What to do when an elected councillor becomes a chronic source of disruption, misinformation, or worse, and refuses to resign?
The existing answer, under Ontario law, is: not much.
Pickering councillor Lisa Robinson, for example, has now gone a full calendar year without pay, but not a single day without her seat on council.
Currently municipalities don’t have a tool to remove an elected representative from office, having their hands tied when it comes to cases of misconduct. The highest punishment a councillor can get under Ontario’s Municipal Act is a 90-day unpaid suspension.
But that may change soon.
Earlier this year, the Ford government introduced Bill 9, the Municipal Accountability Act. If passed, it would allow municipal councils to expel one of their own in case of serious misconduct.
Municipalities have long called for these tools, but even supporters of the bill are skeptical that they will be able to use it effectively.
“AMO and members across the province have been advocating for action on this since 2020,” said Alisha Neufeld, a senior advisor at Association of Municipalities of Ontario. “This is a really big step for improving healthy local democracy across the province.”
But while the bill has been broadly welcomed, there’s growing concern in the municipal sector that the process it outlines is so complex that it might be unusable in practice.
Bill 9 lays out a multi-stage, multi-jurisdictional process that critics say borders on procedural paralysis.
Here’s how it would work as it is right now:
- A municipal integrity commissioner investigates the councillor’s conduct and finds a serious breach.
- That commissioner then refers the case to the provincial integrity commissioner for a second, independent investigation.
- If the provincial integrity commissioner agrees the conduct warrants removal, the recommendation goes back to the local council.
- Council must then vote unanimously, excluding the offending member, to vacate the seat.
Neufeld said AMO supports the bill’s general framework but is pushing for two key amendments to make it viable. The first: lower the voting threshold for removal from unanimous to a two-thirds majority.
“We recognize that a vote to remove an elected official is fundamentally different from a routine council vote,” she said. “But a unanimous vote poses equity issues. It’s far harder to get unanimity on a 20-member council than on a five-member one. A two-thirds vote would be more proportionate and still reflects the seriousness of the decision.”
The second amendment AMO plans to propose would allow for a range of progressive disciplinary options, not just removal from office.
“Obviously, removal is a severe disciplinary action,” she said. “But in many cases, there are other steps that could be appropriate, like barring a councillor from chairing committees or speaking during meetings. That flexibility would help address misconduct that doesn’t rise to the highest threshold.”
Even assuming all the investigations happen swiftly, Bill 9 also includes a sunset clause: if any part of the process is still ongoing when nominations open for the next municipal elections, set to happen next by the end of August next year, 2026, then the entire effort is automatically terminated.
“That’s to avoid frivolous, politically motivated complaints meant to damage candidates,” said Marianne Meed Ward, Mayor of Burlington and Chair of the Ontario Big City Mayors (OBCM). “And I support that,” she added.
That means if Bill 9 isn’t passed and operational well before the end of 2025, the next municipal election cycle could kill its use in real time.
Guy Giorno, a political law expert and partner at Fasken, supports Bill 9, calling it a “valid and necessary tool” for rare, but serious cases.
“It’s a big thing to overturn an election result. That’s why the process should be rigorous,” he said.
He defends the need for a high threshold, warning that without safeguards, councils might start using the law against political opponents who simply say unpopular things.
“No MP or MPP in Canada has ever lost their job just for saying something people didn’t like,” Giorno said. “We have to be extremely careful before we overturn a democratic election.”
He also raised a deeper concern: the variable quality of municipal integrity commissioners.
“There’s no professional standard. We’ve seen integrity commissioners with criminal records, or who were suspended by the Law Society for misappropriating funds,” Giorno said. “That’s why I support the bill’s use of the provincial integrity commissioner, even if it makes the process lengthier. It adds a layer of credibility and consistency.”
Municipalities have been asking for stronger accountability tools for years. Introduced in early May, the bill made no meaningful progress before the summer recess. No timelines have been announced for regulation or implementation.
Meed Ward said that “there should be a process that allows an independent judge, based on independent findings, to recommend removal from office.”
Meed Ward emphasized that the bar for removal should remain high, and that the process must be protected from being misused to settle political scores. But she acknowledged the ongoing debate over whether a unanimous council vote is realistic.
“I think that’s a valid concern,” she said of AMO’s proposal to switch to a two-thirds vote. “There are folks who say it needs to be unanimous to avoid political ganging-up. Others say the bar is too high. Both perspectives are valid.”
Still, Meed Ward said her priority is seeing the bill passed, with amendments if necessary. “I’ll support the legislation either way,” she said. “We need it. We hope we never have to use it, but we need to have it.”
“Right now, all we can do is dock pay, remove committee privileges, or restrict office budgets,” she said. “But if the conduct makes a councillor unfit to serve or unsafe to work with, the public deserves a way to hold them accountable.”
As Giorno put it: “This is a delicate matter and that’s why the system is built to be cautious. But it’s also built to work, and it has to work eventually.”
Whether “eventually” is soon enough for municipalities facing these issues today remains an open question.
The office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs Rob Flack didn’t provide a comment by deadline.
