Toronto taxpayers may be on hook for councillor’s $20Gs in legal fees
· Toronto Sun
Taxpayers could be picking up the $20,000 legal tab Chris Moise rang up during an investigation that found the Toronto Centre councillor “crossed the line” by making personal remarks about a constituent.
That probe, by Toronto’s integrity commissioner Paul Muldoon, was examining two complaints made after a 2025 incident , reported by the Toronto Sun , in which Moise told Daniel Tate he had a “white supremacy view.”
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“I find you appalling,” Moise told Tate after a meeting in January of that year. “You have harassed my staff. You have harassed me. … I will never apologize to you.”
City council has been asked to reimburse Moise for $20,807.61, plus interest , in legal expenses incurred during the investigation by Muldoon. Councillors are expected to make a decision when they meet next week.
Reached by email, Tate expressed astonishment that everyday Torontonians would be expected to bail out a politician for behaviour that the integrity commissioner found unacceptable.
“The disrespect for the taxpayer never ends,” he wrote.
Moise’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Even though Muldoon recommended “no penalty” for Moise , his report was effectively ignored when it came before city council last month.
Muldoon had recommended city council not reprimand Moise, but “adopt the findings” that he violated Article 14 of Toronto’s code of conduct for members of council, which says elected officials must not “engage with others … in a manner that is abusive, bullying, intimidating or derogatory.”
‘Actually threatening?’
Council unanimously ruled that the line should be dropped and replaced with language, provided by Councillor Paula Fletcher, that seemed to imply city politicians, including Moise, are being victimized by the public.
In the only remarks in the council chambers about Muldoon’s report, Fletcher said the commissioner should clarify “what members of council need to do to respond to aggressive, harassing, hateful and actually threatening behaviour.”
Muldoon’s report gives some insight into the legal work taxpayers are being asked to pay for.
Moise’s legal counsel argued there is context that “cancels out” Moise’s “liability” for his conduct, the report says.
Tate had sought a “gotcha moment,” Moise’s counsel told Muldoon. The legal representative also alleged Muldoon had “placed a ‘reverse onus’ on (Moise) to prove harassment,” the report says.
Moise made claims about racism to Muldoon, who wrote that he did “give great weight to the context” of race.
“The councillor was caught in a brief reactive exchange with one of his most vocal critics, who was persistently pursuing the councillor in a manner likely to elicit an emotional response,” Muldoon wrote in his report.
“In his submission, the respondent said that, as a black man who has experienced racism and hate throughout his life, the complainant’s persistent criticisms of equity-based projects, and of the councillor himself, are connected to racism.”
Moise said his comments “reflected an honest expression of his informed perspective, shaped by his lived experience and an understanding of how racism operates in both its overt and subtle forms,” Muldoon wrote.
In his report, Muldoon said Moise asked him to consider the 2025 squabble with Tate “against the backdrop of a prolonged and highly publicized dispute surrounding the renaming of Yonge-Dundas Square to Sankofa Square and disputes about other city equity initiatives (Moise) has championed.”
That prolonged dispute between a councillor and a constituent was in the news yet again last month, when the Sun reported Moise’s office had pressed city bureaucrats to crack down on Tate, who sells T-shirts featuring the old Yonge-Dundas Square logo on his integrityto.ca website.
Emails obtained by the Sun show that Moise’s chief of staff emailed 10 city officials about the sale of the shirts during a January budget meeting. Tate attended that meeting and wore one of his shirts.