Our memory is general pretty good, but we honestly can't remember the last time town council held a regular meeting or one of its two monthly committee meetings without including a private discussion.
It's been a long time. We would guess a year, maybe two.
It's actually very simple for council to go into a secret discussion. Council just passes a motion to go in camera – one of those curious legal terms based on Latin and simply meaning in private – and out go members of the public, the media and most town employees, and the television feed to the community channel and the satellite service is cut.
Of course, that television insight into town council is only relevant for this discussion if the meeting can actually be heard on TV, which is not always guaranteed. But that's another issue.
In camera – i.e. shutting the public out – is completely legal.
There's a section in the GNWT's Cities, Towns and Villages Act that describes when an in-camera meeting can be held. There are 11 possibilities, ranging from discussion of commercial information that might be prejudicial to the municipality or the people involved; to personal information, including about employees; to the salary, benefits or performance record of an employee; to the acquisition or disposition of property by the municipal corporation; and more topics that can cover a wide range of issues.
We don't know what council is talking about when it goes in camera, because, as we said, it's private. The meeting agenda does refer to the section of the act under which the in-camera discussion is being held, but that just indicates the topic with no specifics.
We also know that some in-camera sessions of council have multiple topics.
Usually, an in-camera session is automatically tacked on to the end of a meeting.
However, two recent meetings had two in-camera sessions – one during the meeting when those not in the loop to hear everything had to leave briefly, and the regular private chat at the end of the gathering.
It wasn't always like this.
In-camera sessions – while not uncommon – were not held every single meeting of town council, as is happening now. They used to be occasional, rather than routine.
And we in the media used to expect – in our quaint belief that democracy is best served out in the open – that the business of a public government would be discussed in public. That's because, you know, it's a public government.
We remember attending a council meeting at the now dearly-departed old town hall. It was one of those times when an in-camera session was declared.
At that meeting, we were sitting next to a young reporter straight out of journalism school who seemed puzzled by what was about to happen.
"What's an in-camera meeting?" she asked another reporter.
All these years later, we still do not have a good answer to that question.
We really can't say if in-camera meetings are always warranted, or just a convenience for council.
All we can say right now is there are definitely more of them.