I have so much to say about this week’s incredibly disappointing debate around fourplexes, but that will have to wait because I want these words on the record before the meeting on Tuesday. I’ve even thought about delegating to say this in-person myself.
Mayor Cam Guthrie needs to apologize.
At Tuesday’s meeting, council will be asked to receive a report from the integrity commissioner regarding three complaints made about the mayor’s social media posts saying that they contravened the municipal Code of Conduct. Although the report states that there was no violation of the code that still doesn’t mean that the mayor wasn’t in the wrong, or that the report doesn’t raise important questions.
Without getting into the TikTok of what happened, let’s just say that the mayor shared what was supposed to be a jovial post about celebrating the spirit of Christmas with his wife by performing a few songs at a long-term care home. Some Twitter users took exception to the attached picture where the mayor appeared maskless. Although this was December 2023, COVID outbreaks at long-term care persisted and continue to persist.
As opposed to responding to those worried residents with contrition and compassion, the mayor responded with sarcasm. The trend continued until the mayor posted a picture of himself, still maskless, raising funds for a holiday charity. Again, the mayor’s followers suggested a mask, but the mayor suggested, “I’ll put on a smile instead.”
So the mayor completely dismissed community concerns about the continued spread of a dangerous virus that’s still impacting our community, especially people who are immunocompromised. In this specific response though there’s an additional and perhaps accidentally sinister angle.
Insisting that smiles trump masking was a frequent reprise of the people who believe that COVID-19 is either a) not serious, b) part of a “plandemic” to assault individual rights and/or reduce the population, or c) used to force people to take dangerous and untested vaccines to accomplished option ‘b’.
When the mayor says “I’ll put on a smile instead” when someone is expressing a public health concern, it’s hard not to hear that science denial, and I know that the mayor worked too hard to keep Guelph safe during the pandemic to mean that.
Now, can an argument be made that some of the Twitter users were egging the mayor on to the point where he embraced his baser instincts? Perhaps. No one wants to be called a “f-ing demon” or being told that your voice raised in song will “kill many”. But these are hardly the worst things I’ve seen tweeted about the mayor, and frankly, I’ve seen more slanderous things tweeted about the mayor in the last week when compared to his alleged status as a supernatural creature.
On the other hand, perhaps the mayor is just tired of being called out on his apparent lack of dedication to improving access to the disabled community. The chair of the Accessibility Advisory Committee is repeatedly on his case about including alt-text on the images in his posts, and she was on it again this week, asking the mayor to make sure the visually impaired know the content of the images he’s posting.
It seems well and truly bizarre to me that the mayor doesn’t try. In fact, it seems like he’s going out of his way to twist the knife, and you might say the same thing about the back-and-forth at Christmas. It would have been so easy to just say, “Oh, you’re right, perhaps I should be more careful,” or “Oh, you’re right, but we were taking these precautions…”
Now I’m not queuing up to rethink the conclusions reached by the integrity commissioner. Given the fact that this was the mayor’s own Twitter account and not explicitly connected to city business, I agree that what happened last Christmas didn’t contravene the Code of Conduct. But the report also makes it clear that the mayor must be held to a higher standard, and to that end I do have a few suggestions about next steps.
First, Guthrie needs to set limitations, he needs to put a wall between his official mayor business and everything else. Not only does Guthrie share vital information from city hall as well as his public appearances and speeches, he also acts as a reporter on city business occasionally, talking about council decisions and debates.
The mayor has already played fast and loose with his division of labours. In the midst of the last municipal election he decided to ditch a dedicated campaign account and just use his main Twitter feed for both the purposes of being mayor and running for mayor. Again, no rules were broken, but then, as now, it just smelled, and in the PR business anything that smells bad, is bad.
And if this sounds difficult, might I suggest that the mayor take a social media break to figure out what it is he wants to do, and how he wants to do it, and then be clear in his intent. There’s no foul in admitting you might be taking a wrong approach, and that you need to try something new. As for that vital information, I do believe that the City of Guelph has a whole communications department.
There’s also a piece of this that must be owned by the City of Guelph too. If the mayor’s been playing fast and loose with the rules, it’s because the rules haven’t been updated to reflect the current realities of the digital age. The mayor and councillors get their own city approved devices for city business, they’re given City of Guelph phone numbers and email addresses, should we not be talking about an official mayor’s social media account, or Ward 1 social media accounts, for example?
It seems that councillor Erin Caton is going to be bringing a motion along these lines, directing staff to have more substantive Code of Conduct regulations in regard to social media. I hope they’re successful because this city is woefully behind the curve on a whole host of tech issues and is full of politically influential technophobes that would probably red line any tech more advanced than a VCR.
As for the mayor, I hope he listens. All of us have, at times, been mean, or short, or short-tempered on social media. I know I have; it seems to be the nature of the beast. Hopefully, Tuesday’s meeting is taken as an opportunity for growth and not an assault because the mayor’s got to be the mayor for everyone, including the people who are critical of them.
