Death threat leads to calls for Ontario politician to resign

An Ontario man alleges he and his wife were the subject of violent threats to deter him from running for political office. Colton Praill reports.

The 39-second-long voicemail came with a violent warning to stay out of small-town politics. According to retired police officer Tom Dingwall, he was startled because he believes the threats came from a professional acquaintance: his local councillor.

“(She) told me that I need to stay out of next year’s election and that if I don’t, she will come to my house and kill me and sexually assault my wife,” said Dingwall in an interview with CTV National News.

In the short tirade, the caller identified herself as Corinna Traill, then launched into an expletive-laced message meant to deter Dingwall from running for mayor of Clarington, Ont., in next year’s municipal election.

The woman’s voice said that Dingwall should support a rival candidate, Joe Neal.

According to Traill’s personal website, she was first elected as a councillor for Clarington in 2010. Prior to that, she was a lawyer practicing human rights, employment and family law. As councillor, she has advocated for affordable housing for seniors and the LBGTQ2S+ community.

But Dingwall, a former homicide detective with Durham Regional Police, says the message he received on the afternoon of Aug. 28 frightened his wife, and was so alarming that he made the decision to report it to police.

He played the voicemail for a CTV News journalist to verify the contents, but did not provide an audio copy because it’s currently under investigation by Peterborough Police. However, the phone number attached to the message was connected with Traill’s name in Dingwall’s list of contacts.

“When people aren’t thinking rationally – they’re unpredictable, and unpredictable people, unfortunately, sometimes do stupid things,” Dingwall said. “I’m not prepared to take that type of risk with my family.”

Councillor responds to allegations

Dingwall is also calling for Traill, who has sat on council for the past 15 years, to step down.

“It’s my tax dollars paying her to represent me and my family, and I don’t think she should be representing me and my family, or any other family, until she gets some help for whatever issue she’s dealing with,” he said.

In an email to CTV News, Traill calls it an “unfortunate circumstance” and says it would be “inappropriate to talk about it at this time.

“I am doing what I can to work through it and I am looking forward to this being resolved,” Traill wrote.

Bracing for tension

Since Dingwall posted about the incident on social media this week, Clarington’s current mayor, Adrian Foster, has been inundated with questions and has had to put out a news release to address what he called “a concerning trend of toxic behaviour in municipal politics” happening in the town of 100,000 people and across the province.

“I don’t think people understand how distracting it is – you know we have work to do,” said Foster in an interview. He’s bracing for some “difficult” moments when city council returns from summer break and resumes their meetings on Monday.

“It’s just not helpful to the democratic process and it’s not helpful to governments,” the mayor added.

Municipal elections are more than year away, but Foster worries the coarsening of political discourse will scare exemplary candidates from running for public office.

“We want people to run and we want people to get out and vote,” he said. “But that tenor should not be tolerated.”

The need for better checks and balances

Foster says he does support the Ontario government’s Bill 9, the Municipal Accountability Act, which would give councils the power to fire misbehaving and unethical members after an investigation by the provincial integrity commissioner.

Foster says municipal governments need “better checks and balances and better ramifications for really, really poor behaviour.”

For years, municipalities have voiced the need for stronger laws to deal with problematic councillors. Examples include a Pickering councillor accused of homophobia and racism and an Ottawa councillor accused of harassing and bullying his female staff.

Currently, councillors can be stripped of pay for varying periods of time but not fired.

But critics of Bill 9 say the bar for removal is too high, because it would require a unanimous council vote after a recommendation by the integrity commissioner. The bill will be debated this fall in the Ontario legislature.