ÈȵãºÚÁÏ

In Canadian municipal law, the council exercises both executive and legislative governmental authority at the municipal level.

It is reasonable for setting the strategic direction of the municipality and in that regard for planning and delivery of a range of services and programs that the municipality will deliver to its citizens and authorizing the expenditures that are necessary for this purpose.

The Municipal Act in Ontario provides the following programs, services and activities to follow.

It is the role of council:

• To represent the public and to consider the well-being and interests of the municipality;
• to develop and evaluate the policies and programs of the municipality;
• to determine which services the municipality provides;
• to ensure administrative policies and procedures and controllership policies and procedures are in place to implement the decisions of council;
• to ensure the accountability and transparency of the operations of the municipality, including the activities of the senior management of the municipality;
• to determine the financial integrity of the municipality; and
• to carry out the duties of council under this or any other act.

That these responsibilities are those directly of council itself and that they may not be delegated to the municipal staff is made clear in the act, which states the staff is playing a supporting role only.

It is the role of the officers and employees of the municipality to:

• To implement council’s decisions and establish administrative practices and procedures to carry out council’s decisions;
• to undertake research and provide advice to council on the policies and programs of the municipality; and
• to carry out other duties required under this or any act and other duties assigned by the municipality.

The proper exercise of the fiscal authority is perhaps the most important responsibility of the council during its term of office. For this reason, some would say it is difficult accepting the benefit of some of the key recommendations in the Bellamy Report, which advocates a limited role for council in the overall procurement process.

Here are some of the recommendations:

• City council should establish a fair, transparent and objective procurement processes. These processes should be structured so that they are and clearly appear to be completely free from political influence or interference.
• Councillors should separate themselves from the procurement process. They should have no involvement whatsoever in specific procurements. They have the strongest ethical obligations to refrain from seeking to be involved in any way.
• Members of council should not see any documents or receive any information related to a particular procurement while the procurement process is ongoing.
• Councillors who receive inquiries from vendors related to any specific procurement should tell them to communicate with one or more of the following three people, as is appropriate in the circumstances: the contact person in the tender document, in accordance with the contact rules in place, the fairness commissioner, the person in charge of the complaints, as set out in the tender documents.
• Each procurement professional in a key city position should have paid membership in at least one relevant professional organization.
• Senior staff and councillors all receive training necessary to be able to read and understand financial statements.

To say the foregoing proposals go too far is not to advocate micromanagement of the municipal operations by either council as a whole or by the mayor and individual councillors.

Micromanagement is as disadvantageous in the public sector as in private, perhaps even more so, for while private sector directors and senior managers have usually enjoyed distinguished careers as line managers and technocrats within the operation of a company, only rarely have municipal councillors had a meaningful experience in the actual delivery of municipal programs and services.

Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at swbauld@purchasingci.com. Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.