Fewer complaints coming into Sudbury's Wrongdoing Hotline

The City of Greater Sudbury says it received fewer complaints through its Wrongdoing Hotline in the last year, compared to previous years.

The Wrongdoing Hotline was created in 2016 "for citizens, employees and contractors to report complaints that could be deemed illegal, dishonest, wasteful or a deliberate violation of policy."

BetweenJune 1, 2018 andMay 31, 2019, the hotline received 124 complaints a drop from previous years, the city's Audit Committee heard on Tuesday. In the same time period between 2017 and 2018, 142 calls were received. A total of 156 calls were made between June 2016 and May 2017.

Ron Foster, the city's Auditor General says one of the reasons for the drop in calls could be due to the city's Integrity Commissioner now handling the complaints about City Council and the Mayor's office.

Out of the 124 calls, about 30 per cent of the calls required detailed investigation and some complaints were referred to other areas, such as bylaw.

"We put approximately half of those to bed with call it same day sort of review, so say well this process has some merits but those complaints don't require an extensive investigation to resolve," said Foster.

By the end of May 2019, the city still had sixoutstanding complaints to be investigated, which is also a drop from previous years. In 2018, there were 15 outstanding calls, compared to 35 in 2017.

"We refined our process in terms of how we coordinate investigations within the city with human resources, for example, as well as bylaw services and the city's customer service or 311 line, so we now have fairly well established mature processes for dealing with standard complaints," Foster said.

The Audit Committee voted to continue with the Wrongdoing Hotline and starting in 2020, all calls to the hotline will be dealt with internally, which will help minimize the costs going forward.