Chris Fell, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, CollingwoodToday.ca

Future members of The Blue Mountains council will have a limited number of meetings they can attend virtually each year.

At a special committee of the whole meeting on July 6, The Blue Mountains council approved an updated procedural bylaw that will govern how meetings are conducted in the future. The bylaw is set to come to council for full approval on July 13.

A review of the procedural bylaw has been underway for several months, with a public meeting on the topic held in June.

The biggest change council made was to implement a limit on the number of meetings a councillor can attend virtually each year. Once the bylaw is approved, members of council will be able to attend 20 meetings virtually each calendar year.

Although the bylaw will take effect immediately once it is approved by council, the virtual limitations will have no impact on the present council. There are only 11 remaining scheduled meetings in the present term that could be impacted by the new procedural bylaw. The new bylaw will not apply to any meetings attended virtually before the bylaw’s approval.

The new council to be elected in October takes office in November 2026. The new council will have an opportunity to review the bylaw during its first year in office.

During the review process, council had directed staff to include a limit of 20 meetings for virtual participation. However, at the June public meeting councillors questioned that number and suggested it was too high. Subsequently, staff recommended that the proposed update leave the matter of virtual meeting attendance up to the new council.

Coun. June Porter moved a motion to include the 20-meeting limit.

“I strongly believe we need to take a stand on virtual attendance. Virtual hasn’t always served as well,” said Porter.

The amendment from Porter originally included a clause that would have required members of council who wished to exceed the 20-meeting virtual limit to have their request approved by a vote of council.

Coun. Shawn McKinlay objected to the clause and suggested it would breach the Privacy Act to require members of council to disclose personal information about the reasons for their request for virtual attendance to gain council’s approval. McKinlay noted that a councillor may wish to attend virtually for medical or health reasons.

McKinlay also suggested the clause could violate the Municipal Act, which allows municipal elected officials to attend meetings virtually provided the local procedural bylaw allows such attendance.

“Council can’t kick a member off without due course and a justifiable reason,” he said.

The clause was subsequently withdrawn.

Other changes in the draft bylaw include:

• The inclusion of strong mayor powers
• A requirement that the chair of the meeting be attending in-person
• Clarification on motions being withdrawn, reconsideration motion and a motion to rescind
• Clarity on point of order and point of privilege
• Allow deputations not tied to a staff report on the agenda to be scheduled on the date of council’s public meetings

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Four months after resigning as co-chair of the science advisory committee to Canada’s national pesticide regulator in 2023, Bruce Lanphear went to a Warrior Monk Retreat on Bainbridge Island, where after a predawn meditation session, a monk asked participants to write down what they were feeling.

What emerged on the paper was a poem he titled ‘Confessions of a Toxicologist’. The monk then asked Lanphear to read it aloud:

“I am guilty.

I believed,

as many of us did,

that a little poison

would be safe—

like an aspirin,

or a glass of wine

with dinner.

I stood by

as it seeped quietly

into the soil,

the womb,

the breath of morning.

I waited for proof,

as if the earth were a courtroom,

and the rivers

could file motions.

I stayed silent,

even when I knew it was wrong,” he was sobbing as he continued.

“I listened

to the men in suits,

not to the mother,

not to the child

who coughed in her sleep.

I gave the benefit of doubt

to industry—

as if doubt

were theirs to claim.

Now I know

what I should have known:

that life doesn’t wait

for peer review.

That silence

can be poisonous too—

odorless,

weightless,

but fatal all the same.”

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