Fort Frances councillor's motion exposes staff agenda on Sunny Cove

A motion brought forward by Councillor Brunetta at the June 22, 2026 meeting of Fort Frances’ town council should heighten concern in the community about the municipality’s dealings with the Sunny Cove Camp property.

The recitals of Councillor Brunetta’s motion indicate that in July 2025, council directed town staff to move forward with the rehabilitation of the property, including the removal of derelict buildings. Despite that direction, municipal staff spent the next several months exploring options to sell the property, without any authorization from council to do so. This culminated in the December 2025 report recommending the sale of the property, which was narrowly adopted by council.

Councillor Brunetta’s motion raises concern that the December vote defied council’s procedural by-law, requiring a super-majority in order to reconsider the prior decision. That may be. It is apparent from the June 22 agenda items that this has triggered a flurry of activity and legal advice by the municipality.

(I pause here to note that the public legal memo from staff on the June 22 agenda indicates that the municipal integrity commissioner was also contacted for input. This suggests that advice has been sought in response to speculation that at least one member of the 4-member majority that voted to sell the property was in conflict, contrary to the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act. Had the vote been 3-3, the resolution would have been defeated.)

What has been clear now for months is that the community is united in its opposition to the sale of Sunny Cove and wishes for the municipality to maintain this property and reimagine it for the benefit of the public. Frankly, it is unclear how, in council’s wisdom, they ever saw fit to dispose of the municipality’s only lakefront recreational property while continuing to promote the delusion (including through their recent branding exercise) that Fort Frances provides access to Rainy Lake for anyone but boat and cabin owners.

The bigger issue here is that the municipal administration has been exposed as having its own agenda, and a sense that it can – and will – act insubordinate of council’s authority when it would prefer different marching orders. That is entirely unacceptable. It is also a recurring problem that the new council is going to have to address immediately upon taking office.

When it comes to Sunny Cove, the public deserves a full accounting of how council’s original direction came to be supplanted by a recommendation that appears to have been developed entirely independently of it. Hopefully, the legal advice alluded to on the council agenda includes recommendations from an employment lawyer about which members of the administration to dismiss.

Crucially, council will likely soon enter a ‘lame duck’ phase under the Municipal Act, 2001, where it is prohibited from disposing of significant assets. This is cause for alarm as past practice has been to delegate council’s authority to staff during this period – staff with no political accountability but a clear political agenda on this file. The extension of the deadline for expressions of interest to acquire Sunny Cove would appear to line up nicely with this troubling possibility.

The situation calls on council to immediately put the brakes on this process and to let the future of Sunny Cove stand as an election issue for candidates to campaign on this fall. Council must act before it loses the authority to do so later this summer. The community should also demand that incumbents seeking re-election immediately and publicly clarify their commitment to maintain this property as a municipal asset.

Douglas W. Judson