BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West
The Commission municipale du Québec is expected to schedule a hearing in the coming weeks to formally assess accusations levelled against Pointe Claire Mayor Tim Thomas that allege he misused his city-supplied car and credit card.
“A hearing date will be set in the coming weeks,” said commission spokesperson Anne-Julie Lefebvre on Monday in response to questions from The 1510 West.
It is at a hearing that evidence will be presented, Lefebvre stated, adding that details of the allegations will not be made public until then. The identity of the individual or individuals who filed the complaint are not revealed.
As of yesterday, no hearing involving Thomas appeared on the commission’s schedule, which has public hearings booked in other matters until the end of May.
On March 21, the Commission municipale issued a municipal ethics citation, a two-page form letter that outlines four allegations of how Thomas has alleged to have contravened the City of Pointe Claire’s ethics rules. The allegations include having used the car leased for him by the city for personal use; having used a city-issued credit card to purchase gas for the vehicle while using the car for personal use; and charging meal expenses while travelling to meetings of the Montreal Agglomeration council.
The citation was issued almost two months after Thomas was summoned by Commission municipale officials and questioned about the anonymous complaint lodged against him. He answered questions for about four hours.
According to the Commission municipale, a citation is issued when its municipal integrity investigations and prosecutions directorate “believes that the information in its possession is likely to demonstrate that a municipal elected official or office staff member has violated an ethics rule.”
In this instance, the commission could find fault with Thomas’s and/or the City of Pointe Claire’s administration’s actions.
At the April 1 Pointe Claire council meeting Thomas vehemently defended his actions with respect to his use of the city-leased vehicle and credit card, and compared his expense claims with those of former mayor John Belvedere.
“I want to reassure citizens that I have been spending their taxpayer dollars appropriately and in a manner that is consistent with what previous mayors of Pointe Claire have done,” Thomas said.
Thomas claimed he spent $4,844 in gas, which was charged to his city credit card during a period of time that stretched from shortly after his election in late 2021 and when it was revoked by the city’s administration in 2024, a period of less than three years. The amount is comparable to the gas charges of $5,510 posted by Belvedere during his four-year term in office, from 2017 to 2021. Thomas said he obtained the figures through an access-to-information request.
Thomas also said he charged a total of $1,326.23 on his city credit card on meals, which represented working dinners with other mayors of demerged municipalities following meetings at the Montreal Agglomeration council. In comparison, he said Belvedere accumulated $10,966.28 in meal charges during his term in what Thomas described as a variety of contexts, including meals in Pointe Claire with other members of council, where he picked up their tab.
The City of Pointe Claire’s administration opted not to continue to provide Thomas with a car in April 2024, after the vehicle was damaged beyond repair when the mayor hit a deer in the Laurentians, where he was visiting his mother. The city’s director-general at that time also asked Thomas to return the credit card that had been issued to him by the municipality.
If found in breach of an ethics violation, Thomas could face a penalty that ranges from a reprimand to being ordered to reimburse any benefit received, a suspension or fined a maximum of $4,000 for every breach upheld by the commission.