Image Credit: Council of Forest Industries

By James Peters

Southern Interior Local Government Association

SILGA delegates endorse Kamloops call that elected officials be protected from bullying and harassment

May 3, 2024 | 7:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops went three-for-three at the Southern Interior Local Government Association (SILGA) annual convention this week.

The gathering, which wrapped up Friday (May 3) at the Coast Kamloops Convention Centre, featured more than 200 delegates from SILGA’s 37 member municipalities. As part of the proceedings, Kamloops councillor Bill Sarai was voted the body’s first vice-president.

Kamloops forwarded three resolutions to the voting floor at the meeting and saw them all endorsed unanimously.

The first resolution calls on the province to increase the temperature threshold for activation of emergency shelters to the freezing mark in the Interior. The threshold is already at 0C for shelters in the Lower Mainland, but remains at -10C in the Interior.

A second resolution urges the government to develop a more ‘holistic’ approach to addressing the toxic drug crisis, saying harm reduction is given more emphasis and funding than prevention, treatment and recovery, and enforcement.

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Finally, delegates endorsed a Kamloops-sponsored motion asking the province to change the Workers Compensation Act to recognize elected officials as ‘workers’ in order to afford them protection from bullying and harassment at the hands of other elected officials.

Despite well-publicized allegations of bullying and harassment against the mayor of Kamloops, Sarai says the resolution was not specific to the situation in the host city.

“It’s just the climate we live in,” Sarai told CFJC Today. “It’s not only in our municipality. It’s been happening a little bit more frequently throughout the province. What I’m hearing through SILGA is this could be something that UBCM is also hearing and they want to take it to the province.”

At council’s April 23 meeting, Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson contended he has never been the subject of any bullying or harassment complaints made through Worksafe BC or CUPE Local 900, which represents hundreds of City of Kamloops employees.

He has, however, been subject to Code of Conduct complaints of bullying and harassment by four city employees, including the CAO and acting CAO. Those complaints led to a third-party investigation that, among several other incidents, summarized a shouting match between Sarai and Hamer-Jackson in the mayor’s office.

“There’s always ability to have a heated discussion and a debate but, at the end of the day, you should respect each other to agree to disagree and move on to the next issue,” said Sarai Friday. “We need diversity there, we need dialogue, we need discussion, we need debate — that’s a healthy council. It’s when it gets personal and it gets vindictive, that’s when you sort of have to draw the line that this isn’t part of governing.”

Asked whether clearer direction from the province could have prevented some of the ugliness that has played out at Kamloops City Hall, Sarai reiterated the council Code of Conduct doesn’t have enough teeth.

“It shouldn’t be us against them, a councillor against a councillor, a mayor against a councillor or a councillor against a mayor,” he said. “It should be an ability for the province to come in and say, ‘Here’s where we see the issues, here’s how we’re going to fix it and if you don’t fix it, here are the sanctions we can put forward. If it continues, the sanctions get more and more serious.’ There’s no mechanism for that right now.”

The three endorsed resolutions will be among dozens sent for debate at the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention, set for Sept. 16 to 20 in Vancouver.