Sean Chu's only 'punishment' for taking picture of mayor's licence plate was a training course

More details are emerging about how the City of Calgary responded to Coun. Sean Chu's decision to take a picture of the mayor's license plate and share it with others.

The incident was revealed by Mayor Jyoti Gondek during a special city council meeting on Nov. 15.

The information resulted in council voting to remove Chu from the deputy mayor roster for both this year and next year.

Chu was in line to serve as deputy mayor in December and chair a council meeting on Dec. 6, the national day of remembrance and action on violence against women.

Gondek said she was opposed to allowing that to happen, citing the security incident. "He [Chu] has further compromised my personal safety in this past year, given that he took photos of my vehicle license plate in a secured area, photos that later surfaced from a member of the public," said Gondek.

The picture was taken by the veteran councillor and former Calgary police officer last January in the executive parkade at City Hall, where council members and senior city officials park their vehicles.

Gondek said the picture showed up in an email to her office soon after. That was about the time a protest against COVID restrictions occurred outside the mayor's house.

After the matter was discussed publicly in the council chamber, city officials initially refused to talk about how Chu's behaviour was dealt with. "In order to maintain the integrity of our processes, we cannot confirm whether or not administration has undertaken any security investigations, or share details or results of any security investigations publicly. This includes sharing details including who was involved, recommendations or actions taken and who made them," said the city in a statement to CBC News. That line of communications has now changed.

City manager David Duckworth told CBC News that members of the city's corporate security team looked into the matter.

"A picture was in fact taken by a member of council — in this case, Coun. Chu. To address our corporate security team's security incident or the risk, they deactivated Coun. Chu's access to the secured city facility," said Duckworth.

Chu now parks in a nearby public parkade. Duckworth said the decision to cut Chu's access to the executive parkade was made entirely by security officials, based on the risk. It had nothing to do with the city manager's authority. 

He said he was told the decision to revoke Chu's access to the executive parkade is permanent.

After that sanction, Duckworth said a senior official with city administration filed a complaint with the integrity commissioner about Chu's actions as a potential breach of council's code of conduct.

The identity of the complainant is confidential.