Bill 9 explained in plain English

Bill 9 amends Ontario's codes of conduct for city councillors and municipal elected officials by shifting code creation to provincial regulation, establishing a provincial Integrity Commissioner role in code enforcement, and creating a process for removing elected officials from office based on serious code violations.

Bill 9, the Municipal Accountability Act, 2026, changes how ethical conduct rules work for Toronto city councillors and municipal elected officials across Ontario. Currently, the City of Toronto and municipalities create their own codes of conduct for elected officials. This bill changes that by allowing the provincial Lieutenant Governor in Council to make regulations that set a single code of conduct for city council members and certain local boards in Toronto, and for all municipal councillors and local boards across Ontario. The bill also creates new roles and processes: 1. The provincial Integrity Commissioner (appointed under the Members' Integrity Act, 1994) gets new responsibilities. They will provide training to local integrity commissioners, advise on the independence of people being considered as commissioners, and oversee serious conduct violations. 2. Local integrity commissioners can now recommend that an elected official's seat be declared vacant if they find serious code violations that meet four conditions: the official breached the code, it was serious (possibly repeated), it harmed someone's health, safety or well-being, and lesser penalties are not enough. 3. When a local commissioner makes such a recommendation, the provincial Integrity Commissioner reviews it by conducting their own inquiry. If they agree the violation is serious enough, they recommend to city council or the municipal council that the seat be declared vacant. 4. The actual council must then vote to approve the seat removal. The vote requires all eligible council members to agree (except the official in question, who cannot vote but can speak and try to influence others). 5. If an official's seat is declared vacant under this process, they are removed from office and cannot hold the same position for four years. The bill also protects commissioners by allowing them to refuse frivolous, vexatious, or bad-faith complaints, and prevents seat removal recommendations during election periods. The specific rules in the bill apply to Toronto city council and local boards in Toronto under Schedule 1, and to municipal councils and local boards across Ontario under Schedule 2, with similar provisions in both.