The Quesnel city council’s move to strip Mayor Ron Paull of his official duties came after reports he had recommended the book Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools) to other officials in the area. The court called the book “controversial” and “seen by Indigenous communities as being hurtful, hateful and harmful to healing and reconciliation,” and the mayor’s moves were said have damaged the city’s relationship with the nearby Lhtako Dene Nation.
But Justice H. William Veenstra has now quashed the council’s resolutions against Paull, ruling they were based on a report from city staff that was “at best ambiguous and confusing” and could be properly read as “merely inviting input as to a process to be followed.” He ruled the report was not a “clear and unambiguous document” setting out the allegations that would underlie a motion of censure and sanction — in other words, the “case to be met.”
“[Mayor Paull] understood the Report to be an informational document setting out general advice and a possible process were Council to pursue censure and sanction against him,” Justice Veenstra wrote in Paull v. Quesnel (City), 2025 BCSC 347. “He was not challenged through cross-examination, and I am unable to say that his understanding was unreasonable.”
Justice Veenstra also noted that the eventual decision to censure and sanction Paull was based on alleged misconduct different from events outlined in the report. He wrote the council eventually “pivoted to a new theory of the case against the mayor” that the book did not matter but that something had to be done to improve the relationship with the Lhtako Dene Nation and other Indigenous bodies.
“There were calls for ‘accountability’ and ‘leadership,’ but those were divorced from any specific allegations of misconduct. This new theory was the basis on which Council decided to censure and sanction Mayor Paull,” he wrote. “It is implicit in the legal principles governing procedural fairness that the decision-making body, when it concludes it cannot proceed on the basis for a decision on which it gave notice and with respect to which the subject party responded, cannot then proceed on a different basis. That is what Council has done here.”
Counsel for Quesnel did not respond to a request for comment. Counsel for Ron Paull were unable to provide comment by press time.
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