A short meeting for the end of a short month. The regular meeting of Guelph City Council for February had some promise for controversy with reports from the integrity commissioner and the lobbyist registrar, but it seems like council is just too well-behaved. (This year anyway.) We’ll get to that, and we will also get to all the other business that council didn’t want another bite at in this week’s recap!

Regular Meeting of City Council – February 19, 2025

The last council meeting of the month was largely uncontroversial, which was unusual given the fact that it included reports from the integrity commissioner and the lobbyist registrar.

The meeting started off with an appointment to Guelph Cemetery Commission, and then property owners of recently designated heritage assets were honoured. Getting into the meat of the meeting, the first item was the consent agenda from Committee of the Whole, but no one on council was terribly interested in revisiting the administrative penalty system or the internal audit workplan.

That brings us to John Mascarin, the integrity commissioner. He reviewed his report, which included five complaints, three about the same topic, and all of them ended up being dismissed quickly and cleanly, and then there was that not-so-small matter with the mayor’s role on the Global Covenant of Mayors that was litigated last November. Mascarin said that his door is always open, and he will keeping an eye out for any changes to the municipal code of conduct that were promised before the Ontario election, but otherwise that’s all he had to say till 2026.

As for lobbyist registrar Susan Craig, she said that her job is about transparency and not stopping lobbying, which can be useful and provide important knowledge and information to council. There were 40 lobbyists registered last year, there were 24 interactions with council, and there were zero complaints. Council had no follow-up questions for Craig, the bylaws were approved, and everything wrapped up nicely before 7 pm.

Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.

The next meet of city council is Committee of the Whole on Tuesday at 9:30 am. You can see the agenda on the City’s website here.