Fredericton's Code of Conduct: Welcome Progress and Missed Opportunities

Fredericton's City Council is considering amendments to its Code of Conduct by-law on Monday. The by-law governs the conduct of councillors — setting standards for how they carry out their duties and providing a process for complaints when those standards aren't met. The amendments respond to the recent Code of Conduct Regulation enacted under the Local Governance Act.

The proposed changes are worth a look. Some are genuine improvements, but I think there are some missed opportunities.

The complaint process: real progress on transparency

The most significant change in the amendments is around transparency, and it's a big one. The word "confidential" is removed from the investigator's report in several places, and the investigator is now required to attend an open Council meeting, explain their process and findings, and answer questions from members — including the councillor who is the subject of the complaint. Code of Conduct matters can still be discussed in closed meetings when they touch on sensitive matters — solicitor-client advice, for example — and the new language could be clearer. But my expectation is that the city will follow a recent advisory of the Local Governance Commission to the effect that only that information is to be discussed in a closed meeting, and the rest of Council's discussion and any decisions must occur in open meetings.

Under the current by-law, the public would learn whether a complaint was upheld or dismissed, but never the reasons or the underlying facts. That wasn't fair to anyone — not the complainant, not the councillor, and not the public trying to evaluate whether the process worked. Opening the process up changes that fundamentally.

Several other changes are also welcome. Timelines are tightened: the Mayor or Deputy Mayor now has seven days to respond to a complaint, and appeals must be filed within five days. The Mayor or Deputy Mayor can now initiate an informal complaint on their own if they believe conduct has violated the by-law. Complainants are no longer required to exhaust the informal process before filing a formal complaint. And the amendments narrow who can file a formal complaint to residents, current employees, and former employees within the past two years — unless the City Clerk decides it's in the public interest to allow it.

The amendments also tighten the rules on false statements. The current by-law prohibits making a statement knowing it's false. The revision adds "or misleading" and covers omitting material facts that make a statement misleading. This is definitely an improvement — the original version set a bar so high that it would be difficult to enforce short of outright lying.

The missed opportunities

The proposed amendments do not address an important structural weakness in the process: complaints against councillors are gatekept by the Mayor or Deputy Mayor.

This creates a conflict of interest problem — not necessarily an actual one, but an unavoidable perceived one. The Mayor is asked to rule on a complaint about a colleague whose cooperation and goodwill they need to do their job. Even if the Mayor makes the right call every time, the public has reason to wonder if the decision was unbiased. That's unfair to the Mayor, too.

There's also an expertise problem. Interpreting and applying a code of conduct is a job that requires legal expertise, and the Mayor and Deputy Mayor aren't necessarily trained for it. A neutral expert would be better suited to this gatekeeping role — a designated independent third party or an integrity commissioner. The Local Governance Commission doesn't currently perform this function, but it would be a natural fit for local governments across the province. Initial handling of a complaint is far less involved than the investigation itself, so cost shouldn't be a barrier.

A similar structural problem arises with Council's role in deciding complaints and appeals, though the latter is mandated by the Regulation. The move toward open proceedings, along with the existing ability of the Local Governance Commission to hear complaints, go a long way toward addressing the concern in this context.

The amendments also add a definition for "reasonable grounds" — requiring "a clear and credible reason to believe something is true, based on reliable evidence not just a guess or suspicion." The intent is understandable: investigations are expensive, and that cost comes out of our tax dollars. That said, this standard may be too high for the intake stage. The by-law already allows complaints to be dismissed if they are frivolous or vexatious. The reliability of the evidence is for the investigation to test — not a prerequisite for starting one. The gatekeeper doesn't need to believe the code was violated. They just need to believe it's likely enough that an investigation would be in the public interest.

The values update

The amendments update the values that councillors are expected to uphold. The current by-law lists integrity, respect, accountability, leadership, collaboration, public interest, and transparency. The proposed version replaces these with honesty, integrity, objectivity, impartiality, and accountability — dropping leadership, collaboration, public interest, and transparency.

The new values are prescribed by the Code of Conduct Regulation, so their inclusion isn't arbitrary. But the Regulation doesn't say a code can't include additional values — it sets a floor, not a ceiling. Limiting the code to only the prescribed values is a choice.

The dropped values are perhaps more aspirational than enforceable, and transparency in particular is arguably best addressed through procedural rules — open meetings, published agendas, and the like. But a code of conduct does two things: it sets enforceable standards, and it articulates a vision of the role. A councillor isn't just an honest, impartial decision-maker. They're also a community leader who builds partnerships, works across sectors, and pursues collective goals. The current by-law captures that, and the proposed version drops it. As a whole, the changes improve the process for enforcing the rules that matter — that's good. But something is lost in the shift from collaborative governance language to individual conduct standards, and the Regulation would allow the city to keep it.

On balance

These amendments are progress. The tightened timelines, the stronger false statements rule, and especially the move toward open proceedings are all genuine improvements. The missed opportunities are structural — until the complaint process is independent of the people it's designed to hold accountable, it will struggle to earn full public confidence, no matter how well-intentioned the people running it are.