An apology from the mayor of Fort Frances.
June Caul admitted, after a closed-door meeting last night, she provided a confidential legal opinion about wood rights to a resident.
Emails obtained by Fort Frances lawyer Peter Howey through a freedom of information request suggest that opinion was received by local real estate agent David Kircher.
Kircher had raised questions last year about the extension of a forestry license granted to Resolute Forest Products for the Crossroute Forest, now being managed by the Boundary Waters Forest Management Corp.
Caul says she provided the information to help the resident understand council and others were working diligently to find answers to the same questions.
“I should have asked Council to give me permission to share the report from the lawyers, and for this, I humbly apologize,” says Caul.
The information contained in the document later became the basis of a newspaper story that appeared last October.
Caul denies playing a part in the document being obtained by the Fort Frances Times.
“I want to be very clear that I had no part in the leaked to the press that recently happened,” says Caul.
Here is the full transcript of Mayor Caul’s apology as read at Monday’s town council meeting.
“When I took my oath of office as the mayor of this great community, I made a personal promise to myself to listen to and respect every community member, their concerns and their ideas, even if their ideologies don’t match with mine. I also promised myself to step up in whatever way possible to protect this Council, administration and staff in any way I needed to.
For many months, I have seen letters to the editor and received many emails and phone calls from citizens voicing concerns about the transfer of Resolute’s forest license and audit. In 2019, a law firm was sequestered to find answers for the questions we also had regarding these types of concerns.
As always as I had vowed, I met with the resident to listen to his concerns regarding this issue. In an attempt to assist in helping this contact to understand that Council, staff and consultants had been working diligently toward finding answers to the questions we had ourselves. I shared the letter from the legal team we had hired to show this resident that we had received this draft that told us that they had found as much as was available on the ministry website.
In my lack of knowledge of the issue, what I thought would be an end to the concerns voiced by this resident, opened up a whole new can of worms, more concerns and questions. In my haste to stand up and protect the integrity of this Council, our staff and consultants, I definitely misstepped in the way I handled the situation. I should have asked Council to give me permission to share the report from the lawyers, and for this, I humbly apologize.
I want to be very clear that I had no part in the leak to the press that recently happened. I feel betrayed, and have lost the trust and confidence in my contact, just as I assume Council and staff must feel about me regarding my actions in trying to deal with this issue. I want to once again sincerely apologize for the way I handled this situation.”
