Quesnel Mayor Ron Paull has filed a petition in Supreme Court in Vancouver to have the censure and sanctions imposed on him by City Council lifted.
Paull was censured and was removed as the city’s CRD and Northern Development Initiative Trust representative, was removed from city committees and Indigenous Relations, and had his travel budget and lobbying budget removed at a Council meeting on April 30th.
He is accused of taking the controversial book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the truth about Residential Schools) to a CRD meeting and trying to distribute it.
In response, Paull has said that a Director at the CRD’s committee of the whole meeting the day before had raised concerns about books focused on sexual orientation and gender identity being available to children and youth in local libraries.
He said at the CRD Board meeting the following day he brought a copy of his wife’s book and showed it to two of his colleagues, asking what the CRD library would do with it.
Paull’s petition claims that Council’s actions were not fair saying that the Mayor should have been notified of his alleged misconduct in a timely manner and given a meaningful opportunity to reply.
It also accuses Council of ambushing the Mayor at the April 2nd meeting calling it an orchestrated public hearing without notice into allegations against him and his wife Pat Morton, who was first accused of distributing the book in the community.
Chiefs and elders from local Indigenous communities were invited to speak at that meeting.
The petition notes that the agenda for that meeting did not state that there would be an open discussion about allegations made against Mayor Paull and his wife relating to the book.
It also says that Pat Morton tried to speak but was repeatedly interrupted by Councillors Scott Elliott and Laurey-Anne Roodenburg for “points of order.”
It was at the conclusion of that meeting that a motion was made for staff to prepare a report on the potential censure of Paull.
The petition says that motion was also not on the agenda for the meeting.
The petition also states that the resolutions made against Mayor Paull were unreasonable, adding that the power to censure and sanction was intended as a means of regulating the conduct of an elected official where there has been a substantial falling away from expected standards, and not a tool to be wielded for “cheap political gain.”
The petition states that in this case the Mayor’s wife, who is NOT a member of Council shared the book with someone and that the Mayor later showed the book to two CRD Directors after a meeting.
It says this is not a rational or reasonable basis for censuring and sanctioning an elected member of City Council having regard for the legal and factual constraints.
Finally, the petition also claims that Council does not have the authority to prohibit the Mayor from claiming legitimate expenses under its travel policy or to remove his lobbying budget.
The City of Quesnel has 21 days to respond to the petition from the day it was filed on Wednesday. (May 29)
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