The fight to look inside the shrouded folder St. Catharines council makes it hard for you to see

Recognizing the central role of accountability and transparency at City Hall, Ontario's Municipal Act grants municipalities powers to ensure good governance. 

Councils have the responsibility to ensure the operations of the municipality, run by senior management, are conducted openly and subject to public scrutiny.

According to the City’s website, St. Catharines is committed to organizational transparency while “routinely providing information to the public that engages citizens and encourages public access to information that matters the most.”  

While this and other statements on the City’s website indicate a knowledge of the responsibility to prioritize accountability and transparency, some practices of officials suggest the opposite.  

Their SugarSync folder is one of them. 

St. Catharines council and senior staff rely on the SugarSync system for storing and sharing documents. SugarSync, a cloud-based service, is designed to securely share files across multiple devices, making it an ideal tool for City staff to provide councillors with access to confidential documents from home. 

Files in the SugarSync system, however, are managed by senior staff and are not easily accessible to the public. While some documents are rightfully confidential and must remain private, a review by The Pointer revealed the majority of documents the City places in the system are public in nature and should be easily available for anyone to access. 

But it’s hard to imagine most residents are aware of SugarSync’s existence or how to access its contents—information meant to serve the public interest. Transparency and accountability through access to information that should be in the hands of the public whose money keeps City Hall afloat, is the only way they can be assured elected officials and staff are using tax dollars in the best possible way.

While a large portion of the files stored in SugarSync are not directly accessible to the public—documents related to existing development applications are available—they can see the title of each document. To understand what they might pertain to residents would have to follow council meetings or read the minutes to identify the items connected to documents in the SugarSync folder which only have their title provided. To access the actual documents, individuals must submit a formal request, adding a significant procedural hurdle to obtain information intended for the public.

Responding to questions from The Pointer, Acting Clerk Donna Delvecchio explained that: “SugarSync is a secure file storage tool that the City has used since 2015 in providing Mayor and Councillors with correspondence received after the publishing deadline for agendas, confidential correspondence from staff and presentations that are associated with an item on the agenda (if applicable).”

This means almost any piece of information related to an issue being dealt with by council, including controversial matters or other pressing concerns with significant public interest could be shielded from residents. 

It’s unclear why such a secretive, opaque system was being used for documents that are supposed to be entirely available and instantly accessible to the public. 

Since The Pointer began asking the City about SugarSync, spokespeople have said changes are currently being made to the system to ensure proper transparency.

Delvecchio explained that any member of the public interested in receiving access to an item should contact the Clerk’s office to request it.

The procedures for the public to obtain information from SugarSync may seem straightforward to staff and council, but any requirement for additional effort to access public documents creates a significant barrier to transparency. 

Compounding these concerns is the seemingly arbitrary nature of what gets placed in SugarSync, which raises questions about who makes these decisions. 

In the past, St. Catharines has used SugarSync to withhold documents from public view that were intended by their authors to be accessible not just to City staff and elected officials, but to all residents. The City’s decision to exclude such information from agendas or minutes, instead placing it in a system unfamiliar to most members of the public with only a title to identify each document, raises concerns about whether the system is being managed with transparency and the public trust as guiding principles.

A letter sent to the City on April 22, 2024 authored by St. Catharines resident and activist Vicki-Lynn Smith (full disclosure: she is the reporter’s sister) was addressed as official correspondence for the Mayor and Council. In her letter, Smith expressed support for local Palestinian families, urging recognition of their struggles amid ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

For months the local Palestinian community had been requesting recognition of their suffering, akin to the respect and acknowledgment previously extended to local Ukrainian and Jewish communities for their respective losses and hardships. However, the Palestinian Canadians' requests were repeatedly denied. At the center of this controversy were St. Catharines Mayor Mat Siscoe and Regional Councillor Laura Ip, both of whom not only actively opposed granting political recognition to the suffering of local Palestinian families, but led council efforts to prevent residents and groups from even addressing their concerns during public council meetings, using a range of procedural moves to shut them out.

Under normal procedures, official correspondence such as Smith’s letter would have been placed in its entirety on the public agenda for the next council meeting. It would have been available for not only staff and council to read, but any member of the public by simply opening the agenda on the City website. In this case, however, a decision was made to place the letter in SugarSync, in effect removing it from public view completely. The letter was in City staff’s hands a week before the public meeting, but was not made available for the public to read.  

“They buried that letter,” Smith told The Pointer. She feels Mayor Siscoe was actively working to make the issue “go away.” She said removing her letter from public view served the goal of council members who previously supported shutting down any discourse around the Palestinian cause, effectively silencing her advocacy.

Mayor Mat Siscoe actively opposed political recognition of the suffering of local Palestinian families.

(Niagara Region)

Following questions from The Pointer about the public perception of SugarSync as a barrier to transparency, St. Catharines CAO David Oakes stated the system is now under review.

“Individuals can contact the Clerk’s Office to request a copy of the correspondence, and unless it is deemed confidential, they will receive it. Having said this, the Clerk’s team is currently planning to bring forward a new Council correspondence policy intended to establish a new way of presenting this information that can be easily accessed by Council, to continue our practice of transparency while also satisfying our file management and tracking protocols,” he said. 

A follow-up request sent to Oakes seeking further information about any upcoming changes was not returned. 

For Smith, the CAO’s remarks offered little reassurance. 

“What does it mean to say people can request the letter if they want to see it?” she questioned. “Who knows anything about this? How do you participate in a system you know nothing about?” 

A review by The Pointer of document titles stored in the SugarSync system revealed a wide variety of materials that have been effectively removed from immediate public scrutiny. These include:

• “Memorandum from Acting City Clerk regarding Information for Decision on Fairview Park Community Vision (Report CRCS-105-2024)”
• “Correspondence from Residents of 345 Geneva re. Issues in Fairview Park and John Page Park”
• “Correspondence from Councillors interested in being appointed to the Municipal Development Corporation Board of Directors re. Item 9.1”
• “Memorandum from Director of Community, Recreation and Culture Services regarding Indoor Tennis at Community Park - Operator Withdraws Submission”
• “Memorandum from Senior Planner regarding St. Catharines response to Bill 185”
• “Memorandum from City Clerk regarding Item 9.1, Information for Decision on Applications to Amend Zoning By-law 2013-283 and the Garden City Plan, Subject Lands: 240 Scott Street, 387 and 389 Geneva Street (Report PBS-077-2024)”
• “Memorandum from the Director of Planning and Building Services regarding Ontario Street Corridor Secondary Plan Study Status Update”
• “Correspondence from Vicki Lynn Smith regarding Request for Consideration and Support for the Palestinian St. Catharines Community”

These are just a sampling of the titles contained within the SugarSync system. The full list is extensive, and accessing the actual contents of these documents requires submitting an official request. This practice raises concerns about accessibility and transparency, as information that could be of significant public interest is not readily available without navigating procedural barriers.

The Pointer has formally requested access to all documents stored in the SugarSync system over the past four years. The City has agreed to fulfill this request, and updates will be provided as the information is reviewed.

What seems evident, however, is the need for systemic change. In 2024, it is increasingly difficult to justify the use of a system like SugarSync for anything other than legally confidential documents that must legitimately remain inaccessible to the public. Implementing clear and robust processes for managing and sharing public documents could address many of the concerns raised by citizens like Vicki-Lynn Smith. 

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