Municipal leaders have agreed that more needs to be done to protect councillors from harassment and bullying.

Members of the Association of Manitoba Municipalities have approved an amended version of the Respectful and Safe Work Environment resolution that was sponsored by the Town of Morris.

Mayor, Gavin van der Linde said it's about time something was done on the issue.

"There is a kind-of misconception that you can do and say whatever you want within a council context and there's no way to stop that," he said. "I think every delegate here is up for serious and heated debates but there's a problem where people are consistently crossing the line and taking it outside of council, making personal attacks on people that have nothing to do with the issues. That has to stop."

The approved resolution calls for the AMM to lobby the Province of Manitoba to strengthen the powers of censuring when a council member is in contravention of the Municipalities Code of Conduct and to allow Code of Conduct complaints to be heard by the Ombudsman or another third party who can make further recommendations that can be implemented by a Council resolution.

However, the resolution stops short of asking to include elected officials in the protections afforded by the Workplace Safety and Health Amendment Act.

"I don't think we had a one hundred per-cent solution in our resolution," admitted van der Linde following the vote. He added however that the point was to open the conversation with the province. "To see how we can change the Municipal Act, and the rules that we operate by, to make it better for municipalities."

A second similar resolution was also brought forward at the AMM convention. It was co-sponsored by the RM's of Springfield, West St. Paul, Swan Valley West and Oakland-Wawanesa.
    
The two resolutions were the result from what happened in the RM of Ritchot this spring when Mayor Jackie Hunt and two councillors resigned due to name-calling and belligerent behaviour at the council table. This led to council being dissolved due to lack of quorum and the election of a new council.

van der Linde noted the discussions that have taken place since this incident have shown that harassment and bullying at the council table to be a bigger problem than originally thought. He said more and more people continue to come forward with their own stories of what they've experienced.

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