This Thursday, Victoria’s Mayor Marianne Alto and Councillor Stephen Hammond are bringing a joint council member motion before their colleagues and City staff to increase transparency of council meetings which are closed to the public.
These meetings are not only closed to the public but also the media, and frequently, the City of Victoria does not provide any information on the meeting’s agenda.
Victoria is not the only municipality in BC to hold closed meetings. It is a frequent occurrence when dealing with an issue dealing with legal, land and labour matters.
On top of those matters, meetings can be closed to the public and media when the City decides something must be kept confidential as per the Provincial Community Charter legislation.
This kicks in when a councillor or former councillor breaches confidentiality or causes the municipality loss or damages.
Notably, the last closed meeting Victoria’s city council held was earlier this week on Monday, January 15th, and the reason for the meeting was not listed in the meeting notes.
Prior to that, they recently held a closed meeting to discuss the controversy that came about when Councillor Susan Kim signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire.
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The motion Mayor Alto and Councillor Hammond are bringing forth would allow for more transparency by not viewing the information council discusses from an “all or nothing” approach.
“Council should, whenever possible, default to giving as much information as possible, as opposed to always assuming any information given will be detrimental to the City,” reads the motion by Alto and Hammond.
They are recommending City staff report back with implications of allowing more transparency by giving more information about what is discussed in closed meetings, providing a timeline of when information might be revealed and revealing whether a decision is unanimous or not unanimous.
This motion rising will be discussed at the Committee of the Whole meeting on Thursday, January 18th.
