Governance Reform in Niagara

The Committee of the Whole meeting that took place on Thursday, February 26, 2026 was a lively one!

Thank you to everyone who attended in Chambers and/or the overflow room. We’ve filled Council Chambers several times over the years, and it’s always good to see this level of engagement.

A number of things happened on Thursday night. Some of them are captured in the videos below, some of them can be found by viewing the entire video of the meeting found here.

Some of you will know that I have long been a proponent of governance reform in Niagara. I campaigned on it in 2018 and in 2022.

In February and June of 2020, I brought motions to the Region that would have seen us engage in a fulsome governance review. The motion I brought, which was seconded by former Regional Councillor Barb Butters read as follows:

That the Office of the Regional Clerk be DIRECTED to form a citizen committee of 15 people, as representative as possible of the local area municipalities, and engage in a public consultation process;

That the citizen committee and public consultation process ADDRESS the following questions:

• Should the Regional Chair be directly elected by the citizens of Niagara or appointed by Regional Council?
• How many Regional Councillors should represent each municipality?
• If the number of Regional Councillors that represent each municipality is suggested to be different than it is currently, should the votes of Regional Councillors be weighted? If so, how should they be weighted?
• By which method should Regional Councillors be elected?
• What strategies are recommended to increase citizen engagement for and following elections?
• What strategies are recommended to get more people to consider running for elected office?
• What can be done to have Council be more reflective of the demographic make up of the Niagara region, e.g., gender, age, race/ethnicity, income status, etc.?

And that the citizen committee, with the results from the public consultation process, REPORT back to Corporate Services Committee by April 2021.

Among other things, the question of whether or not there are too many Regional Councillors would have been answered, and if the answer was to change the number of Regional Councillors, there would have been advice on how to manage votes.

This process could also have led us quite nicely into a discussion about governance changes throughout Niagara, but, alas, the motion was soundly defeated with only (former) Councillor Butters and I voting in favour of it.

(Note: This was the first time I heard Councillor Diodati give his impassioned “We Were Elected to Make Decisions, Not Ask the People” speech…which he gave again this past Thursday evening.)

Anyway…

I had planned to bring governance reform back to the table following the 2022 election, but then we were told by the province that we could not engage in these efforts ourselves.

Then, suddenly, governance reform is so urgent a situation for Niagara that on February 19, 2026, Bob Gale (newly-appointed Chair of the Region) unilaterally decreed that governance reform must happen now and sent a letter to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, a letter to the mayors of Niagara’s 12 local area municipalities, and did nothing to inform directly-elected Regional Councillors. You can read more about that and what the Chair’s proper role is here.

I found out about the letters from Councillor Siscoe (in his role as Mayor of St. Catharines), but – and let’s be perfectly clear here – while Bob Gale told Councillor Bateman that he neglected to send the correspondence to Regional Councillors because he left it to the mayors to send it to ‘their councillors,’ we are not – as Councillor Bateman very rightly pointed out – the mayor’s councillors. We are REGIONAL Councillors and equals to the Regional Councillors who happen to also be mayors. It is the Regional Chair’s job to communicate with Regional Councillors, no matter their other roles.

Over the last week, I’ve been doing my best to communicate via my social media everything we know about Bob Gale’s unilateral, unauthorized (by Council) decision to send these letters. You can read several posts to the Facebook page I use for Regional Council matters here.

Now, moving on.

Over the course of the last week, I encouraged residents to send their feedback to Bob Gale, copy me, and explicitly request of him that their correspondence be shared with the rest of Council. Many people did exactly this, but Bob did not follow through with what he should have done and did not send the correspondence to the Clerk’s Office for inclusion the agenda. So, I asked him about it:

Following that conversation, several people e-mailed me to advise that they had, in fact, received an acknowledgment of their e-mail from Bob Gale’s staff, so why would anyone play dumb here and say they weren’t aware of these requests for their correspondence to be included on the agenda.

At the end of the meeting, and after I forwarded many e-mails to Council, the Clerk confirmed that the e-mails would be on the agenda. After the fact…which isn’t good enough, but this also isn’t the Clerk’s fault, as the Chair, ultimately, sets the agenda (the Clerk’s Office does the technical work to prepare agendas, but doesn’t *set* them), and he failed to ensure the correspondence was added. You can view that exchange in this video:

With that administrative stuff out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the Committee of the Whole meeting.

There are a few things to note in the video excerpt below.

1. I ask Bob Gale about data to back up his assertion (made to Niagara-on-the-Lake Town Council) that an eight-member Council is the most effective, and he answers that it is his personal opinion.
2. I cite more than a dozen white papers and journal articles about the failure that is municipal amalgamation, and ask him the following question:
   • “Now that you know all of this, Chair, are you willing to commit to take the steps necessary to appropriately educate yourself and your staff and properly study a major decision that could have a deleterious effect on hundreds of thousands of people for generations? Just a yes or no is fine, as I know you’re very concerned about our time this evening.”
3. Rather than answer the direct question, Bob Gale’s Chief of Staff hands him a written script and Bob Gale begins reading a number of things that do not at all answer my question.
4. I try to bring the discussion back to answering my question.
5. Bob Gale tells me “you can’t stop me on this, this is my answer to your question.”
6. I tell him it’s not an answer to my question, because this is not the question I asked him.
7. He tells me “I’m going to overrule you” and insists on going on.
8. I sit back from my desk.
9. Bob Gale leans over and whispers to his Chief of Staff, “costs.”
10. While we are waiting for Nick to come up with the correct script, Councillor Badawey asks me who that person is, and I advise that it’s his Chief of Staff.
11. One of my colleagues encourage me to say it into the mic.
12. I return to my mic and call out a politically-appointed staffer sitting at the horseshoe with the Chair (because this has *never* happened before — not under Bradley, not under Caslin, not under Zimmerman, etc.).
13. Bob Gale confirms that Nick is not politically impartial (which is the issue), then tells us he “worded that wrong.”
14. Then, Bob Gale tells me “you’re not going to listen to any answers we give, you just want to give a sermon, so we’re good” (please note the “we” in what he said there).
15. I reiterate that I want him to answer the question I asked.
16. He tells me his staff and he are educated.

After several other directly-elected Regional Councillors said their piece about how inappropriate the Chair’s actions are (including Councillor Bateman asking a question that led to Bob Gale saying “I was instructed to”…more on that later), Councillor Redekop and I brought forward the following amendment to the motion:

Councillor Redekop picked up Councillor Bateman’s thread about Bob Gale being “instructed” by the province and introduced the amendment (you’ll hear this in the video below).

Bob Gale doesn’t understand how Council direction works, so he challenges that that second resolution might not be “legal” and asks our Director of Legal Services for advice. She confirms that it is, of course, legal and offers that Council takes actions like this (directing the Regional Chair) on a regular basis.

I spoke very briefly to the amendment and then Councillor Steele called the question.

For clarification on procedure, when a Councillor calls the question, if there are still speakers on the list, we vote on whether or not to call the vote (the question) or to proceed with debate. A motion to call the question isn’t, itself, debatable.

We had an electronic vote to call the question. Some people voted ‘no’ to calling the question. Some people were out of the room and, when you’re away from your desk and you haven’t signed off (which happens to many of us when we step out to use the facilities, for instance), your vote automatically comes up as a ‘no.’

The motion to call the question passed and then there was a request to vote on each of the three resolutions in the amendment separately. These votes are only to agree (or not) for the amendment to become part of the final motion.

The votes on the amended items were as follows:

1. That a governance review of Niagara BE INITIATED to address areas of duplication and improve service efficiency based on data, a business case with financial analysis and public consultation, including local area municipalities, commencing this term of Council;

RECORDED VOTE
Badawey – yes
Bateman – yes
Campion – no
Chiocchio – yes
Craitor – yes
Diodati – no
Easton – no
Foster – yes
Gale – doesn’t vote
Ganann – yes
Grant – yes
Greenwood – no
Heit – yes
Insinna – no
Ip – yes
Jordan – yes
Junkin – yes
Kaiser – yes
Morocco – regrets
Olson – yes
Redekop – yes
Rigby – yes
Seaborn – yes
Secord – no
Siscoe – not in room
Sorrento – no
Steele – yes
Ugulini – yes
Villella – yes
Whalen – yes
Witteveen – yes
Zalepa – yes

2. That Regional Council DIRECTS Regional Chair Gale to refrain from any further action and utilization of any further Regional resources or staff time, with the exception of the above, in connection with a review of Regional governance or municipal amalgamation; and

RECORDED VOTE
Badawey – yes
Bateman – yes
Campion – no
Chiocchio – yes
Craitor – no
Diodati – no
Easton – no
Foster – no
Gale – doesn’t vote
Ganann – yes
Grant – no
Greenwood – no
Heit – yes
Insinna – no
Ip – yes
Jordan – yes
Junkin – yes
Kaiser – yes
Morocco – regrets
Olson – no
Redekop – yes
Rigby – no
Seaborn – yes
Secord – no
Siscoe – not in room
Sorrento – no
Steele – yes
Ugulini – yes
Villella – yes
Whalen – yes
Witteveen – yes
Zalepa – yes

3. That this resolution and amendment BE FORWARDED to the Premier and the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

RECORDED VOTE
Badawey – yes
Bateman – yes
Campion – no
Chiocchio – yes
Craitor – yes
Diodati – no
Easton – yes
Foster – yes
Gale – doesn’t vote
Ganann – yes
Grant – yes
Greenwood – no
Heit – yes
Insinna – yes
Ip – yes
Jordan – yes
Junkin – yes
Kaiser – yes
Morocco – regrets
Olson – yes
Redekop – yes
Rigby – yes
Seaborn – yes
Secord – yes
Siscoe – not in room
Sorrento – no
Steele – yes
Ugulini – yes
Villella – yes
Whalen – yes
Witteveen – yes
Zalepa – yes

Some people have been very concerned about Councillor Siscoe not being in the room. I will tell you that he didn’t know we were bringing this amendment and his brief absence from the room had nothing to do with whether or not he cared to vote on the amendment. He was back in the room for the final vote on the amended motion (the much more important vote on this).

The final vote on the motion was:
Badawey – yes
Bateman – yes
Campion – no
Chiocchio – yes
Craitor – no
Diodati – no
Easton – no
Foster – yes
Gale – doesn’t vote
Ganann – yes
Grant – yes
Greenwood – no
Heit – yes
Insinna – no
Ip – yes
Jordan – yes
Junkin – yes
Kaiser – yes
Morocco – regrets
Olson – yes
Redekop – yes
Rigby – yes
Seaborn – yes
Secord – no
Siscoe – no
Sorrento – no
Steele – yes
Ugulini – yes
Villella – yes
Whalen – yes
Witteveen – yes
Zalepa – yes

So, Niagara Region is moving ahead with undertaking a governance review and determining the best way to proceed in this regard. The review will be evidence-based and include public consultation.

The other important part of this motion is that Bob Gale cannot pursue governance reform on his own. He is not to use any Regional resources or staff time to pursue this matter without the direction of Council, except in the pursuit of what Council has directed in the first resolution of this motion.

This second clause is important, because while Bog Gale has been running around to local area municipality council meetings telling them this was all his idea, he’s also slipped(?) twice and told Niagara-on-the-Lake Town Council that he has been “tasked” with this (then, immediately denied saying that and went so far as to say he wouldn’t speak that way) and then told Niagara Regional Council (in response to questions from Councillor Bateman) that he has been “instructed” by the province.

So, we don’t know which story is true. Was this all his idea? Doubtful. Or is he acting on behalf the province without Council’s knowledge?

Regardless, the Chair acts on behalf of/at the direction of Council, not alone.

While my time as an elected official is coming to an end (I will not be seeking re-election), I will do my best to keep Niagara residents informed on this matter.