After publicly feuding with Haldimand County’s integrity commissioner last year, Independent MPP Bobbi Ann Brady now wants the Ford government to do away with integrity commissioners provincewide, saying the municipal ethics watchdogs are a waste of money.
Integrity commissioners investigate allegations of wrongdoing by members of council and local boards. Having an outside expert lead those investigations is intended to make the process impartial.
But Brady alleges some commissioners write biased reports as part of a “problematic process” that is “weaponized” against politicians.
“We’ve seen this locally. There’s no consistency,” Brady said, arguing commissioners’ findings and recommended penalties “depend on who’s being investigated (and) who they choose to interrogate.”
Brady recently tabled a motion at Queen’s Park that would amend the Municipal Act to “remove costly duplication within municipalities” by eliminating the integrity commissioner position altogether.
Instead, Brady said, municipal staff such as the clerk or chief administrative officer could look into complaints about council members breaching their code of ethics.
“I’m a taxpayer too, and I sure as hell don’t like seeing reports come in at $40,000 and the taxpayer being hosed on, sometimes, a witch hunt,” Brady told The Spectator. “Put it in the hands of people we are already paying and there’s a huge savings.”
But it is unclear how senior civil servants would feel empowered to investigate council members without fearing professional reprisal, given mayors with strong-mayor powers can unilaterally fire CAOs, as happened in Haldimand last year.
‘Editorializing’ or sticking to ‘pure facts?’
Brady’s issue with Toronto lawyer David Boghosian, who serves as integrity commissioner for both municipalities in her riding, dates to last year, when the MPP refused to meet with Boghosian during his investigation into a leak of confidential documents in Haldimand.
Boghosian eventually found Haldimand Mayor Shelley Ann Bentley responsible for leaking the documents with what he called the “obvious intention” of influencing the 2025 provincial election by “discrediting” Brady’s main rival, Progressive Conservative candidate Amy Martin.
Bentley continues to deny that accusation, but Haldimand councillors voted to accept Boghosian’s recommendation to fine the mayor four months’ pay.
In his report, the integrity commissioner said Brady’s decision to duck his questions was “disappointing,” which prompted Brady to accuse Boghosian of “editorializing” instead of sticking to the “pure facts.”
In an email to The Spectator, Boghosian noted “there is a currently full-scale review of the municipal integrity system ongoing in the province which MPP Brady may not be aware of.”
The goal of the review, he explained, is to “come up with a standardized code of conduct for all municipalities in Ontario and a generally improved integrity commissioner regime.”
“For that reason, I will not be commenting on the views of MPP Brady,” Boghosian said, inviting Brady to contribute to the review process “rather than simply arguing her case in the media.”
Brady also accused some integrity commissioners of slanting reports to please the majority “voting bloc” on municipal councils in order to keep their jobs.
Boghosian, who is the integrity commissioner for Hamilton and more than a dozen other municipalities, did not address that accusation in his email. But at a public meeting in Haldimand last fall, he called it “absurd” that he would cater the content or timing of his reports “for some political purpose.”
“To suggest that I would go out of my way to interfere in politics in Haldimand County is, quite frankly, baseless attacks,” he said.
By J.P. Antonacci, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on May 20, 2026 at 09:50
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