The City of Ottawa spent $11,131.07 on an external report into the social media conduct of Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante, though the city’s integrity commissioner did not track the full expense of the investigation.
Last August, Integrity Commissioner Karen Shepherd
found Plante had contravened
the discrimination and harassment section of the code of conduct through her use of memes and emojis during heated online debate over plans to house asylum seekers in 2024.
Shepherd recommended Plante’s pay be docked for three days, but
council ultimately voted
to reprimand Plante and not suspend her pay.
Plante has maintained the complaints against her were “politically motivated” and said the integrity commissioner’s decision infringed on her freedom of expression by policing her “tone.”
Documents obtained through an access-to-information request show how much money the city spent on an external investigator — but because the city’s own integrity commissioner does not track the hours she devotes to individual cases, the full cost of the investigation remains unclear.
‘Emojis, memes and innuendo’
In July 2024, Barrhaven was on a shortlist of locations the City of Ottawa was considering for tent-like “Sprung Structures” to house asylum seekers.
The structures were designed to free up community centres, some of which were being used for temporary emergency housing. Residents
protested
, and eventually the city
shelved the plan
.
Plante was a vocal supporter of the structures and weighed into heated debate online.
According to the integrity commissioner’s report, formal complaints against Plante came from four unnamed witnesses, one of whom served as an elected official for more than two decades.
The report
gives an overview of dozens of Plante’s posts but dives deeper into three: her use of a thinking face emoji to convey sarcasm, a meme of Oprah Winfrey to insinuate the complainants were working together, and another meme with the text “Behold: A man has arrived to share his manly view.”
“Her manner of engagement with the witnesses, in the communications examined in this inquiry, was marked by the disrespectful use of memes, emojis, innuendo and disparaging ad hominem remarks,” Shepherd wrote in the report.
In a statement at the time, Plante defended her comments as legitimate political debate and rejected the idea that they amounted to personal attacks.
“We must protect space for honest, sometimes critical, public debate, especially when it concerns the needs of vulnerable residents,” she wrote.
Internal documents paint partial picture of costs
Internal documents obtained through an access-to-information request show Shepherd delegated part of the investigation to Kemptville-based lawyer John Dickson.
The request turned up three pages, including an itemized bill and invoice for the external report, with a breakdown of the hourly rate and time billed for each step of the process.
The bill, which came in at $11,131.07 (tax included), represents a portion of what the city spent to investigate the complaints against Plante.
It details about 60 hours of work billed at $165 an hour.
Asked for the hours she billed the city, Shepherd said in an email she does not track time spent on individual investigations.
“My monthly invoices are drafted in general language in part to preserve secrecy as required by my statutory duty of confidentiality,” she wrote, adding that such an approach has been standard practice since her office was established in 2012.
Shepherd is paid through a $25,000 annual retainer and an hourly per diem of $250, up to a daily maximum of $1,250.
According to the
latest annual report
, Shepherd logged 544 hours across her three statutory roles in the 2025 reporting period and was paid a salary of $138,520.
Central issue unsolved
Plante said she’d be “curious” to know how much money the city spent on the investigation overall, adding the $11,000 it took to hire an external investigator would be enough, through various city programs, to house one person for a year.
“All this effort to malign an emoji has not solved the issue,” Plante said in an interview.
Ian Stedman, a professor of public policy at York University, said integrity commissioners will often seek external expertise.
The cost of lodging an integrity complaint against an elected official has been kept low to help preserve democratic accountability, he said.
To guard against abuses of the system, the integrity commissioner is empowered to act as an “arbiter” of whether complaints are legitimate.
“I don’t think this was a case where the complainant was just grasping at straws,” Stedman said.
“The commissioner is — generally speaking — not going to go through the effort of the expense of investigating something, if it doesn’t come in looking at least reasonable.”
Complaints deemed “frivolous or vexatious” may be thrown out, he added, but the integrity commissioner must otherwise take them at face value.
“This is one of those situations where I think the commissioner is acknowledging that it’s a fine line, but that we need to be very careful — whether we’re making official pronouncements or unofficial pronouncements — to be a kind person in public office,” he said.
Plante has maintained she was targeted by complainants seeking to exploit the city’s integrity system to attack a political opponent.
“I wish people were more aligned on finding solutions to our housing and homelessness crisis, and less worried about scoring political points, and weaponizing this issue,” she said.
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