Ontario’s ombudsman found that the Niagara regional government “rushed to judgment” and infringed on a local journalist’s rights when it seized his property and called the police.
In a report released on Wednesday, ombudsman Paul Dube said that the region’s actions towards the journalist that occurred during a council meeting in December 2017 constituted “the type of conduct that courts have consistently found to be a violation of Charter rights.”
He called on the municipality to issue a public apology.
The ombudsman announced in December 2017 that he was looking into the unlawful seizure of property belonging to a reporter with the St. Catharines Standard after receiving dozens of complaints related to the incident.
“What began as a regular meeting of council,” the report begins, “ended as a controversial evening attracting considerable media attention and censure.”
The incident, which has raised concerns about press freedom, began when a citizen blogger left his seat at the media desk to use the washroom, leaving behind his digital recorder to capture what he missed.
During his absence, the council moved into closed session, and “chaos ensued” when councillors spotted the digital recorder. The regional chair of the meeting told staff to call the police, to remove the recorder from the chambers, and to bar its owner from the rest of the meeting.
Once the closed session resumed after the kerfuffle, another councillor noticed that a different reporter had left a laptop behind, which piqued suspicion that it, too, could be recording the meeting.
“There was no evidence of this,” the report says, but it was nevertheless removed as well.
Both the citizen blogger and the journalist whose laptop was removed were told to leave the building immediately or be charged with trespassing.
The ombudsman found that “the region rushed to judgment” by seizing the citizen blogger’s recorder “without first questioning whether there was an innocent explanation for the recording device.”
There was no reason to justify the seizure of the other reporter’s laptop or to evict him from the building, he added.
Once it realized its mistake, the council apologized to the reporter the next morning.
“The region’s actions were unreasonable, unjust, wrong and contrary to law,” the ombudsman said in a press release.
Moreover, Dube found that the meeting was illegal and in contravention of rules on open meetings because staff locked the building doors while the meeting was ongoing and the council failed to pass a resolution explaining why the meeting was closed to the public.
The report makes 14 recommendations aimed at better ensuring “that fairness, accountability and proper consideration of the law guide (the council’s) actions in the future.”
They include updating bylaws, clarifying policies related to trespassing or the seizure of property and making audio and video recordings of all closed meetings.
Niagara Region said in a press release that it received the ombudsman’s report and that it had already begun changing some of its policies and procedures. It will, for instance, hire a Sergeant-at-Arms to manage council chambers during meetings.
“Niagara Region is committed to ensuring that there is safe and orderly access to all public meetings,” it said.
