Manitoba appeal court rules RM of St. Andrews council lacked authority to strip mayor of power

Three Manitoba appeal judges have ruled that councillors in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews didn't have the power to strip their mayor of her key responsibilities.

In a decision published on Friday, the Manitoba Court of Appeal ruled the councillorsof the rural municipality, locatednorth of Winnipeg, did not have authority to pass bylawsallowing them to take away the power of Mayor Joy Sul to chair council meetings, or to allow them to choose another councillor to chair meetings in her place.

The first bylaw, which was passed at a special council meeting in 2019,wascreated to address political disagreement regarding a wastewater project in the municipality, as well as some councillors' concerns that the mayor wasn't maintaining order during meetings, the appeal decision states.

"Regardless of how it is framed, the effect of [the bylaw] was to remove the duty to chair council meetings from [Sul] in her elected role as mayor," the decision says, declaring both of the bylaws invalid.

This is welcome news for Sul, who was re-elected in 2022, after having served as a councillor in the municipality for four years.

"I'm just ecstatic. It was three long, hard-fought years and I knew it was wrong," she said in an interview on Monday.

"This ruling is such a huge milestone for every head of council in Manitoba and actually across Canada, it sets precedent."

In July 2021, a Court of Queen's Bench judge ruled that Sul did not establish she was treated in bad faith, with bias or denied procedural fairness by colleagues on the RM council.

Sul and her lawyer appealed that decision on the basis that the judge didn't reasonably interpret theMunicipal Act, which the appeals court judges agreed with.

A democracy issue

Sul believes her treatment during her first term in office as the municipality's first female mayorwas anti-democratic because she won with more than 62per cent of the vote in 2018, yet she was stripped of her key roles.

"Even to this day, I have residents calling me and they still shake their heads. How could this have been done," Sul said.

"They spoke by their vote and it took seven people the five councillors, an interim CAOand then the former CAO seven people, to overturn the results of an election. Like the people's voices did not matter."

She adds that she was held to a higher standard than the previous male mayors, and was the subject of gender-based discrimination.

John Preunwas deputy mayor at the time the bylaws were enacted. He maintains that he and the six others on council acted in the municipality's best interests.

Preun says Sul "went rogue" during her time in office and he worried she was putting future government funding and grants at risk with a big wastewater infrastructure project on the line.

"We did the best we could with the information that we had at the time, and we did what we what we felt was necessary to not put the municipality in any danger," he said in an interview on Monday.

He denies he or the other councillors discriminated against Sul on the basis of her gender.

"This had nothing to do with that. This had to do with with her not getting her way," he said.

Five of the six councillors who voted to strip Sul of her duties were defeated in the last election, including Pruen, who lost to Sul by 739 votes.

Sul was one of just 22 women elected as heads of council across Manitoba's 135 municipalities that had elections in 2022.