The City of Cambridge says a social media post by one of its councillors, and the resulting investigation, will end up costing the city an estimated $90,000.
Adam Cooper posted the image of a person with blue hair to his personal Facebook account on Jan. 22. The text, accompanying the image, said: “He took my pronouns! I have to live in reality now!”
The incident happened around the same time U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order stating the U.S. government would only recognize a person’s sex as male or female.
Eric Bolton, one of the founders of Grand River Pride, publicly commented on Cooper’s post.
“Dude… you’re a city councillor. You should be better than this,” he wrote.
Cooper response was: “I’ll proudly represent reality.”
The post prompted “a very large number” of formal complaints to the integrity’s commissioner’s office, which sparked a months-long investigation into Cooper’s behaviour.
The results were presented to Cambridge council on Oct. 14.
One of the investigators, Meghan Cowan, noted that Cooper believed the post was protected under his right to freedom of expression.
“Freedom of expression is not an absolute, unfettered right,” she explained. “We found that the meme was not sensitive to the wider social conversation happening at that time about the inclusion of people who use pronouns such as they/them to self-identity. The meme was interpreted by many people who viewed it as mocking individuals who chose to identify themselves by pronouns other than she/her or he/him.”
Cooper’s post also failed to uphold the city’s Code of Conduct, she continued, which stated councillors must conduct themselves with decorum, courtesy, respect and decency at all times.
The recommendation from the integrity commissioner was that council formally reprimand Cooper and suspend his pay for 10 days.
The councillor remained defiant, however, calling the response to his post an unnecessary witch hunt.
“I can only say it was the most hurtful, hateful experience to go through. The things that were sent to me – things that somebody shouldn’t hear. If we’re going to talk about whether the things I said were hurtful, we need to talk about what was said to me because there’s a lot of hypocrisy going on here and this is just the truth,” Cooper said at the Oct. 14 meeting. “People went after my family. They went after my friends. They went after anybody that I even remotely did business with. They came at us with the most hateful accusations you can imagine. Ones I’m not even going to repeat here. I wonder where the outrage was then.”
He was visibly emotional as he continued, “What this mob tried to do to me, to my children, to my family – that mob that came after me holds no moral superiority to be standing on any kind of soapbox, preaching to me or anybody else. I will not take lessons in moral decency from any of the hateful mob that came after me and continues to do so.”
Cooper stated he wanted to live in a community where people were allowed to disagree.
“I’m going to continue speaking to things that some people find uncomfortable but need to be said. I’m going to keep doing that. That’s what I do. I’m not going to stop. And if people attack me and claim that I’m hateful, so be it.”
At the conclusion of Cooper’s comments, council debated the integrity commissioner’s recommendations.
Councillor Mike Devine was against the idea of docking Cooper’s pay, saying it wouldn’t benefit anybody. Instead, he suggested sensitivity training, which he previously took part in and called an eye-opening experience.
“Two weeks pay is not going to correct the issue,” he said. “What we need to do is change the attitude and the thought process.”
Council eventually decided to formally reprimand Cooper and said he had to participate in sensitivity training within three months.
The city has now shared details about the cost to both investigate Cooper and pay for sensitivity training.
“It’s estimated at approximately $90,000,” the city said in an email to CTV News. “We are still in the process of obtaining quotes from vendors for sensitivity training.”
They ended with, “That is all we will be providing at this time.”
Cooper sent CTV News the following statement: “It is disappointing that this has incurred any cost to the taxpayer. The escalation of the situation was entirely unnecessary. I extended an invitation to meet in order to resolve this issue positively, without imposing costs on the taxpayer or diverting attention from council responsibilities. This matter could have been resolved at that point. Sadly, my offer was not taken up, and some individuals chose to escalate this matter unnecessarily, thus incurring these costs.”
- With reporting from Shelby Knox and Heather Senoran
