted us to arrange an interview with the author of the Article that is the subject of the Complaint.”
After speaking with Hutchins, Cowan indicates, “We subsequently contacted the Councillor to provide him with a further opportunity to make further submissions, which he did.”
Given that the holiday period fell when they were completing this interview process, Cowan provided an interim report to the City and advised both the complainant and councillor on December 19, 2024, “that we anticipated that the investigation would take more than ninety (90) days as set out in the requirements contained in Section 10(1) of the City’s Complaint Protocol.”
The principles of procedural fairness require the integrity commissioner to provide reasons for her conclusions and recommendations.
She writes that in accordance with the requirements of the Code and its Complaint Protocol, the Councillor was provided with a draft of this Report so he could review and make submissions on the preliminary findings and recommendations. The Councillor submitted lengthy submissions, which were duly considered, Cowan reports.
The complaint
The complaint alleges that Councillor McLaren contravened Section 5.1 (e) of the Code, which states, “In carrying out their duties, members are expected to: … (e) Refrain from making disparaging comments about another member or unfounded and speculative accusations about the motive of another member.”
On October 1, 2024, Kingstonist released the article titled “City Views: Did financial risk kill housing co-op’s bold vision, or something else?” The article detailed a request for a $2.29 million line of credit in support of the Limestone City Cooperative Housing plan to build affordable housing in the City. The Article reported that City Council voted against the request for the line of credit at its meeting on September 17, 2024.
McLaren sits on the board of Limestone City Cooperating Housing, which was requesting funding from the City to further their cooperative housing project, which City Council voted against.
It was in this context that McLaren was interviewed by Hutchins, though the interview occurred at the grand opening of another (and unrelated) cooperative housing project the day after Council voted against Limestone City Cooperative Housing funding request. The report notes that the article states, in part, “But McLaren also offered other reasons as to why his group’s project was DOA at Council — listing psychological and political aspects. For example, if the group had come up with a smaller housing vision, then that too would’ve failed, he believes.”
The article continues, quoting McLaren, “Sometimes psychologically people don’t say the entire truth. They say something that sounds good. I’m sure these same arguments would’ve come — ‘Why didn’t you make it bigger?’”
“In McLaren’s mind,” Hutchins writes, “it was all about shutting down his future ambitions.”
“’Helping me get to be mayor,'” McLaren is quoted as saying. “I think that everybody who gets into Council at one point wants to be mayor and if one or two or a few feel that they’re getting too much benefit from a particular project, they’ll be shut down.”
The report notes that Hutchins’s article continues, “Them’s fightin’ words. By implying motive, which is a Council taboo around the horseshoe, the veteran councillor believes some of his colleagues were unwilling to give him and his project a big leg up in advance of the next mayoral race in two years.”
According to Cowan’s report, the Complaint alleges that the comments made by the councillor in the article are disparaging and slanted to paint other members of Council in a poor light. In particular, the complaint alleges that the councillor’s comments in the article made “unfounded and/or speculative assertions about the motives of other members of Council.”
The councillor’s response
According to the report, McLaren provided his initial responding submissions on November 18, 2024. He acknowledged, “…I realized as soon as I answered the reporter’s question that I should not have said any of that.“
McLaren then alleges that he asked the reporter to keep his comments off the record. “I tried to repair the damage and get it off the record with a request immediately to the reporter, but to no avail.” The councillor also explained his mindset at that time, as the “issue was still very raw” and that as he fell “…into a state of stream of consciousness or brainstorming while trying to make sense of the vote, I foolishly lowered my guard….” The Councillor continued that he was “…free talking; evaluating possibilities as they came to my mind. I discarded the quoted notion as soon as I said it and tried to take it back. I said ‘No’ probably to myself, probably not loud enough for the reporter and but then I did asked [sic] that that be off the record. He clearly denied that request.”
At no point during the interview with Hutchins did McLaren request to go off record or retract a statement he’d made.
The report goes on to say that McLaren’s response was “duly provided” to the complainant, who responded. The complainant pointed out that McLaren claimed he had asked Hutchins for his comments to be off the record. Further, the complainant relayed that, to their understanding of journalistic practices, if such a request had been made, they would have expected the article to be clarified.
Cowan writes, “The Complainant advised us that they had contacted the Editor of the Kingstonist (Tori Stafford) on a no-names basis to inquire about the newspaper’s practices when a request for something is made to be ‘off the record’ and that the Editor’s response confirmed such an understanding.”
Cowan notes that as part of the investigation, her team interviewed Bill Hutchins on December 20, 2024. During the Interview, Hutchins stated that McLaren had not made a request before, during, or after their conversation on September 18, 2024, that the conversation be “off the record.” He also confirmed that he was recording the interview and holding a recording device between himself and McLaren the whole time.
The councillor’s additional response
On January 9, 2025, the integrity commissioner wrote to McLaren to advise him of the interview with Hutchins.
“The Councillor wrote to us on January 13, 2025 and provided detailed submissions,” writes Cowan. McLaren advised that he had “discarded the quoted notion as soon as he uttered it.”
McLaren is quoted as writing, “Please understand that most communication happens non-verbally,” and explained that he had been non-verbally misinterpreted. He called this a “miscommunication, one that can happen in any medium.” He had never used the words “off the record.”
“What appears clear to me now… is that the reporter did not interpret the context, the body language, nor the word I used in the most likely common way that most normal people would normally interpret the situation,” the councillor responded, as per the report.
After providing much detail about his understanding of human communication conventions, McLaren is quoted as alleging, “the apparent discrepancy was only due to a miscontextualization and a misunderstanding of body language being translated into text. … The bottom line is that I am sorry I answered the reporter’s question in the way that transpired, I tried to undo my words. I thought I was successful in taking them back because of all the sum total of contextual cues sent him and received from him. And I am sorry that I was unable to successfully communicate that to the reporter.“
Findings
Cowan writes, “We understand from the Councillor’s Response and the Councillor’s Additional Response that he acknowledges that he made the comments that were reported in the Article. In particular, that the Councillor mused about other members of Council’s motivations in voting against the funding proposal for the Limestone City Cooperative Housing plan was in some way an attempt to thwart the Councillor’s mayoral ambitions.”
Cowan concludes McLaren’s comment casts aspersions on the intent of Council in passing the motion as it did, which is a contravention of the Code of Conduct, calling the remarks “a speculative accusation about the intention of members of Council.”
Her report continues, “We are prepared to accept the Councillor’s submission that his comments were an initial musing that he quickly discounted and attempted to distance himself from but was not successful. Nevertheless, we find that he never formally retracted the comments or specifically advised the author of the Article that he did not want his comments reported.”
McLaren was provided a draft copy of the report, which he argued unsuccessfully against. Those details can be reviewed in the report.
Subsection 223.4(5) of the Municipal Act, 2001, sets out two penalties that may be imposed on a member of council where there has been a finding of a contravention of a code of conduct: (1) a reprimand; and (2) suspension of the remuneration paid to the member in respect of his or her services as a member of council or of the local board, as the case may be, for a period of up to 90 days.
In her decision, Cowan notes, “We have taken into account that the Councillor had previously been found to have breached the Code as set out in our report dated November 26, 2024.” Likewise, she writes, “we have taken into account the Councillor’s explanation as set out in the Councillor’s Additional Response where he advised that he thought he had taken back his comments, although this does not answer why he took no steps to correct the record once the Article was published.”
All things considered, the report recommends, “on the grounds of general deterrence and in order to maintain the public confidence with respect to the ethical framework put in place by the Council to govern its members,” that City Council issue a formal reprimand to McLaren. Cowan does not recommend a monetary penalty.
Kingston City Council will receive the integrity commissioner’s report and a briefing from Cowan herself at their meeting on Tuesday, May. 7, 2025.
