Councillor Stephen Karpuk says he and others from the City were embarrassed at a recent dinner hosted by the Canadian Homebuilders Association, after Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson apparently made fart jokes before a crowd of hundreds during a discussion on carbon emissions and green energy.

“The groans in front of 230 people were embarrassing to me. ‘Do you want me to fart more’…really disgusting,” Karpuk told City Council Tuesday as part of his Councillor Report.  “So that – I was really embarrassed.”

Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson rejected the accusation.

“That’s dead wrong,” Hamer-Jackson countered, to which Karpuk fired back.  “No there were enough people there who can back that up.”

Karpuk also used his Councillor Report to take issue with comments the Mayor made during his own report, in which he outlined a series of meetings he had taken, or was planning on taking, including with members of the city’s public sector union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).

“We have one employee — [Chief Administrative Officer] David Trawin. We don’t deal with other staff. That’s not our privy,” stated Karpuk.

Karpuk also taking issue with comments made by Hamer-Jackson earlier in the meeting, where he said he received a number of public complaints about the work of the City’s Community Services Officers (CSO’s).

“Your comments today about our CSO’s were very derogatory and negative,” argued Karpuk. “They do a fantastic job, and I think you owe them an apology, [Community and Protective Services] Director [Byron] McCorkell an apology for saying that they cannot do their job. I am really pissed off that you can go out there and make statements like that. Words matter.”

The Mayor did offer a counter response to Karpuk’s criticism.

“The citizens in the community, I said, I was getting complaints. And that’s the fact,” countered Hamer-Jackson. “We’re not all perfect. I don’t do my job perfect, you don’t do yours perfect, CSO’s don’t do theirs perfect. I’m telling you what the citizens of the community are telling me, and I feel that we need to look at something a little bit different.”