A London city councillor is facing a 30-day pay suspension for a social media post quoting the deputy city manager and expressing concern with her city’s homelessness and encampment crisis.
Coun. Susan Stevenson, who is serving her first term on London’s city council, was the subject of a complaint made to the city’s integrity commissioner after she published a post on X (formerly Twitter) in which she quoted a comment deputy city manager Kevin Dickins made in a council meeting calling homeless encampments part of the “fabric” of communities.
“The encampment strategy is a long-term vision for our community on how we address encampments. They are here to stay. They are the fabric of every municipality now. What is our strategy to support them and address them?” Dickins had said in the meeting.
The quote was added to a CTV News London article that Stevenson linked to and quoted on X, adding emojis to signal her disapproval.
Stevenson has been a frequent critic of the city’s approach to addressing London’s homelessness crisis, often voicing her opposition to city plans and questioning city employees responsible for administering these plans.
After Stevenson quoted the deputy city manager on social media, Dickins filed a complaint to the integrity commissioner alleging that Stevenson was harassing him by persistently challenging him on the city’s approach to the homelessness crisis and by publicly disparaging him on social media.
After a months-long investigation, the integrity commissioner concluded that Stevenson had indeed harassed Dickins and that she ought to be punished with a 30-day pay suspension for the violation.
The integrity commissioner’s report specifically states that Stevenson editorialized Dickins’ quote by adding “provocative” emojis and unnecessarily included Dickins’ name in the post, amounting to public criticism and disparagement of the city employee.
The report also states that while Stevenson’s “words and tone may be moderated and sound respectful,” the “staff experience these statements” as “unfair and disrespectful.”
In an appearance on True North’s the Faulkner Show, Stevenson said she was merely attempting to advocate on behalf of the interests of her constituents and was not harassing anyone.
“This is an elected city councillor representing the dire needs of her constituents. And civic administration is saying that me advocating for my residents is harassment,” said Stevenson.
“Now we’ve got civic administration saying that I’m bullying and harassing even though the integrity commissioner says in the report my tone and words are moderated and I sound respectful but it’s being experienced as harassment and so they’re finding it to be a serious breach of the code.”
Stevenson announced this week that she would be seeking the federal Conservative Party of Canada nomination for London Centre, a riding currently held by the Liberals under the previous electoral map.