Municipal Codes of Conduct are extremely valuable for local councils to establish a general standard to ensure that all Members of Council share a common basis for acceptable conduct, and to which all Members are expected to adhere to and comply with. As AMO and municipalities await provincial direction, your Association has developed a course that helps and guides municipal leaders in: developing or revitalizing existing codes of conduct, establishing buy-in or ownership at council, expectations on ethical behaviour and how to ensure adherence, how to address and manage breaches, Integrity Commissioners as a supporting resource and so much more.

This training will be delivered by a leading Ontario lawyer in the municipal sphere including in that of integrity commissioners.

Session Facilitator:

Mary Ellen Bench

Mary Ellen Bench has worked in municipal law for over 35 years, mostly as in-house counsel leading the law department for the City of Mississauga and before that for many years in the City of Toronto.  She is presently counsel at Dentons, a municipal Integrity Commissioner in various localities, and a senior advisor at StrategyCorp.  In these roles she has been engaged in many matters respecting municipal governance, conflict of interest and ethics, finance, economic development, land development, infrastructure, workplace investigations,  risk management, strategy, elections, and establishing municipal service corporations.  Mary Ellen has participated in drafting Council-staff relationship policies, social media policies, whistleblower policies and procedures, and many other policies that relate to codes of conduct for members of council, local boards and also for staff. Mary Ellen led the strategy development and work to prepare and introduce a Councillor Code of Conduct and retain the first Integrity Commissioner for the City of Mississauga, and has commented on and responded to complaints under many other codes of conduct since.  

AMO requires a certain threshold of attendance for the viability of workshops. If we are unable to meet this threshold 2 weeks in advance of the scheduled workshop, the workshop will be cancelled with AMO making all efforts for the workshop to be rescheduled. All registered attendees will be notified in a timely way.

Register here

Cancellations must be submitted in writing to events@amo.on.ca by 4:00pm 7 days prior to the scheduled date. Registrations can be transferred at any time.