Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of procedural fairness owed in Integrity Commissioner investigations and at City Council when imposing sanctions on a municipal councillor.
• Adequacy and reasonableness of the Integrity Commissioner’s factual findings that several statements made at a town hall were “categorically false,” misleading, or deliberate misrepresentations.
• Treatment and admissibility of evidence on judicial review, including exclusion of materials not before the Integrity Commissioner or City Council, particularly where alleged to relate to procedural fairness.
• Allegations of bias against the Mayor and Integrity Commissioner, and the requirement that such bias claims be raised before the original decision-makers to preserve them for judicial review.
• Charter challenges under ss. 2(b) and 15 to a 90-day suspension of pay, and whether false or deliberately misleading speech about City staff and policies is protected to a degree that outweighs Code of Conduct objectives.
• Proportionality and deterrence in sanctioning an elected official under a municipal Code of Conduct, especially where there is a history of prior Integrity Commissioner reports and sanctions.

Background and facts of the case

Lisa Robinson was an elected municipal councillor for the City of Pickering. She held a town hall meeting on November 28, 2024, at a City-owned community centre, where she addressed residents about various municipal issues and City practices. Following this meeting, the City’s Chief Administrative Officer filed a formal complaint to the Integrity Commissioner. The complaint alleged that Councillor Robinson had made several statements about the City that were “flagrantly misleading or categorically false,” and that she mishandled attendees’ personal information in a way that exposed the City to potential privacy breaches. The Integrity Commissioner investigated and issued a recommendation report dated June 16, 2025. The report identified multiple problematic statements made by Robinson at the town hall. First, she asserted that the City had increased fees for Trespass Notices to $650, when in reality there was no fee associated with issuing a Trespass Notice. Second, she made statements about the City’s reliance on surveys that the Commissioner characterized as “categorically false.” Third, she claimed the City had spent over $20 million on consultants in 2024, which the Commissioner also found to be “categorically false.” Fourth, she provided an explanation of the City Council’s gift policy that the Commissioner concluded “deliberately misrepresented” the policy. Finally, she circulated a sign-in sheet to attendees that collected personal information without proper disclosure to ensure informed consent and without engaging City staff to ensure secure custody of the information. This raised concerns that the City had been exposed to a potential breach of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Code of conduct framework and findings

The City of Pickering’s Code of Conduct is enacted under the Municipal Act, 2001. It sets standards for the conduct of members of Council, including how they communicate with the public, how they treat City staff, and how they handle confidential or personal information. The Integrity Commissioner found that Robinson’s conduct at the town hall breached the Code of Conduct on several fronts. Her inaccurate and misleading statements undermined public trust in the City and disparaged City staff. Her handling of the sign-in sheet, without proper disclosure and safeguards, created a risk of non-compliance with municipal privacy legislation. In the Commissioner’s view, this was not a matter of simple misunderstanding. The report concluded that Robinson’s conduct was “intentional, with the goal of discrediting and disparaging City staff, and casting doubt on and undermining the public’s trust and confidence in the City as a whole.” This finding of intent and purpose was central to the Commissioner’s assessment of both misconduct and appropriate sanction. The report also noted that this was the fifth time the Integrity Commissioner had had to report publicly on complaints about Robinson’s conduct. In each prior case, City Council had imposed suspensions of pay. This history weighed heavily in the sanction recommendation, particularly on the principle of deterrence.

Sanction decision by city council

The Integrity Commissioner recommended that Robinson be sanctioned by a 90-day suspension of her pay as a councillor. Deterrence and escalation of sanction in light of her prior history were key considerations. On June 23, 2025, the report was presented to City Council. Council debated the matter, with Robinson having the opportunity to ask questions of the Commissioner and make submissions during the meeting. In the end, Council passed a resolution adopting the report in full and imposing the recommended 90-day suspension of pay. Under the Code of Conduct, s. 18.04 provides that the factual determinations in the Integrity Commissioner’s report are “final and binding” on City Council. Under s. 223.4(5) of the Municipal Act, Council’s role is limited to deciding the appropriate sanction, not reopening the factual findings or the Commissioner’s investigative conclusions. This division of roles later became an important point in the Divisional Court’s assessment of procedural fairness and the applicant’s ability to challenge the factual basis of the report.

Judicial review application and late filing

Robinson applied to the Ontario Divisional Court for judicial review of Council’s sanction decision. She sought to quash the 90-day pay suspension on several grounds: alleged breaches of procedural fairness, alleged bias on the part of the Mayor and the Integrity Commissioner, and alleged violations of her Charter rights under sections 2(b) (freedom of expression) and 15 (equality). The application was filed slightly outside the 30-day time limit prescribed by the Judicial Review Procedure Act. Robinson was about two weeks late in commencing her application. The City did not oppose an extension of time. The Divisional Court, exercising its discretion, granted leave for the application to proceed despite the delay, treating it as a preliminary point that did not warrant dismissing the case outright on timeliness alone.

Evidentiary record and inadmissible material

On judicial review, Robinson attempted to rely on various materials that had not been before the Integrity Commissioner or City Council. The City objected, arguing that this material was not properly part of the record. In judicial review, the starting point is that the record is confined to what was before the decision-maker. There are recognized exceptions, including when new evidence is needed to assess alleged breaches of procedural fairness that could not reasonably have been raised earlier. Robinson did not dispute that much of her material had not been provided to the Commissioner or Council, and she did not offer a persuasive justification why it should nonetheless be admitted. She claimed some of the new material related to procedural fairness, but the court found she had not demonstrated that it met the exception for evidence that could not have been raised before the decision-makers. As a result, the additional materials she tendered were not admitted. The court emphasized that its role was to review the specific decisions and the record that properly underpinned them, not to entertain a broader narrative based on documents or allegations not previously put before the Integrity Commissioner or City Council.

Procedural fairness and opportunity to respond

Robinson alleged that the process before the Integrity Commissioner and Council was procedurally unfair. She said she had not been given a proper opportunity to respond to the allegations or to the Commissioner’s preliminary findings. The court rejected these allegations. The record showed that she had been formally notified of the complaint, given the opportunity to respond to the allegations, and that the Commissioner’s report reflected and addressed her responses on the points she did make. As for the preliminary findings stage, the Integrity Commissioner had invited her to provide further submissions and followed up when he received no response. Robinson told the court she had sent a June 6, 2025 email with her response. However, the Commissioner stated at Council that he never received any such submission, and the court found that the screenshot Robinson relied on did not conclusively show that a substantive message was sent, or what it contained. The court considered that ongoing email communications from the Commissioner should have made it clear to Robinson that no June 6 submissions had been received, yet she did not resend or otherwise confirm delivery. On this basis, the court found that she had had several opportunities to submit her comments and simply failed to do so. At the Council meeting, the court reviewed the transcript and concluded that Robinson was allowed to question the Integrity Commissioner and make submissions during the debate on sanction. However, she was prevented from revisiting the factual determinations in the report. This was not unfair, the court held, because s. 18.04 of the Code of Conduct makes the Commissioner’s factual determinations “final and binding” on Council, and the Municipal Act limits Council’s role to determining the appropriate sanction. Her opportunity to contest factual findings lay at the investigative stage, not at the sanction hearing.

Bias allegations against the mayor and integrity commissioner

Robinson further alleged that both the Mayor and the Integrity Commissioner were biased against her. She pointed out, for example, that the Mayor had allegedly initiated or supported previous complaints about her and had allegedly admitted to being biased, and that the Integrity Commissioner had recommended multiple previous sanctions. The Divisional Court did not accept these bias claims. Critically, Robinson had not raised bias as an issue in the underlying proceedings before the Integrity Commissioner or before Council. She did not ask the Mayor to recuse himself or invite either decision-maker to rule on their own alleged bias. The court held that a party generally cannot raise bias for the first time on judicial review when they could have and should have raised it before the decision-makers, giving them a chance to address or correct the situation. Moreover, much of the material Robinson relied on for her bias allegations was either not properly admitted or not before the court at all. The court emphasized that simply having previously alleged bias in other contexts, or having a history of prior complaints and sanctions, is not the same as properly bringing a recusal or bias motion in the proceedings under review. This reasoning mirrored the court’s earlier approach in Robinson’s prior unsuccessful judicial review, where similar bias allegations had been advanced and rejected.

Assessment of factual findings and standard of review

On the substance of the Integrity Commissioner’s findings, Robinson argued that the conclusions about her town hall statements being false, misleading, or deliberate misrepresentations were unreasonable. The Divisional Court approached this through the lens of reasonableness review, giving deference to the administrative decision-maker’s factual determinations. Citing the Supreme Court’s guidance in Vavilov, the court noted that a reviewing court should not interfere with factual findings absent exceptional circumstances, such as where findings are clearly unsupported by the record or fundamentally irrational. The court concluded that the Integrity Commissioner had clearly explained the basis for each factual finding, and those findings were available on the record. Robinson’s disagreement with the outcome did not show that the Commissioner’s reasoning or conclusions were unreasonable. As a result, her challenges to the factual findings were dismissed, and the Integrity Commissioner’s core determinations of intentional misconduct and misrepresentation stood intact.

Charter arguments under sections 2(b) and 15

Robinson also argued that the 90-day pay suspension infringed her Charter rights. Under s. 2(b), she claimed the sanction punished her for communicating with her constituents and exposing municipal issues, and that the response was not a proportionate limit under s. 1. Under s. 15, she argued she was uniquely targeted and that loss of pay had a disproportionate impact because she is a single mother. She also mentioned s. 7 in oral submissions, but this ground had not been pleaded in her notice of application or argued in her written factum, so the court held that s. 7 could not be raised at that stage. The court gave these Charter arguments little weight for both procedural and substantive reasons. Procedurally, Robinson did not raise any Charter arguments before the Integrity Commissioner, despite being invited twice to make submissions and despite already knowing, from an earlier judicial review, that Charter issues were expected to be raised at the administrative level first. Her written submissions in court were also very brief: only a few lines for s. 2(b) and s. 15. In relation to s. 15, Robinson provided no evidence and no concrete analysis to establish a discrimination claim or show that she was treated differently based on a protected or analogous ground in a manner that engaged substantive equality. The court therefore dismissed the s. 15 claim outright. For s. 2(b), the court observed that an administrative decision-maker may, in some circumstances, need to identify Charter dimensions even when not expressly raised, but a proper Charter analysis is impossible where the claim is essentially undeveloped and where no evidentiary record was created. Substantively, the court noted that Robinson’s approach to s. 2(b) suggested she viewed her expressive rights as absolute, with no room for balancing against the statutory objectives of the Code of Conduct. The Commissioner had not explicitly conducted a Charter analysis because no Charter issue was put to him, but the tenor of the report was that Robinson’s speech did not lie at the core of freedom of expression values. Rather than engaging in genuine political debate, her statements were found to be “categorically false” in some instances and a “deliberate” misrepresentation of policy in another, made intentionally to discredit staff and erode public trust. In that context, the court held that it was implicit that the City’s goals—ensuring City staff are treated with dignity and maintaining public trust and confidence in municipal governance—outweighed any limit on her ability to make false or misleading statements under the guise of free expression.

Final observations and outcome

In closing, the Divisional Court remarked that Robinson clearly felt she was the victim of a vendetta and that she was being treated unfairly by the City. However, the court underscored that its role was confined to reviewing the specific decision and the evidentiary record properly before it, not to re-litigating a broader history or hearing generalized grievances unsupported by admissible evidence. Much of what she attempted to advance at the hearing was either irrelevant to the specific allegations or not properly in evidence, and could not be considered. Ultimately, the Divisional Court dismissed her application for judicial review. The City of Pickering, as the successful party, was awarded its costs fixed at $10,000 on an all-inclusive basis. The court noted that this amount was substantially lower than what the City sought, and referred to a prior separate judicial review in which Robinson had been ordered to pay $30,000 in costs. That earlier figure, however, related to a different proceeding. In this case, the only monetary order in favour of the City was the $10,000 costs award, which represents the total amount ordered in the City’s favour arising from this decision.