Not enough members showed up for a virtual meeting of Invest North Bay on Wednesday, causing cancellation of the event with no new date scheduled.
"We were not able to address the agenda items due to lack of quorum," Executive Director Ian Kilgour told BayToday.
The board can have up to 14 members but has dwindled to just nine as others have quit or had their term expire. Invest North Bay appears to be in free fall, unable to attract new members and has been without a chairperson for five months after the resignation of George Burton. The secretive group did not allow reporters to ask any questions following its recent Annual General Meeting.
One of the items on Wednesday's agenda was a letter from Kevin Ferris and Nicole Peltier which asked the Board to address, what they see, as a conflict of interest situation involving Mayor Al McDonald, former chair George Burton and a $1.2 million contract given to marketing company TWG Communications.
Invest North Bay has a conflict of interest policy but has so far refused to make it available to the public. Multiple requests by BayToday were turned down. It remained unknown until mentioned by Integrity Commissioner George Valin while investigating a City of North Bay Code of Conduct complaint.
See: Here's the Conflict of Interest policy Invest North Bay doesn't want you to see
In his report, Valin stated that on a balance of probabilities, that "between and during the years 2010 to 2018, the Respondent Mr. McDonald enjoyed a personal and business or professional relationship with William Ferguson." (co-owner of TWG) "On a balance of probabilities, that between and during the years 2010 to 2018, the Respondent Mr. Burton enjoyed a personal and business or professional relationship with William Ferguson.
Valin's report states that TWG co-owner Bill Ferguson was McDonald’s campaign manager in the municipal elections conducted in 2010, 2014, and 2018 and paid TWG a substantial amount of money for advertising undertaken during his election campaigns. In addition, in September 2015, Ferguson was the chair of the Board of Governors of Canadore College, and chair of its executive committee, when the College negotiated a five-year extension of Burton’s contract as its President at an agreed stipend of $1.2 million. Canadore has also conducted substantial business with TWG.
We reached out to Mayor McDonald for an explanation but got no response.
Part of the conflict of interest policy states that other board members are responsible for holding their fellow members to account.
"If a Board Member believes that any other Board Member is in a Conflict of Interest position with respect to any contract, transaction, matter or decision, the Board Member shall have the concern recorded in the Minutes. Thereafter, at the request of the Board Member who recorded the initial concern, the Board shall, after the Board Member alleged to have a conflict has absented himself or herself from the room, vote on whether the Board Member alleged to have a Conflict of Interest is, in the opinion of the Board, in a Conflict of Interest," states the policy.
"All the people on the board at the time discussions were going on with TWG would have been fully aware of the Invest North Bay conflict of interest policy and they also would have been aware of the relationships amongst those three individuals so the onus was on them to call out the conflict if the people directly involved weren't going to declare it themselves," Ferris said.
BayToday reached out to two members of the board, George Flumerfelt, the President & CEO at J.S. Redpath Ltd. and Tiz Silveri, an Executive Vice President with the North Bay Regional Hospital to ask why they had not spoken up, but got no response.
