Nine months after the civic election which saw brand new faces at the table, the new city council appears to be following an old, illegal habit: doing their business behind closed doors. Not only following - expanding it.

The Owl has reviewed the agendas and minutes of

every council meeting since the October 2025 election
every 2025 meeting
the first nine months of the 2021 council.

What we found is a troubling pattern: items being added to, and postponed from, closed session meetings - with those votes taking place behind closed doors.

This is clearly a violation of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) and the city's own Procedure Bylaw.

Even more concerning: some of the items council chose to discuss behind closed doors never appeared on the open agenda at all. Council made no effort to discuss them in public - even when the subjects were plainly matters of public interest that could have been addressed openly.

The excuse they seem to slide all these subjects under? "Advice from officials." That can hide a multitude of sins.

The Law is Clear

Section 201.1(3) of the Municipal Government Act states:

"When a meeting is closed to the public, no resolution or bylaw may be passed at the meeting, except a resolution to revert to a meeting of a council or council committee held in public."

Councils cannot make decisions behind closed doors. The only vote a council can take in a closed session is to open the meeting back up to the public. They cannot vote to:

add agenda items,
subtract them,
postpone them to a later date than the very next closed meeting, or
give substantive direction

without doing so in open council.

Before a meeting can close, council must pass a resolution in public identifying the part of the meeting to be closed and the specific FOIP exception justifying the closure.

The Owl discovered this pattern while reviewing agendas and minutes months after the November 2025 meeting. When we brought it to the attention of council members, they ignored our inquiries. We then took the matter to the city clerk, who confirmed that adding an item to the closed agenda after the doors were shut was a vote that should have happened in public. We followed up with council members again, asking for an explanation. They referred us back to the city clerk. (The current city clerk was not employed until mid-June 2026. These past violations were not on her watch.)

What Can Actually Be Discussed in Closed Session?

The law is very narrow about what can be discussed behind closed doors.

The Municipal Government Act requires all meetings to be held in public unless a specific exception applies. The exceptions are found in the Access to Information Act (ATIA), and they are limited. They include matters where disclosure could be harmful to:

Personal privacy
Individual or public safety
Law enforcement
Intergovernmental relations
Economic or other interests of the public body
Advice from officials or deliberations involving officials

But these exceptions are not a blank cheque.

The "advice from officials" exception - the one council uses most often - is discretionary, not mandatory. The public body may refuse to disclose, but often the public interest in transparency outweighs the exception.

It does not apply to information that has already been considered in a public meeting, or to statements of reasons for a decision. Statistical survey results cannot be withheld under this exception either.

It Didn't Stop There

The data suggests this wasn't a one-time mistake. It has become standard practice.

At multiple meetings since November 2025, items were added, postponed, or deferred during closed sessions. The pattern repeats across the council's calendar:

December 8, 2025: Three items - Contact Information, Economic Development Conference, and Corporate Communications Update - were postponed to 2026. All were listed under the vague "advice from officials" exception. All were postponed behind closed doors.
December 15, 2025: Three "ADDED" items appear in the closed session minutes - Public Services Update, Energy Update, and Development Permit Update - all under the same "advice from officials" exception.
January 5, 2026: Council added "Council Strategy and Policy Development" to the closed session, citing "privileged information" as the basis.
March 16, 2026: Five items were postponed in a single closed meeting, deferred en masse to the April 7 session.
April 27, 2026: An entire meeting was held in closed with one item removed, another postponed to an unknown date.
June 22 and July 20, 2026: Two more meetings were held entirely in closed session. If a meeting begins and ends behind closed doors, there is no public meeting at which to pass the mandatory resolution to close it.

Each of these votes - to add, to postpone, to defer - occurred behind closed doors in violation of the MGA.

Behind Closed Doors: The Pattern

The list of items council chose to discuss - or postpone - behind closed doors raises serious questions about what, exactly, they consider "confidential."

Electric Substations Infrastructure Modernization It was postponed from the March 16 closed council meeting to the April 7 closed session. It never appeared there. No public vote explained why. No motion referred it back to committee. It did not appear on the relevant committee Action Item list. It eventually surfaced in open committee on May 7 and was approved by council on May 19. If it could be discussed openly in May, why was it behind closed doors in March? And who decided it would disappear from the April 7 agenda? This was a decision that involved ten of millions of dollars that they knew they were going to have to spend.

City Hall Smudging Ceremony Discussion (February 17, 2026) The minutes simply note: City Hall Smudging Ceremony Discussion [s.29, advice from officials] - received for information." A discussion about a ceremonial practice at City Hall was held behind closed doors. This is a matter of public interest that could have - and should have - been discussed openly. It has never resurfaced.

Contact Information (postponed from December 8, 2025 to 2026). Why did this need to be secret - and why was it postponed to an unknown date?

Corporate Communications Update (postponed from December 8, 2025 to 2026). The city's communications strategy was discussed behind closed doors and then postponed to an unknown date. What is so sensitive about how the city communicates with its residents that it cannot be discussed in public?

Council Strategy and Policy Development (January 5, 2026). Strategic planning is a core function of council. While some aspects may involve sensitive negotiations, the general direction of council's strategy is precisely the kind of information the public deserves to know.

These are not matters of commercial sensitivity. They are not legal matters requiring solicitor-client privilege. They are routine governance matters that could have been discussed - at least in part - in open session. Council chose not to.

The City's Own Bylaw Says the Same Thing

Council cannot claim ignorance. The city's Procedure Bylaw No. 4725, which council itself passed, reinforces the MGA in explicit terms.

Section 4.48 states:

"Members must not make motions or vote in a Closed Meeting except on a motion to recess or to resume the public Meeting."

There is no exception for postponing items, adding items, or deferring them to a later date than the next closed meeting. The only motion allowed behind closed doors is the one to open the doors again.

Section 6.10 adds:

"The agenda and any amendments to it must be confirmed by a Majority vote at the start of the Meeting."

The agenda cannot be amended in secret. Voting to postpone an item to an unknown future date is a material change to the agenda, functionally no different than adding a new item. The law requires this be done by a majority vote in public.

The "Postponed to the Next Closed Meeting" Argument

There is a provision in the Procedure Bylaw that states items not dealt with in a closed session "shall be forwarded to the next Closed Meeting of Council or as directed by a motion of Council in the Regular Meeting."

If it is to be postponed past the next closed meeting then a vote must be taken in open council. Postponing to an unknown date allows items to fall off the agenda, possibly never to be addressed again like the smudging ceremony. It can be a very effective way of killing an agenda item without actually voting on the item.

Why This Matters

The Municipal Government Act's open meeting provisions exist for a reason. The public has a right to know what their elected officials are doing. When council conducts its business in private, it undermines public trust and violates the very law that gives it authority.

When the public cannot rely on what the agenda says - when items are added in secret and cannot be discovered until weeks later - that seriously undermines public trust. It also allows them to avoid questions from journalists. Local news outlets are being told to restrict our questions to agenda items only (which violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - they can refuse to answer but they cannot tel us what questions we can ask). If it never appears on the agenda, then we cannot ask about it.

Bumping an item to the next meeting, no big deal and permitted by Procedure Bylaw 4725.

Bumping items to an extended timeline or no timeline at all without a public vote, that is a problem and the lack of a public vote is a violation of the MGA.

The province already found the city was being managed in an "irregular, improper, and improvident manner" following a municipal inspection. The Minister of Municipal Affairs issued binding directives requiring the city to address systemic governance issues, including adherence to meeting procedures.

This is not the first time The Owl has documented efforts to control what questions get asked. In July, we reported on a city staff member telling our journalist not to ask council members about things not on the agenda - a request she refused to put in writing and acknowledged was not official policy. When combined with the pattern of items being added and postponed in closed session, the picture is clear: this council is using procedural rules to avoid accountability.

From the Data

The table below shows every closed session meeting since the October 2025 election, with the number of items discussed, added, and postponed.

Now compare that table to the table below showing the first 8 months of the 2021 council. They postponed nothing.

Again, compare to the first 10 month of 2025. The table below shows the 2021 council again, postponed nothing.

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Behind Closed Doors: Council's Favourite Meeting Place