Municipal Ethics Regimes and Gender-Based Violence in Canadian Politics

Over the last several years, municipal Integrity Commissioners across Canada have reported how councilors—mostly men—have engaged in various power abuses that are gendered in nature. Gendered unethical behavior in city halls has ranged from sexist remarks to bullying, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. These incidents have occurred despite the presence of formal ethics rules intended to address violence and harassment in most municipalities. In this paper we propose to evaluate municipal ethics rules in Canada as they relate to gender-based violence. Our research questions ask: what are the main weaknesses of existing ethics rules that deal with this issue, and how can they be improved upon to better address gender-based violence at the local level? To answer these questions, we employ an in-depth comparative case study of three municipalities in Canada (the cities of Barrie, Brampton, and Ottawa), and assess how reported claims of gender-based violence perpetrated by politicians were addressed in each jurisdiction. We focus particularly on the role of Integrity Commissioners, which are independent accountability officers with statutory authority to oversee and investigate claims of harassment made against politicians. The paper builds on growing research on gender-based violence in local politics worldwide. Findings demonstrate that women mayors in the United States and Sweden face more violence compared to their male counterparts (Herrick and Franklin 2019; Håkansson 2021). Less is known about how local governments have sought to tackle gender-based violence in politics through legislation and policy. While elected officials like mayors can be targeted, violence is also frequently directed at city hall staffers and members of the public. Improving municipal ethical machineries to better address this problem will help create safer political workplaces for those who work in them and who are most likely to experience violence (women and racialized people). It will also help strengthen public accountability and trust in local governments worldwide. Despite the presence of independent, non-partisan officers, our research identifies several significant gaps in municipal ethics rules dealing with this issue. These include a lack of fully independent processes and weak sanctioning provisions in all three of our case studies. These shortcomings impair the ability of Integrity Commissioners to sufficiently address gender-based violence at the municipal level of government. We argue that to prevent and address this problem, municipal ethics machineries need to include greater independent oversights and stronger sanctions against elected officials who perpetrate violence. As the case studies in our paper are all non-partisan local councils, our findings will have relevance for other non-partisan local councils, including in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of western United States, and point to the need for robust ethics rules in decision-making bodies where political parties are not relevant. *Co-authored with Zachary Spicer (York University) and Ian Stedman (York University).