Janet Leiper speaks of an iceberg. There’s a tiny bit of her work as integrity commissioner for the City of Toronto that towers above the waves and captures the public’s attention. Then there’s an enormous mass of work that lurks unnoticed beneath the surface.
Her point is that there is a lot more to her job than the high-profile complaints about councillors — and a certain mayor — that might make it into the press. “It’s not an accurate reflection of the bulk of the work. Most of it is below the waterline.” Leiper (LLB ’85) completes a five-year term as Toronto’s integrity commissioner in September 2014. She came to the job as a part-timer, but has recommended city council transform the position into a full-time job. The expanded workload is a measure of her success.
The number of inquiries she’s received from citizens about city council’s code of conduct rose 48 per cent from 2012 to 2013, the most recent period for which data is available. Even if they don’t see it all, Torontonians clearly think their integrity commissioner is standing guard.
If you could see the top of Leiper’s metaphorical iceberg, you might see Rob Ford at the summit, waving a bright flag. In August 2010, when Ford was still a quirky suburban Toronto councillor running for mayor, Leiper said he should repay donations for his personal football charity because his fundraising appeals were made on city council letterhead.
Ford would still win the election and eventually become the world’s most famous Torontonian for other reasons. But looking back, the Ford case was one of Leiper’s first big media splashes and it gave her position national profile.
For the record, Leiper did not speak to me about Ford or any of the matters she’s been involved with. She said nothing about her job that she hasn’t published in a public report. Like any good referee, Leiper believes in following the rules.
One of the things she will talk about is that looking back, she was surprised at the magnitude of work. Integrity commissioners don’t pick their own cases, she explains. They’re directed to matters either because they’re reacting to a complaint from the public or because they’re providing advice to public officials who have questions about the code of conduct. In fact, behind-thescenes advice makes up about 90 per cent of her workload, she said.
Leiper clearly believes in serving both the public and the legal profession. Among other things, she served as a director of the Criminal Lawyer’s Association from 1993 to 2001, chair of Legal Aid Ontario from 2004 to 2007 and a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall from 2007 to 2009.
She still practises law as a sole practitioner focused on criminal and administrative law. Besides serving as the part-time integrity commissioner, she is a bencher and chair of the Certified Specialist Board with the Law Society of Upper Canada, an alternate chair for both the Ontario and Nunavut Review Boards and former director of Pro Bono Law Ontario.
Leiper is clearly someone who believes the legal system exists to help others. When the system fails, rather than silently grumble about it, she gets involved with the hunt for a solution.
Leiper has always been interested in solving problems. Growing up in Mount Forest, just north of Guelph, she once considered a career in engineering. Yet after a couple of years of undergrad, she decided to give law a shot. She enrolled at Western Law in the fall of 1982 and was placed in a criminal law small group with Ian Hunter. She found her calling. “After the first week, I was aware that I wanted to keep reading ahead in the book, and that wasn’t the case in any other course,” she said.
She was determined to be a litigator and worked in the legal aid clinic. She still remembers her first trip to court to represent a client. She was both awed and terrified that an older person would put so much trust in a green young law student. “Protecting someone and bringing their story forward was so strong for me,” she said. “This was the kind of work I wanted to be doing.”
Leiper was called to the bar in 1987. She names chairing Legal Aid Ontario as one of the many highlights of her career. She says it was fascinating to bring together so many people with diverse views, yet somehow pilot meetings to a consensus. “If everyone agrees at the outset what the core values are, you get some pretty amazing decisions.”
She also recalls the day in 2009 when she saw an ad for the integrity commissioner position. It was such a natural fit, she said. There was the chance to do something new — “litigators can’t resist a shiny new file” — but there was also the opportunity to engage in yet another public function. With a tenure that coincides with the Rob Ford era, she’ll exit the integrity job having landed a role in history. But that’s not what she was in it for. She did it for the service to the council and to the public.
“I want everyone to participate,” she said. “It’s their code of conduct, not mine.”
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