Governance Review at a Snail’s Pace

Aug 30, 2019

I don’t believe the 20 year old governance model the City operates under is serving the taxpayers well. I am hoping the City will complete the governance review and recommendations by 2020.

October 26, 2016: Councillors Wyatt and Eadie brought forward a motion to conduct a governance review of how the City – is governed. I fully supported this motion and have spoken to it many times over the years. In 2018 funding was approved to proceed, things were held up for a variety of reasons, and finally an request for proposals was issues. Nothing moves fast when the potential for a power shift is on the horizon. Just this week Council received an updated that a contract was awarded to the firm MNP.

MNP has been tasked to:

Scope of Services

D3.1 The Services required under this Contract shall consist of a review of the Governance Structure of the City of Winnipeg in accordance with the following:

(a) Creation of a Terms of Reference to be used as a framework for the Work to be completed:

(i) Including timeframes for deliverables, processes to be undertaken, consultation of stakeholders, public engagement strategy, undertaking of a cross jurisdictional review, methodologies to be used, and governance issues to be examined

(b) Review and provide recommendations for amendments to relevant Provincial Legislation and City of Winnipeg By-laws with respect to Governance of the City of Winnipeg including but not limited to the City of Winnipeg Charter Act, and the City of Winnipeg’s Organizational By-law 7100/97, Procedure By law 50/2007 and the Development Procedures By/law 160/2011;

(c) Conduct interviews with members of Winnipeg City Council and senior management to gather feedback on governance issues;

(d) The proponent shall develop and submit a public engagement strategy to allow for in person, and online feedback. The Office of Public Engagement will be available for collaboration and to provide insight and knowledge on public engagement;

(e) Conduct a cross jurisdictional review of other Canadian municipalities in order to establish overall best governance practices and to provide specific recommendations on, but not limited to:

(i) Structure of committees of council including the mandate and delegated authorities of each, their function, relevance, distribution of work load, and appointment process to all committees;

(ii) Administrative – Political interface between the public service and elected representatives;

(iii) Public hearing process;

(iv) Appeal process for administrative and political decisions; and

(v) Annual budget process – political oversight and review process.

(f) Provide recommendations pertaining to the above to Council for consideration, broken down by:

(i) Changes requiring the adoption of new, or amended City of Winnipeg by-laws; and

(ii) Changes requiring the adoption of new, or amended Provincial Legislation.

Once the governance review is complete – a request for changes will have to be made to the Province of Manitoba for final approval.

WHY IS GOVERNANCE IMPORTANT?

What is governance? Simply put, governance* is the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Good governance has eight major characteristics:

participatory
consensus oriented
accountable
transparent
responsive
effective and efficient
equitable and inclusive
follows the rule of law

Governance assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account and that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are heard in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.

The last time the City of Winnipeg reviewed its governance model was almost 20 years ago. A lot has changed in society related to how we receive, share and disseminate information.
Best practice suggests governance reviews for large corporation should occur every 5-10 years, if not more frequently.
Under the current model, the Mayor and the appointed Executive Policy Committee, and the Mayor’s two Deputy Mayor delegates receive extensive information on many topics from department staff. They discuss and analyze this information for weeks prior to voting on an issue. Other Council members not a part of this tier have four business days to review information before voting on an issue. (It took me over almost year to change the timeline from 96 hours to four business days!)

I don’t believe the current governance model the City operates under is serving the taxpayers well.

Under the current governance model:

Under the leadership of the former mayor, and under the current governance model, a series of external audits were conducted investigating Real Estate Management, Winnipeg Police Service Headquarters Construction, and Winnipeg Fire Paramedics. Currently, there is an RCMP criminal probe into Winnipeg Police Headquarters Construction.
Under the leadership of our current mayor, and under the same governance model, missed deadlines for filing of legal claims have occurred, contempt of court charges have been laid against City staff and three members of the Mayor’s Executive Policy Committee for violating a Court of Queens’ Bench order, the Province of Manitoba is having to conduct a review of accountability in the Property Planning and Development Department, external audits have revealed a failure to communicate both within the organization and to the public on capital planning processes (involving multi-million dollar projects), lack of defined roles and job descriptions for staff within departments have been occurring, and lack of criteria that identify files that pose significant risks to the organization (political, financial, etc.) in the legal department has been identified for correction.

I’d like to see Leadership acting a lot more quickly on the governance review, as something is not working in the favour of taxpayers within the City. A governance review may result in a dramatic improvement of these critical key characteristics, and that would be good for all taxpayers: