Jess McDiarmid
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, December 5, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - The first budget meeting that Gordon Van Tighem went to as mayor in 2000 was supposed to be closed.

" I turned to the city administrator and said, 'Does this have to be in-camera?' He said, 'It's your call but you'll get more information in-camera than out of camera,'" Van Tighem remembers.

" I said, 'Fine, it won't be in-camera. And it was the first time that the pre-budget briefing was held in the open and it has been a full and open process ever since."

Last week, city council voted unanimously in favour of a motion to review the procedures and practices for going in-camera and consider recommendations for making the process more open and transparent.

Some councillors said they were concerned that discussions could go off-topic or involve peripheral information that probably could be public.

They also said having too much information in-camera that they couldn't talk about led to residents believing problems weren't being dealt with.

Despite the worries, most councillors noted transparency in council has changed for the better since a court ruling against the city in 1998 outlawed secret meetings.

" (Council) has been extremely cautious in the manner in which private meetings are held ever since," said Van Tighem.

" In the period of time I've been involved with this council, there has been an extremely small amount of anything brought forward in-camera."

Coun. Bob Brooks, serving his fifth term as a city councillor, said when he started in 1991 there was a lot of business conducted in closed meetings.

The committee structure at that time had a few councillors on each, so councillors would gather at lunch to deal with items administration felt were in-camera issues, said Brooks.

" I think a lot of the issues were also considered to be politically sensitive," said Brooks. " But what also would happen is that once people would start in their discussions it would basically carry into something that we felt could have gone into the public venue."

After Brooks left council in 1994, another councillor, Dick Peplow, and the Yellowknife Property Owners Association began speaking out against " secret meetings."

After the city tried to take houseboat owners to court to collect property taxes in a decision made behind closed doors and rushed through council for rubber stamping, the association initiated proceedings against the city in January 1996.

The ruling more than two years later deemed closed-door meetings to be against the law.

" Whatever the original intention was in having these briefing sessions, the original purpose has evolved and broadened to the point where, in my view, they became de facto council meetings," said NWT Supreme Court Justice Howard Irving as he handed down the ruling.

It found that, among other things, council had extended Tuaro Dairy's lease twice before the issue went public and that the city clerk claimed no votes were taken at the meetings, although records showed then-Mayor Dave Lovell had " broke the tie" at least once in the two years the lawsuit dealt with.

Even prior to the ruling, a newly elected city council had started holding committee-of-the-whole meetings instead of the lunchtime sessions.

Lovell said the meetings started before his time as a means to make sure all councillors had the same information and to deal with problems arising from there being " insiders" and " outsiders" on council.

" Unless you think that every councillor was a crook, there was nothing there that was out of the ordinary," said Lovell. " You try and be very strict on what you discuss in-camera, but it's awfully hard... sometimes it goes off on a bit of a tangent."

Lovell said the court case didn't have " any effect at all" on how the city ran.

" The next council was all anti-secret meetings and did it all by e-mail," said Lovell. " I remember reading (e-mails) and going, my God guys, you're going farther than we ever did ... E-mail just absolutely replaced the discussions we used to have around the table."

But Lovell said nothing bad for the city was done in " secret meetings." He said a lot of the hubbub over the meetings was a product of discontent in the city, which was going through mine and government lay-offs, and a murderous bombing and strike at Giant Mine around that time.

Blake Lyons, however, served on council for seven terms, including the time that spanned the court case and called the ruling a " good wake-up call."

" For members of council it gave them some good boundaries. That, I think, was one of the most important things, that they knew you don't cross that line."

When people know what's going on, they get involved and share knowledge with council, which helps it make the best decisions for the city, said Lyons.

" An informed public is good because quite often, and I'm as guilty as anybody else, I might make a decision based on what I believe rather than what I know," said Lyons. " And that's dangerous."

Mayor Van Tighem said if discussion strays from what council has gone in-camera to talk about, the normal response is to stay with the topic.

When council comes out of in-camera, any of those topics can go on the agenda for the next meeting. He also said that it's not easy to go in-camera now - it requires administration's recommendation, the mayor's agreement and two-thirds of council in favour.

The concerns that led to the motion for a review are a long way from those of the mid-1990s, said Van Tighem.

" We are so far away from that now, it's like comparing a caveman to somebody in a Gucci suit."