Ed Smith, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Pointer

Jim Ross, a man who helped Mat Siscoe get elected mayor of St. Catharines, went on to receive approximately $65,000 in municipal contracts to host tele-town hall and other virtual consultation sessions for the City since 2022 without following the proper procurement safeguards, an investigation by The Pointer has found.

Since 2022, Mayor Siscoe has personally requested information about contracts awarded to Ross without a competitive bidding process to ensure that the amounts that were being handed to him did not violate municipal rules that do not allow sole-sourcing above certain dollar values, to protect taxpayers from unethical procurements to friends, family, associates or other entities that represent a conflict of interest. 

Siscoe sought information prior to the handing of sole-source contracts (which are given to a company without any bidding competition) to Ross, which helped avoid any red flags in the procurement system designed to protect taxpayers from deal making, according to communications reviewed by The Pointer. 

Ross is a political consultant whose companies provide voter-contact, polling, telephone town hall and public-engagement services to political campaigns, elected officials and governments across Canada. During the 2022 mayoral campaign, Ross was paid more than $25,000 by Siscoe for polling and voter-identification services, roughly one-third of the campaign’s total expenditures, according to Siscoe’s financial statements.

The Pointer asked Ross if he had ever declared a conflict of interest with the City. He responded: “My vendor relationship with the city predates the current council term and has been in accordance with the rules for procurement.”  

Siscoe did not respond to questions.

Since Siscoe’s successful mayoral bid in 2022, Ross and his associated companies have received multiple contracts from the City, including several that were awarded through a single-source process.

The records reviewed show a longstanding relationship between Ross, his associated companies and the City of St. Catharines dating back to 2015.

Siscoe has had a connection to that relationship from its earliest days. 

The first telephone town hall contract included in the records reviewed by The Pointer was awarded to Ross in 2015, when Siscoe was still a City councillor and Chair of the Budget Committee. 

Siscoe and then-mayor Walter Sendzik championed the use of telephone town halls as a means of engaging residents in the City’s budget consultation process.  Speaking to the media following the first town hall, Siscoe expressed strong support for the initiative, saying he was “incredibly happy and encouraged by the uptake” and that the City needed to find “new, better ways to engage residents”, adding that telephone town halls appeared to be a tool the City would need to use again in the future. 

Since that first telephone town hall in 2015, various companies owned or controlled by Ross have conducted every telephone town hall held by the City, including the most recent one on August 25, which gave residents an opportunity to ask questions about the flooding emergency. 

What began as a single budget consultation initiative has since expanded significantly, with the City now using telephone town halls multiple times a year for a range of public consultation and engagement purposes, including discussions on mental health and addiction, flooding and the municipal budget.

Numerous different companies have been awarded contracts by the City for these initiatives, but all of them link back to Ross. These companies include Front Porch Strategies, Clear Impact Strategy Inc., Jim Ross Consulting, eNRG Research Group, and ElectRight Inc.—all list Ross as a consultant, manager or founder. 

The various corporate ties to Ross and his work for the municipality were part of a complex examination by The Pointer. 

Contracts reviewed by The Pointer show Ross or companies he is associated with received more than $65,000 in municipal work since 2022. 

Records show that in 2025, Siscoe personally sought information from City staff about the rules governing the procurement of polling and related services. 

In response to email correspondence from the mayor, the City’s Chief Financial Officer provided the Mayor’s Office with information about the City’s procurement thresholds, which establish when sole-sourcing is allowed and when a competitive bidding process is required. Typically, smaller contracts for certain services are allowed without a competitive bidding process, but municipalities have been advised by accountability officers at the provincial level to avoid simply handing even small contracts to the same vendors over and over again, unless there are no other competitors in the market. After Siscoe sought information about procurements for the specific type of work Ross provides, he was given previous quotations obtained from polling companies.

This triggers questions about why senior staff would share sensitive pricing information from potential competitors; what Siscoe did with the information; and why the mayor would be involved with a bureaucratic process that politicians are expressly prohibited from meddling in, to avoid conflict of interest. The entire procurement process is supposed to be free of political interference, other than the final decision, if there is a competitive bidding process, and council votes on the submitted bids. Even when there is a vote, senior staff are usually required to make a recommendation based on a series of objective measurements, including quality of the bid, experience and competitive pricing.

If there is no competitive bidding process (usually for smaller contracts), the mayor and all other members of council are supposed to be completely removed from the decision to hand out a contract, which is done by staff under rules that also require their independence and objectivity.   

In an August 27, 2025 email to the Office of the Mayor, the financial officer wrote: “Mr. Mayor, Further to our discussion, below is an excerpt from the City’s Procurement Policy regarding Informal Quotation requirements and dollar limits.” 

The email sent to Siscoe provided highlighted sections of the St. Catharines policy that outlines the requirements for procurements greater than $10,000 and less than $50,000, which trigger the requirement to solicit three written quotations for any work within that dollar value, as well as the rules governing direct purchases of $10,000 or less, which permit procurement without competitive bidding. 

The information given to Siscoe included the names of competing or potential suppliers, including Pollara Strategic Insights, Forum Research and Nanos Research, as well as information and quotations received by the City in earlier procurement exercises. The material given to Siscoe also identified Jim Ross with eNRG Research Group.

The records that had to be released to The Pointer under freedom of information rules establish that Siscoe took a direct interest in how these polling and public engagement services had been procured, what the dollar value threshold was for going with a single source supplier, without any informal quotes or formal bidding submissions,  and which other companies had previously been approached. The records also indicate that Siscoe had previously discussed the matter with the Director of Financial Management, although the documents provided to The Pointer under the publication’s FOI request do not disclose the substance of the communications between Siscoe and senior staff when he injected himself into the process to award the contracts.

The Pointer contacted Siscoe about his keen interest in the procurements and what he did with the information provided by City staff. He did not respond. 

When competitive procurement processes were used for similar work, the records show that the City approached other firms for the public consultation work, but in some instances those firms were substantially larger companies that declined to bid on the relatively small contracts, leaving Ross as the only respondent. In other circumstances, staff chose not to seek competing quotations, even when the value of the work exceeded the $10,000 threshold, citing Ross as a “reputable vendor.”

The records disclosed under freedom of information requirements raise questions about how consistently the City’s procurement rules and conflict-of-interest safeguards have been applied to Ross and his associated companies, and about the relationship between Ross and Siscoe. 

The Pointer has reviewed municipal procurement records, campaign finance documents, compliance audit materials, City staff reports, FOI records and the City’s procurement bylaw, all of which point to a relationship between Siscoe and Ross that extends beyond a single election campaign or a single municipal contract.

Campaign contribution records show that Ross personally contributed $1,200 to Siscoe’s 2022 campaign, the maximum allowable.

While a political or personal relationship does not disqualify a potential service provider from receiving City contracts, there are policies and safeguards in place to identify and manage actual or perceived conflicts of interest. 

The records reviewed by The Pointer indicate that those safeguards were not enforced in connection with Ross and the various companies tied to him that conducted business with the City. 

Section 8a of the Procurement Policy states: “All Suppliers hired by the City, acting as an agent or representative of the City shall immediately disclose any actual or perceived conflict of interest, in writing to the Procurement Division.” This requirement is intended to ensure that potential conflicts are identified and appropriately managed as part of the City’s procurement process. 

Ross was not simply a municipal vendor. He was also a campaign adviser to Siscoe, the owner of a company that received more than $25,000 from Siscoe’s personal political campaign to get him elected, and a donor who contributed the maximum amount permitted to the campaign. 

FOI records obtained by The Pointer indicate that no disclosure of an actual or perceived conflict was filed by Ross or any of his associated companies, despite the policy.  

Section 8(c) of the bylaw states: “Failure by a Supplier to have disclosed in their Bid an actual or perceived Conflict of Interest may result in cancellation or suspension of the Award, or termination of the Contract at the City’s discretion, without compensation.” Ross’s companies continue to receive contracts from the City, including conducting the most recent telephone town hall held on August 25 to discuss the flooding emergency. 

The policy also sets out specific restrictions on the involvement of elected officials in the procurement process.

Section 7(d) states that all elected officials, officers and employees of the City must declare conflicts of interest to the Director of Financial Management Services and “shall not be involved in a Bid Solicitation process where a real or perceived Conflict of Interest has been found or deemed to exist.”

It specifically includes “requesting the Goods and/or Services, setting the parameters of the Purchase, evaluating Bids, or recommending, deciding or making Awards.” It also prohibits “direct contact with those making those Purchasing decisions, both in Procurement and the user Department.”

Siscoe has never declared a conflict of interest in relation to Ross. 

The City’s Procurement Bylaw establishes different purchasing requirements based on the total value of a contract. For procurements of $10,000 or less, departments may use the Direct Purchase method, meaning staff are permitted to purchase directly from a single supplier without competitive bidding (elected officials are expressly prohibited from being involved in any way).

The requirements change once the total contract price exceeds $10,000. For procurements greater than $10,000 and less than $50,000, the bylaw requires the Informal Quotation process, under which the requisitioning department must actively solicit at least three written quotations (again, this process has to be free from any political interference).

The procurement records reviewed show that contracts awarded to Ross repeatedly fell close to the City’s $10,000 competitive procurement threshold.  

In some cases, the City did use a competitive process, but the circumstances limited the competition. In June 2023, for example, staff sought quotes from three firms for telephone town halls: Ross’ company, Lura Consulting and Pollara Strategic Insights. The latter two, substantially larger firms, declined to bid, leaving Ross as the only respondent. 

Because the three planned town halls pushed the total value above $10,000, staff prepared a sole-source justification citing the other vendors’ decision not to bid. The records show the justification was approved by the CAO’s office within minutes of being submitted.

A similar issue arose the following year, but this time staff discussed whether competitive quotes could be avoided altogether. In April 2024, staff discussed whether three quotes were required because the work was believed to be under $10,000. A subsequent review found that the standing order actually totalled $10,750 before taxes. Despite the amount exceeding the $10,000 threshold, purchasing staff agreed that they would proceed with a sole-source arrangement without obtaining three quotes, justifying that Ross was a “reputable vendor”.

Email: ed.smith@thepointer.com

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