City looks at anti-leak plan after Advance story

By Laurie Watt Barrie Advance Jun 11, 2012 

BARRIE – Barrie councillors will be asked Monday night to approve spending $3,000 on a document protection program to ensure nothing gets leaked from CIty Hall again.

On March 3, Mayor Jeff Lehman called the integrity commissioner, after The Advance broke a story Feb. 29 about former Mayor Dave Aspden suing the city for $2.5 million for injuries sustained while he was mayor. 

The story cited a confidential city memo dated Feb. 27.

Lehman alleged “an unknown member of council had contravened section 10.1 of the Code of Conduct of the City of Barrie.”

In his first investigation, integrity commissioner John Craig noted the leak “tarnished the reputations of the city, its professional staff and members of council who are innocent of this behaviour.”

“One can also assume that matters of trust among members, and between members of staff may also arise, potentially affecting the performance of the municipality,” he said.

Craig – Barrie’s former corporate services commissioner – urged councillors to “confidentially divulge” information to help him find out how the memo reached The Advance “with the expectation the offending member would feel some remorse”. 

Craig said this is the first instance of a breach of the code, created in August 2010 to apply to the slate of leaders elected in October 2010.

Barrie councillors had begun discussing a behaviour guideline after The Advance broke a story about Aspden travelling to China with a developer that had interest in the lands the city was negotiating to annex. The city called police, but no criminal charges were laid.

“Although this is the first complaint under the Code regarding mishandling of confidential information, I have been told that it is not the first occurrence of such improper behaviour,” said Craig.