Former NSCC deputy warden named new Yellowknife bylaw manager

The City of Yellowknife has a new municipal enforcement manager.

Jason Card started the job April 1, according to a city hall official. The municipal enforcement division has been without a permanent manager since the eve of the last municipal election.

Immediately after the close of business that day, Oct. 20, senior administrative officer Sheila Bassi-Kellett announced she had created a new division, and appointed Doug Gillard to manage it. Until then Gillard had been the longtime manager of municipal enforcement.

The move came after months of pressure over allegations by former bylawworkers that Gillard had used controls on his office computer for security cameras on city facilities to surreptitiously view women he found attractive.

Bassi-Kellett gave Gillard the newly-created job of manager of emergency management shortly after an independent investigation concluded that it was more likely than not that he used security cameras to eye women.

• 'The line is blurry': Councillors question Yellowknife SAO's authority to create new division

The sudden move caught council off-guard. Mayor Rebecca Alty said the new division and position had been created without any discussion with council, but indicated she didn't have a problem with it. At the time, Bassi-Kellett said she had the authority to make the change because no additional costs would be incurred.

It turned out that Bassi-Kellett accomplished that, at least partly, by eliminating a bylaw officer position, again without consulting council. The addition of the managerial position added another approximately $50,000 to the city's payroll after taking into account the elimination of the bylaw officer job.

CBC requested interviews with the city and mayor in hopes of helping the public understand how the creation of the new managerial job has resulted in no additional costs.

No one was available. An official sent a Power Point presentation from a Feburary meeting that suggested no bylaw officer positions had been eliminated.

From another troubled institution

The new manager of the city's bylaw division comes from an organization that's facing its share of scandal.

Until becoming the boss of the municipal enforcement division, Card was deputy warden of operations at the North Slave Correctional Complex (NSCC). In March 2018 a former inmate talked publicly about discrimination and harassment he had faced as a gay man doing time at NSCC.

• Beleagured Yellowknife bylaw manager gets new job at city hall

• Former employee alleges inappropriate behaviour by head of Yellowknife's bylaw

Kelly Canadian said the territorial government paid him $5,000 to settle a human rights complaint he filed about the harassment.

Canadian later said guards at the jail sexually exploited him while he was an inmate there. In December, the government confirmed it had fired two guards at the jail after investigating the complaint.

Three months ago Canadian filed a $1.25-million lawsuit against the government for damages and negligence as a result of the alleged sexual exploitation.