70 recommendations come from city inspection; councillor & city manager must attend respectful workplace training

By Medicine Hat News on July 22, 2025.

An inspection ordered by Municipal Affairs on how the City of Medicine Hat administration, councillors conducts turned into an emotional 60-minute plus discussion and debated at the City of Medicine Hat’s July 21 council meeting.

The report was ordered in October 2024, the former Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver ordered a municipal inspection of the City of Medicine Hat following a formal request from city council.

The City of Medicine Hat Inspection final report was submitted to the Minister of Municipal Affairs in April 2025 but was shared with Medicine Hat residents in an open city council meeting.

Municipal governance firm Strategic Steps Inc. conducted a formal, third-party inspection of the City of Medicine Hat’s management, administration and operations, as directed by Alberta Ministerial Order.

The 207-page report done by Ian McCormack of Strategic Steps Inc. had 70 recommendations.

From this report, the Minister has issued three directives to the City of Medicine Hat:

1. Council and the CAO are to review all recommendations in the inspection report, as well as all findings of irregular, improper, or improvident management of the City of Medicine Hat, and provide a report to the Minister on the city’s plan to address each recommendation in the inspection report or explain why action has not or will not be taken for any individual recommendation(s)

2. The City must publish the inspection report on the City’s website, and make copies available upon request, subject to the City’s fees for providing a photocopy; and

3. Council, the CAO, and the designated officers of the municipality must complete respectful workplace training that meets the approval of the Minister. Next steps The city must report to the Minister on its actions to address the directives within set timelines. Municipal Affairs will monitor the city’s progress. Upon request, the ministry may provide supports to the city, such as advice, training, and grant funding for intra-council conflict resolution.”

Councillor Darren Hirsch liked the way the report was done. Not excited he had to go through all of the questioning. He added he has been involved in community work for 32 years and describes the scrutiny of council, administrations and operations as “unfortunate.” Hirsch thanked McCormack for being very thorough and thanked him for offering suggestions and having “no need to be punitive.”

Councillors Andy McGrogan and Alison Knodel were each thankful for the work done and recommendations.

Knodel noted it has been a difficult process, “but I truly felt I was heard.”

She apologized to the community in regards to have the beneficial decisions and work that has been accomplished have been looked at by the public with a tainted view because of the legal actions.

City Manager Ann Mitchell said McCormack’s report was a “solid roadmap.”

While there was support from council, there were some critiques including councillor Robert Dumanowski wanted to have the report publicly point out more individuals on who said what.

Much of the concerns and criticism came from Mayor Linnsie Clark who was not “super stoked” about the report. She said the document was problematic and accused McCormack of “cherrypicking” certain passages of emails, media articles and interviews and “not relying on tangible direct evidence.”

“I think transparency or lack of transparency has certainly something to do with that. I am not going to go through page by page. I will release something at a later time, but you cherry pick or you you take things from emails or articles, but you don;t provide the whole string and you don’t provide the whole article,” Clark explained with some frustration. “So in my view, if you’re relaying on it, the entire document should be disclosed because in some cases the issue that was the concern isn’t reflected in your summary accurately. For example, you cite a headline “Medicine Hat Mayor refuses mediation” and the article is about councillors who leaked confidential information, but you make it seem like I refuse to participate in a mediation and it was not a mediation. You have anonymous statements…”

“There’s just many, many anonymous comments about feelings. So I don’t think that that provides me with a reasonable opportunity to respond because it’s an anonymous person’s feelings, which it’s not..”

“It is extremely defamatory,” finalized Clark using the word innuendo. “I should have a reasonable meaningful opportunity to respond to it but an anonymous quote about someone’s feeling, even though they wrote it down or told you in an interview, is not evidence that I’ve done anything wrong and so I feel like you haven’t provided me with a reasonable meaningful opportunity to respond to the allegations against me.”

Councillor Cassi Hider, “maybe this is where we can have a debrief with Ian.

The full report itself is found by visiting https://open.alberta.ca/publications/municipal-inspection-report-city-of-medicine-hat#detailed

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