City council is asking staff to come back with more changes to an updated whistleblower policy before considering the item for adoption and is expecting to be presented changes on April 20. Due to a new item added to Monday's agenda, city council did not discuss urban hens options.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
City councillors have asked staff for more changes to a whistleblower policy that would allow anonymous third-party reporting at city hall.
During a public meeting Monday, council unanimously adopted a motion to send the policy back to staff after suggesting it needed clarifying definitions, ensuring reports are reasonable and considering direct reporting to council.
The new whistleblower policy is being drafted to replace the current policy, as well as existing fraud policy.
Staff say designed the policy has been designed following council directives that came last fall after former councillor Shila Sharps presented a motion to make enhancements to the policy, allowing anonymous third-party reporting as a mechanism to increase public confidence.
Council also wanted the policy to strengthen anti-retaliation protections for whistleblowers and provide annual anonymized reporting on the number and types of disclosures received by the city and the outcomes of those reports to council.
Lola Barta, interim managing director of corporate services, says the current whistleblower policy is managed internally because it only applies to city employees.
“However, the new policy now brings in elements from the fraud policy as well as it expands who can make a report,” she said. “So it makes more sense for it to fall under corporate services and it would be managed by the finance department.”
If approved, council would also need to approve a budget amendment to add $100,000 from operating reserves to fund the new policy and third-party investigations, however this cost is only an estimate and may increase in the future.
Barta says the new policy also updates language or wording to include members of the public.
“For example, instead of using terms like ‘complaint,’ ‘misconduct’ and ‘reprisal,’ the policy now uses ‘report,’ ‘wrongdoing’ and ‘retaliation,’ which are more commonly used in public whistleblower legislation,” said Barta.
The policy is meant to report “wrong-doings” by city staff, however it is not intended for the public to inquire about general service complaints, bylaw enforcement concerns or neighbour disputes, customer service issues or dissatisfaction with city decisions.
Barta says the policy explains what qualifies as “wrongdoing” and outlines situations where a third-party investigator can decide to delay, pause or end an investigation and work with the city on followup actions.
Mayor Linnsie Clark expressed concern with some of the wording, as well as changes to a section which deals with situations when a whistleblower may make a report describing circumstances that could become the subject of an internal investigation.
This includes a government body or police department which may have jurisdiction of the investigation and would prevent actions by the city to interfere with a third-party investigation.
“I feel like from my perspective that might be a bit broad,” said Clark, who says potential whistleblowers may have a hard time recognizing that their reports may lead to an internal proceeding.
Clark also asked staff to make changes to the policy that would bring forward any report to council.
“I think if people have evidence of wrongdoing this policy gives them the safest way to bring that forward,” said Coun. Stuart Young. “We want to get this right and so we don’t want to have to come back and forth and back and forth, so let’s make sure we get all the pieces right.”
“I agree with the mayor that we need to put this over,” said Coun. Dan Reynish. “This is such an important part of Medicine Hat moving forward that we need to make sure we are getting it absolutely right.”
The policy will be reviewed at an upcoming council meeting on Apr. 20.
Urban hens
City council did not hear a presentation from staff on research surrounding backyard hens due to a late addition to Monday’s council agenda.
Recently staff provided a city committee with three options regarding an urban hen project that could allow Hatters to house a few in their backyards.
One option is the creation of a new bylaw, another is changing the wording of the existing Responsible Animal Ownership Bylaw and the third is to not proceed an urban-hen program within city limits.
Advocates have sought allowance of backyard hens for several years, dating back to 2015, and the subject most recently came up for discussion at council in September 2025.
The News will have more coverage on this issue as updates become available.
