Sudbury councillor broke code of conduct at meeting about homeless centre

Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann broke the city's code of conduct during an April 8, 2024, meeting in her ward at which she barred media coverage and allowed participants to viciously attack the people who ran a drop-in centre in the Flour Mill.

That's the conclusion of Greater Sudbury integrity commissioner David G. Boghosian. For a separate issue, Boghosian also found Ward 7 Coun. Natalie Labbee also broke the code of conduct. Both reports will be dealt with Sept. 3.

In Landry-Altmann's case, she organized a Flour Mill Community Action Network meeting April 8 to discuss the Sudbury Centre for Transitional Care (SCTC).

The drop-in centre, which aims to help the homeless and other vulnerable people, had become a source of anger for many in the community, who believed it was bringing crime and drug use to the area.

Landry-Altmann ejected a Sudbury.com reporter from the meeting, stating "We don’t need the slant of some media person who wasn’t invited."

The SCTC began operating in March, and Landry-Altmann said that problems began soon after.

"These included concerns about increases in crime (violent crime, vandalism, threats, weapons possession, theft and robbery), drug use, prostitution, lewd behavior and aggressive panhandling," she said in response to the complaint to the integrity commissioner.

"There was also associated debris (e.g. feces, urine), garbage and drug paraphernalia. The concerns were not just in the immediate vicinity of the centre but surrounding parks, roads, sidewalks, alleys, lanes, etc."

These problems sparked anger in the area, where people felt that problems downtown were being exported to the Flour Mill.

It was those concerns that led her to schedule the community meeting April 8. While she admitted to barring the media, she claimed that a reporter who wrote an earlier story had no "empathy for the concerns, fear or anger voiced by the residents at the meeting who feel they were ambushed, threatened, stabbed" and that the attendees at the meeting were wrongly portrayed as 'an uncouth bunch incapable of generosity, empathy or goodwill."

Media access

"Hence the need to limit media access," she told Boghosian.

"Could not take that chance. This (was) the theme throughout the meeting – to protect the neighbourhood hence no media. I had given my word to the attendees that there would not be any media and I intended to keep it."

Boghosian found that Landry-Altmann allowed residents at the meeting to attack and threaten the SCTC, despite saying she wouldn't tolerate such language.

And she only allowed SCTC supporters to speak at the end of the more than two-hour meeting, and "repeatedly interrupted the pro-SCTC speakers, such as to ask for or confirm details about the capacity of the SCTC buildings, funding, how much they paid in rent, and even whether the speakers were Flour Mill residents, interruptions that did not happen when other business representatives and residents were speaking."

Police who attended the meeting said that calls for service didn't reflect the complaints they were hearing at the meeting.

Boghosian concluded that Landry-Altmann had hand-picked the people to attend the meeting through hand-delivered invitations, rather than the usual practice of a mailout notice.

"I find that she did this in order to maximize the attendance of people who shared her view that the centre must go, and minimize the attendance of those sympathetic to the goals of the SCTC and the plight of the homeless population, or who at least wanted to consider less drastic solutions," he wrote in his report.

Since she knew the meeting would be so one-sided, she decided to bar the media, because any reporting would "undermin(e) her efforts to achieve her intended objective of getting the SCTC out of her ward."

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She also allowed speakers to hurl abuse and threaten the clients of the SCTC, including threats of violence, without asking anyone making such comments to leave.

Plus, Landry-Altmann "not only treated the SCTC director and supporters with disrespect, indeed, contempt, and also permitted others in attendance to do the same, but she ensured that the SCTC staff and supporters who attended the meeting were relegated to speak at the very end after many attendees had already left so as to minimize the impact of anything they had to say," Boghosian said.

He said she violated Sudbury's Community Action Network rules by barring the media, which she had no right to do. She also told attendees they couldn't record the meeting, which she also had no right to do.

Boghosian recommended Landry-Altmann's pay be suspended for 20 days.

The full report, including Landry-Altmann's response, can be found here.