This bill amends the City of Toronto Act, 2006 and the Municipal Act, 2001 to reframe how municipal codes of conduct are prescribed and enforced. It introduces a formal role for the provincial Integrity Commissioner (the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario) to provide training and advice to local integrity commissioners, receive recommendations from them, and conduct its own inquiries where removal of an elected member’s seat is recommended.
The change creates a two-tier enforcement track: a local commissioner conducts an initial inquiry and may recommend that the provincial Integrity Commissioner determine whether a member’s seat should be declared vacant. If the provincial Integrity Commissioner supports removal, the municipal council must vote on the recommendation within a short statutory window; approval removes the member and triggers a multi-year disqualification.
The bill centralizes standards and raises the stakes for serious code breaches, with regulatory detail delegated to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill gives the Lieutenant Governor in Council power to prescribe municipal codes of conduct, requires local integrity commissioners to take provincially prescribed training, and creates a formal referral path from a local commissioner to the provincial Integrity Commissioner when a local inquiry finds a serious contravention. The provincial Integrity Commissioner must then hold an inquiry and either refer the matter back or report to council recommending the member’s seat be declared vacant.
Who It Affects
Municipal councils, local boards and their integrity commissioners across Ontario, the Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario, municipal clerks (who must call mandatory council meetings), and any municipal member subject to an ethics inquiry. The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing gains broad regulatory authority to set standards and procedures.
Why It Matters
The bill nationalizes aspects of municipal ethics by creating province-level oversight, standardizing training, and supplying a mechanism to remove elected members for serious misconduct. That raises compliance obligations for municipalities, concentrates investigatory authority at the provincial level, and changes political and legal risk for councillors.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Municipal Accountability Act rewrites how municipal codes of conduct are defined and enforced. It replaces local definitions of “code of conduct” with codes prescribed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council, and invalidates existing municipal codes created under the prior language.
The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing receives expanded regulatory authority to set content, process and training standards for those codes and for local integrity commissioners.
The bill formalizes a supervisory role for the provincial Integrity Commissioner. That office must advise municipalities on the independence of proposed local commissioners, deliver the training the regulations require, report on whether a local commissioner has completed that training, and conduct inquiries when a local commissioner asks it to consider a seat-vacancy recommendation.
The bill also shields information gathered by the provincial Integrity Commissioner from disclosure, explicitly subordinating FOI to the secrecy requirements in certain respects.After a local commissioner completes an inquiry under the municipal Acts, they may recommend to the provincial Integrity Commissioner that the member’s seat be declared vacant—but only if specific criteria are met (the member breached the code, the breach is serious, it caused harm to health/safety/well‑being, and ordinary penalties are insufficient). The provincial Integrity Commissioner must then carry out its own inquiry to determine whether those criteria are met; it may use certain powers under the Public Inquiries Act.
If the provincial Integrity Commissioner finds the criteria are met, it reports to council recommending the seat be declared vacant; if not, it refers the matter back to the local commissioner for consideration of local penalties.Where the provincial Integrity Commissioner does recommend vacancy, the municipal clerk must call a council meeting and the council must vote within 30 days. The recommendation is approved only if every council member who is eligible to vote (excluding the member under inquiry, absent members properly excused, and members with prohibited pecuniary interests) votes in favour—effectively requiring unanimous support among eligible voters.
The member under inquiry may speak to the council but cannot vote. If council approves, the seat is vacated and the removed person is disqualified from holding municipal office or serving on local boards for four years.
The bill also builds in procedural limits (no recommendation during the regular election nomination-to-vote period and a six-year limitation from the date of the contravention) and transitional/regulatory powers to manage implementation.
The Five Things You Need to Know
A local integrity commissioner can recommend that the provincial Integrity Commissioner consider declaring a municipal member’s seat vacant only if the member contravened the code of conduct, the contravention is serious, it caused harm to health/safety/well‑being, and ordinary penalties are inadequate.
If the provincial Integrity Commissioner recommends vacancy to council, the clerk must call a meeting and council must vote within 30 days; approval requires all eligible voting members to vote in favour (the member under inquiry may participate in debate but not vote).
A successful approval removes the member and disqualifies them from holding municipal office or serving on local boards for four years beginning when the seat is declared vacant.
The bill bars local commissioners from making a vacancy recommendation during the municipal election nomination-to-voting period and prohibits any vacancy recommendation later than six years after the contravention.
The provincial Integrity Commissioner’s secrecy obligation is explicit and stated to prevail over the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for information obtained in carrying out these functions.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Redefines 'code of conduct' and centralizes rule-making
The bill replaces local definitions of “code of conduct” with a single definition tied to codes prescribed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council. It also voids codes previously established under the old language, forcing municipalities (including Toronto) to operate under the provincially prescribed framework once regulations are made. Practically, this shifts content-setting power from individual municipalities to provincial regulations and starts a transitional clock for local governments to align with whatever standards the province prescribes.
Provincial Integrity Commissioner: advisory, training and investigatory role
The Acts add a formal list of functions for the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario: advise municipalities about candidate independence for local commissioner appointments, provide prescribed education and training to local commissioners, report on training status, and conduct inquiries when requested. The ministry can regulate training content and reporting requirements. The provision also imposes a confidentiality obligation on the provincial office and states that secrecy prevails over FOI legislation for those matters.
Local commissioner may recommend a seat vacancy — defined criteria and timing limits
After finishing a local inquiry, a local commissioner may recommend that the provincial Integrity Commissioner consider vacating a member’s seat only if four statutory criteria are met (contravention, seriousness, harm to health/safety/well‑being, and insufficiency of local penalties). The bill prohibits recommendations during the municipal election nomination-to-vote period and forbids recommendations made more than six years after the contravention, inserting clear temporal and substantive gates on that extraordinary remedy.
Provincial inquiry process and possible outcomes
On receiving a vacancy recommendation, the provincial Integrity Commissioner must conduct an inquiry to determine whether the statutory criteria are met. The provincial Commissioner can elect to use powers under sections 33 and 34 of the Public Inquiries Act, 2009. At completion the provincial Commissioner either refers the matter back to the local commissioner (so local penalties can be imposed) or reports to council recommending vacancy; the bill also requires termination of unfinished provincial inquiries at the start of the election period, with a limited restart window after voting day if the local commissioner requests it.
Council vote mechanics and consequences of approval
Once the provincial Integrity Commissioner recommends vacancy, the municipal clerk must convene council within 30 days for a vote. Approval requires all eligible voting members to vote in favour; excluded members include the member under inquiry, certain absent members and anyone with a pecuniary conflict under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. If approved, the seat is declared vacant and the member is disqualified from municipal office and local boards for four years; if not approved, the seat remains and the municipality cannot impose the statutory removal penalties laid out in the Acts for that contravention.
Regulatory powers, refusal grounds and transitional rules
The Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (and in some cases the Minister generally) can make broad regulations: setting training standards, prescribing what local boards are captured, defining complaint processes, establishing content and process requirements for inquiries and reports, and governing transitional matters. The bill also gives local commissioners discretion to refuse frivolous, vexatious or bad‑faith complaints and supplies mechanisms to manage implementation sequencing when prior local codes are voided.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Municipal residents and complainants: gain a clearer, province‑level review mechanism for the most serious code breaches, increasing the chance that serious misconduct leads to a meaningful remedy beyond local penalties.
- Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario: acquires a defined supervisory and investigatory role, including training responsibilities and a new mandate that raises the office’s influence and institutional importance.
- Local integrity commissioners: receive provincially prescribed training and guidance, professionalizing the role and giving them a clear escalation path for matters viewed as beyond local remedies.
- Municipal clerks: receive statutory clarity to call mandatory council meetings and to manage a short, defined process for high‑stakes votes, which standardizes administrative response across municipalities.
- Victims and persons harmed by councillors’ conduct: the statutory criteria explicitly reference harm to health, safety or well‑being, creating a legal hook for escalation when misconduct has tangible personal impacts.
Who Bears the Cost
- Municipal councils and taxpayers: face additional administrative and legal costs (training, recordkeeping, council meetings, potential litigation) and the political cost of unilateral provincial standards replacing locally negotiated rules.
- Municipal members and candidates: face heightened removal risk and a four‑year disqualification exposure if a provincial inquiry and a council vote both find against them; the new process also increases reputational risk during investigation and debate.
- Office of the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario: must commit resources to training, reporting and potentially resource‑intensive inquiries (including optional use of Public Inquiries Act powers), creating capacity and resourcing pressures at the provincial level.
- Local integrity commissioners: while they gain training and backup, they also take on procedural obligations (reporting, escalating recommendations) and may see more complex matters pushed to the provincial level.
- The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing: gains extensive regulatory drafting and implementation obligations that will require policy work, stakeholder consultation and oversight of transitional arrangements.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill attempts to strengthen accountability by centralizing standards and creating a provincial check on serious municipal misconduct, but it does so by limiting local autonomy and concentrating decision-making authority at the provincial level—setting up a direct trade-off between consistent, potentially tougher enforcement and the democratic primacy of local councils to govern and discipline their own members.
The bill trades municipal autonomy for provincial consistency, but it leaves several operational gaps that will fall to regulation and discretionary interpretation. Key terms—"serious nature," "harm to the health, safety or well‑being," and when penalties are "insufficient"—are left undefined, meaning the provincial regulations and the Integrity Commissioner’s discretion will determine how often vacancy recommendations are plausible.
That creates a risk that similar facts will yield different outcomes across cases and over time.
Procedurally, the requirement that council approval must be unanimous among eligible voters (an effective unanimity rule) concentrates power in small majorities and creates incentives for political brinkmanship: a single recalcitrant councillor can block removal even where the provincial office supports it. At the same time, imposing secrecy that prevails over FOI for provincial inquiries reduces transparency for complainants and the public, potentially undermining the accountability the bill aims to strengthen.
Finally, resourcing is an implementation risk—both at the provincial Integrity Commissioner’s office, which absorbs a new investigatory burden, and at municipalities required to deliver or track training and run additional procedural steps.
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