BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association
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Springwater Deputy Mayor George Cabral has a handful of questions he’d like answered regarding the City of Barrie’s boundary expansion proposal.
In an effort to provide clarity and transparency to Springwater residents, Cabral put forth a notice of motion at Wednesday’s council meeting that would have the township’s information technology (IT) staff perform an exhaustive forensic analysis that answers the following questions:
- How did the boundary adjustment mapping come to include parcels of Springwater land that were not requested by the City of Barrie’s boundary adjustment respecting expanded employment land?
- Why was additional Springwater land offered to the City of Barrie as part of the boundary adjustment process?
- Who authorized this additional Springwater land to be offered to the City of Barrie and included in the boundary adjustment mapping?
- Who was responsible for the creation of the boundary adjustment maps, and variations thereof, prior to May 9, 2025?
- And where were these maps developed and created?
According to Cabral’s motion, organized boundary adjustment meetings in early winter 2023 between Barrie, Springwater and the Township of Oro-Medonte were taking place without the knowledge or direction of Springwater council, and well before strong mayor powers were granted to the local townships.
His motion contends Springwater council had “absolutely no knowledge of, involvement in, nor did it provide any direction regarding any boundary adjustment mapping.”
He wants the township’s IT department to use “whatever means” they have at their disposal to locate and examine any graphics, digital mapping, or digital documents available on any Springwater local hard drive, laptop, cloud, or Springwater server as it relates to the City of Barrie boundary adjustment mapping prior to May 9, 2025.
As well, IT staff would examine the embedded metadata — including but not limited to the date, time and author — and report back to council at its regular meeting on Oct. 15.
If the IT department doesn’t have the ability to perform this task, Cabral wants them to advise council at its next meeting and provide a list of qualified vendors with expertise in the areas of digital data mining, digital trace analysis and forensic indexing.
Additionally, the deputy mayor wants the Oct. 15 report to include a “repository” of all documents, including copies of documents obtained in the search. And should the documents not provide clear answers to his questions, Cabral wants staff to include options of suitable forensic auditing firms to complete an investigation into the matters he has outlined.
Springwater Mayor Jennifer Coughlin considered the motion an affront to her personally.
“In my opinion, this is nothing more than a personal attack and a personal vendetta,” she said. “I am tired of sitting at this table and having my integrity, my process, my goodwill, my oath of office be questioned.”
Coughlin agreed that residents have the right to the truth, but not at the expense of the taxpayer.
She made Cabral an offer.
“Let’s do a forensic audit, but when the report comes back and it says that I’ve done something wrong, I’ll pay for it,” she said.
“But when it comes back and proves again, just like the FOIs (freedom-of-information requests), just like the integrity commissioner reports, just like everything else that has been put forward and against me and comes up clean because there’s nothing to find, you pay for it — not the taxpayers,” Coughlin added.
In a recorded vote, council passed the deputy mayor’s motion with Cabral, Danielle Alexander, Anita Moore and Phil Fisher voting in favour. Coughlin, Matt Garwood and Brad Thompson voted against the motion.
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