Saanich Mayor Frank Leonard has been taking some big hits in recent days, and it’s all over the S-word: Sewage.
Specifically, it has to do with his role on the Capital Regional District’s sewage committee — formally known as the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee — whether he has adequately disclosed potential conflicts of interest and served his community.
The criticism from Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins and Saanich mayoral rival Richard Atwell doesn’t approach the animosity Leonard faced years ago by supporting the now-established blue box recycling program and 911, he said.
The difference is that they are focusing on the thing most important to him: His personal integrity. “To have a debate on my personal integrity when, in fact, I’ve gone over and above what’s required by law, so that indeed my integrity isn’t being challenged, it seems like I’m being attacked for the sake of being attacked.”
Desjardins said she will call for clarification of conflict of interest policies at the CRD at her “earliest opportunity” to prevent the kind of mix-up that saw her accusing Leonard of not being sufficiently upfront about his son’s position with a company that may bid on sewage-treatment projects in the capital region.
The issue arose after Leonard told a Prospect Lake all-candidates meeting that he did not attend meetings of the CRD sewage committee in order to avoid a conflict of interest. His son is a Vancouver manager with Worley Parsons, an international engineering firm that employees 35,000 people.
Desjardins, who initially issued a statement characterizing the revelation as a “previously undisclosed conflict of interest,” has since accepted Leonard’s explanation that he told the CRD about his son’s job six years ago.
“Why the mayor of Esquimalt doesn’t recall my declarations I cannot explain,” Leonard told the Times Colonist, “but she certainly could have asked for a reminder — we see each other at meetings every week and have lunch almost once a month.”
The Esquimalt mayor said she regrets not just asking Leonard for an explanation, but said she was facing questions from constituents already mistrustful of the CRD when it comes to sewage.
Leonard is “a man of integrity” Desjardins said. “There is absolutely no question about that.”
But it’s not enough for potential conflicts of interest to be disclosed only once, she said. Many people on the CRD board weren’t members six years ago, and the coming municipal elections may increase that number.
At other regulatory meetings she attends, the request for conflicts is made at every meeting, so all members get the message all the time.
Leonard points out that he wasn’t at the meetings — he said he sent other Saanich councillors in his place to avoid even the appearance of a potential conflict — so there is no way he could have made such an announcement.
He said the decision to send a substitute was made due to the potential conflicts around his son’s job and his own position as a trustee of the Municipal Pension Board, where he is involved in the investment of pension funds. B.C.’s public pensions have a large ownership in Corix — another firm that might bid for some of the sewage projects.
But not being at the meetings is the basis for Atwell’s criticism of Leonard.
In a statement released Saturday, Atwell charged the mayor with “failing Saanich residents” after missing 102 sewage committee meetings, then voting on the recommendations of the committee in his capacity as a CRD board member a few hours later. (The sewage committee has 16 members, all of whom also sit on the 24-member CRD board.)
In doing so, Leonard missed “all of the important morning discussion and debate and all of the public commentary and public concern, and voted at the afternoon CRD board meeting in the absence of this information,” Atwell said, adding this contradicts Leonard’s reasoning for skipping meetings to avoid “any perception of conflict.”
Normal practice for CRD directors is to declare any conflict of interest ahead of any vote that may benefit a director directly or indirectly and to recuse themselves for the duration of only that item on the agenda, he said.
Atwell pointed out that procurement for the sewage project has been done by the arm’s-length Seaterra Commission since March 2013, thus insulating CRD directors from conflict of interest. Since then, he said, Leonard has missed 22 out of 23 sewage committee meetings, yet voted as a CRD director on the items discussed at the sewage committee.
Leonard, who sits on a number of CRD committees, said he is briefed by the five Saanich councillors who are on the sewage committee before voting. “I have very much contributed at the CRD. I think my colleagues respect my contribution there.”
He said Atwell, a sewage-treatment activist, has frequently criticized him for supporting a regional plan for secondary treatment.
“It’s fair game to criticize me for voting for the plan — I did — but … it isn’t fair to say that I haven’t represented the people of Saanich,” Leonard said. “I’ve simply just avoided anything to do with where the purchasing might be discussed.”
At the CRD board, Leonard has excused himself from two votes in which his son’s firm was awarded two small contracts — even though his son works in Vancouver and “has no involvement now or potentially with CRD projects.”
“I decided that the safest way to never be accused of even having an appearance of a conflict was by not serving on the committee and asking my alternate to serve,” Leonard said.
Desjardins, who sits on the sewage committee, declined to comment on Atwell’s allegations. “Whatever happens in Saanich, happens in Saanich.”
