Ontario mayor wins lawsuit against her own municipality over communications bylaw

Ontario Mayor Judy Greenwood-Speers has successfully challenged a communications bylaw in the Township of Frontenac Islands, securing a court victory that quashed the bylaw. A judge ruled that the bylaw unlawfully restricted the mayor's ability to represent the municipality.

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I was very pleased, and it’s unfortunate that it had to come to this.

Justice Alexandre Kaufman found that the bylaw "substantially impairs" Mayor Greenwood-Speers' role by requiring her to route all media requests and public communications through the township's chief administrative officer. The court determined that this policy exceeded its intended purpose of promoting consistent municipal communications and improperly limited the mayor's capacity to act as the township's representative.

"I was very pleased, and it’s unfortunate that it had to come to this," Greenwood-Speers told Global News. "There is a role for the mayor, and that is to be the voice for the community, both provincially, internationally, federally and locally."

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There is a role for the mayor, and that is to be the voice for the community, both provincially, internationally, federally and locally.

The communications bylaw was passed by the council in October 2024 with a 4-1 vote, with Greenwood-Speers being the sole dissenting voice. The legal challenge arose after she sent a letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford in December 2024 regarding concerns about unreliable ferry service to Wolfe Island. A subsequent complaint to the township's integrity commissioner concluded she had violated the policy by contacting the province without adhering to the bylaw's procedures.

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Democracy is like a garden. You can’t just put the seeds in and then ignore it and expect to have something good.

In his decision, Kaufman noted that the bylaw treated the mayor differently from other council members, who could respond to media inquiries independently. The judge concluded that a communications policy could not be used to diminish or impair responsibilities assigned to the mayor under Ontario's Municipal Act. Greenwood-Speers called the decision a victory for democracy, emphasizing the need for public engagement with elected officials. She also intends to seek an accounting of the municipality's legal costs, arguing that taxpayers should not have funded the dispute, and that the awarded costs of $3,000 were a fraction of the municipality's expenses.

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The court fees that they awarded me are probably one-tenth of what it cost the municipality.