REGINA - At a contentious council meeting Wednesday in Regina, council voted to remove Councillor Dan LeBlanc as the Regina council representative on the board of directors for Community and Social Impact Regina.
LeBlanc had previously been appointed Sept. 14 to serve on the committee, then known as the Community Safety and Wellbeing Organization, which focuses on social issues facing the city including poverty, domestic violence and food insecurity.
But on Wednesday Regina council voted 7-3 in favor of a motion from Mayor Sandra Masters to reconsider his appointment. That was followed by an 8-2 vote to remove him, which only LeBlanc and Councillor Andrew Stevens opposed.
The removal is more fallout from the contentious budget process that took place in Regina last November and December. LeBlanc had been involved in taking the new City Manager Niki Anderson to court over adminstration’s exclusion of a line item in the budget to end homelessness in the city. That budget line item was called for in a council resolution moved by LeBlanc and passed unanimously in June of last year.
In the court action LeBlanc acted as lawyer, with Councillor Stevens and local resident Florence Stratton as applicants. That application was tossed out of King’s Bench court in December as budget deliberations got underway.
It was LeBlanc’s conduct during that legal fight that weighed on the minds of councillors during the contentious discussion of whether to remove him. Concerns were particularly raised about the consequences of keeping LeBlanc on as the council representative before that volunteer board.
The debate was “not about whether or not we are acting democratically. What was undemocratic in this piece was taking the city administration, the city manager and administration, to court,” said Councillor Bob Hawkins. By going to court, “you’re taking a matter out of the hands of a democratically elected council and even worse, you’re intimidating that council.”
“Now councillors can handle that, they’re elected, and they’re pretty tough,” Hawkins added.
“But what we have here is a volunteer board… that’s been asked to do an implementing job, been asked to do a coordinating job, then asked to follow the wishes of counsel as it goes about implementing incremental change to improve the social well-being of our citizens. The difficulty which Councillor LeBlanc faces is has he made it clear he doesn't want incremental change. He’s made it clear in the media, he’s made it clear in the court, he’s made it clear in this council. That makes it very difficult for him to represent us on the Community and Social Impact board. Indeed, those volunteer members of that board might well feel a chilling effect about expressing any opinion that differs from the radical opinions that Coun. Leblanc will take to the board. And that’s wrong.”
Councillor Lori Bresciani pointed to LeBlanc’s actions in bringing forward the homeless motion at council in June, and then to use that motion against other councillors later on during deliberations.
“The word that keeps coming forward for me is trust,” said Bresciani.
“Right now I want to have the individual, whoever sits on there, that they will go in with an open mind, They will go in to look at all sides, and everyone sitting on that committee will have a voice and that voice will be heard, no matter where you sit no matter how you feel on certain issues… At this time, I don't believe LeBlanc is the right person for this committee.”
On the other side, LeBlanc had support from Councillor Stevens as well as several delegations who came to council to support LeBlanc’s appointment. The delegations made the point that they saw LeBlanc as uniquely qualified for the board’s mandate on social justice issues.
“Whose interests are being served by removing Councillor LeBlanc from this board? The people in the community or a more personal agenda?” said Carl Cherland, local Regina resident.
Stevens pointed out there had been “zero service requests” to council as a whole to remove LeBlanc, and that he had only heard condemnation of the motion. He wanted to know if any community or stakeholder groups had come forward questioning LeBlanc’s ability to represent the community, to which Mayor Masters replied “yes.” When asked if she would share that she responded “not even a little bit.”
She further expressed concerns that sharing the names might be a breach of confidentiality.
“The reason you haven't heard anyone come forward today is from people who feel horrible for our City Manager,” Masters said. “The reason they won't come forward is the social media frenzy that exists for opposing views. They don't want any of that unleashed.”
LeBlanc revealed during council that when he heard of the motion to reconsider he had thought of voluntarily resigning. But then he spoke to those in the community and those in the houselessness issue, and decided to stay on and fight.
“They said this was not about Mayor Masters retaliating against me in some sort of schoolyard tit for tat. This was about retaliation against them,” said LeBlanc. “How dare houseless folks and their allies come here in December and demand justice.”
LeBlanc also made the remark that “this council has been very patient with seeing people suffering.” That drew an outraged response from Hawkins, who said “nothing that I’ve heard in my decade on council can be as false as that statement.”
Councillor Cheryl Stadnichuk was one of the councillors on the fence about whether to keep LeBlanc on the committee. She spoke of wanting to give LeBlanc a second chance, but expressed a “really strong concern after the events in November and December.”
She believed trust had been broken from the legal action and wanted to know how it would be repaired. LeBlanc responded he believed “trust would be difficult to repair.”
“To my mind loss of trust should only or principally flow from some form of dishonesty and my view is I was not dishonest at all in this.”
“It’s not just about honesty or dishonesty — I do think tactics and how you bring people together really does matter,” was Stadnichuk’s reaction. In the end, she too voted to remove LeBlanc.
Mayor Masters had perhaps the strongest words against the actions of LeBlanc, but she also pointed to how LeBlanc had targeted Anderson during the court application. It was also noted that Anderson also attends the Community and Social Impact board, as administrative support.
Masters raised concerns about LeBlanc’s social media actions during the court action.
“In the middle of all of this, there were postings on councillor LeBlanc’s social media to ‘fight like hell.’ I would remind council that the person who he was fighting like hell against was our city manager, our sole employee.”
Masters also pointed to communications between Anderson and LeBlanc, which LeBlanc posted publicly. Masters noted Anderson had “every right to the expectation of privacy” in those communications.
“The fact that there was this attack on Niki Anderson, as an employee of ours, our sole employee is almost incomprehensible to me,” Masters said, as she went on to cite the potential impact of having LeBlanc on the board.
“Ask yourself to put yourself in Miss Anderson’s shoes when she shows up at the board meeting and Coun. LeBlanc is there. I’m going to suggest she feels intimidated, she felt harassed with the lawsuit, those are just my words. Now put yourselves in the shoes of a volunteer board.”
“Dishonesty is not the only value that undermines trust. How we treat people matters,” Masters summed up.
In speaking to reporters afterwards, Masters reiterated the need for trust with respect to who sits beside Anderson on the board representing council.
“We have to figure out how to show up in a trustworthy way, and not ‘if I don’t like what you say, I’ll do something first of unprecedented, and be showy’, in lack of a better word,” said Masters.
“Ms. Anderson deserves to feel like she has support when she shows up, because at the end of the day administration is the one supporting the CSIR board.”
In speaking afterwards to reporters following the final vote to remove him, LeBlanc said the decision was what he expected. He also did not appear to back down about his actions standing up for houselessness issues.
“You want to know what’s really rough? People live in tents in our city and die of fentanyl overdose in tents. And you know what’s even rougher? Some people are more mad that a couple of people are going to the wall to get those people out of tents into homes into treatment, than that people are living in tents. It seems like there was a real value on a sort of Victorian politeness rather than on substantive justice of getting folks, mostly Indigenous folks, out of the cold, out of the wet, into homes, into treatment. I think that's garbage. It's predictable, but it's predictable garbage," said LeBlanc.
With LeBlanc off the board, there is now a vacancy that council will need to fill. That will come at a later meeting of council.
