Ethics commissioner finds Surrey councillor breached ethics rules when he voted to stick with RCMP

Open this photo in gallery:

Surrey’s new Ethics Commissioner has ruled that a councillor from Mayor Brenda Locke’s party was in a conflict when he voted in favour of sticking with the RCMP in the November decision to keep the force – a motion that would have failed if that councillor had not voted.

But the ruling will have no impact unless there is a court challenge to Councillor Rob Stutt’s involvement in the vote over the city’s policing, despite having had two family members who were employed by the Surrey RCMP at the time.

While councillors from two opposition parties criticized the whole process and the consequences of the compromised vote, they didn’t indicate they’d be going to court.

And the Surrey Police Union, the group that originally complained about the issue to the Ethics Commissioner, says it won’t start a legal challenge but will wait to see what B.C. Solicitor-General Mike Farnworth decides in the increasingly vitriolic fight in Surrey over whether to stay with the RCMP or continue a transition to a new municipal police force, the Surrey Police Service.

As well, there was another vote last week, this one 6-3, at an hours-long in-camera meeting in favour of the city staying with the RCMP.

The imbroglio underlines the messy and precedent-setting conflict at Surrey council over which force to go with. Ms. Locke issued a statement Wednesday after the Ethics Commissioner’s ruling complaining that the investigation was a result of nasty politics.

“I am disappointed that misinformation continues to be spread in a partisan campaign to discredit certain members of council and the Surrey RCMP,” said Ms. Locke. “In his report, the Ethics Commissioner found that Councillor Stutt acted in good faith and was fulfilling a promise he made to voters.”

In his ruling, Ethics Commissioner Peter Johnson said it was clear Mr. Stutt would not gain financially in any way if he voted to retain the RCMP as Surrey’s police force, even though his son was employed by the RCMP. But, wrote Mr. Johnson, councillors should avoid votes that affect family members in order to ensure that there is no appearance of conflict.

Mr. Stutt’s son was employed by the RCMP but had not yet received approval for a transfer to another detachment that he had requested. As a result, Mr. Stutt should have avoided voting at the Nov. 14 meeting, even though he had made a promise to voters during his campaign that he’d be supporting a plan to stay with the RCMP, Mr. Johnson concluded.

“Given the fact that a decision to continue with the police transition would have resulted in the elimination of a substantial number of policing positions within the Surrey RCMP detachment, there was a personal interest in the matter under consideration that a reasonably well-informed person would have concluded might influence a member of council in Councillor Stutt’s position,” he wrote.

Mr. Stutt’s son has since transferred. His daughter, who also works for the RCMP, was deemed not to be creating a conflict because she had been offered an equivalent union position with the Surrey Police Service.

The fight within Surrey, and now between Surrey and the province, over which police force to use has escalated in recent weeks, with Ms. Locke saying that Mr. Farnworth is bullying and fearmongering to try to force Surrey to continue with the transition.

Mr. Farnworth is expected to make a decision imminently after getting a 400-page report from the city Monday laying out exactly how the city will meet the conditions he set for staying with the RCMP. Those conditions focus especially on requirements that the Surrey RCMP not take officers from other detachments in B.C. so as not to destabilize other communities.