Councillor Sarai breached oath by recording Kamloops mayor and covering it up

An investigator has found a Kamloops city councillor acted without integrity as he continually misled the mayor about a secret recording until he had no way out.

Councillor Bill Sarai breached council’s code of conduct and his oath of office with a “pattern of misdirection” meant to conceal that he made and kept the recording, according to a recently published report.

“This conduct lacked the integrity, respect and leadership that Coun. Sarai swore to adhere to and uphold when he took his oath of office,” investigator Reece Harding’s report read.

He had secretly recorded a conversation with Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson in January 2023 and revealed an edited version to the mayor nearly two years later. The shortened clip only included Hamer-Jackson’s raised voice, swearing at Sarai at city hall.

Sarai claimed someone else made the recording and called Hamer-Jackson “paranoid” when knowledge of the recording became public, until he was forced to admit it was his own following an iNFOnews.ca Freedom of Information request.

Sarai issued a public apology and another councillor filed a code of conduct complaint after it sparked public backlash.

Despite that apology, Harding said Sarai wasn’t entirely convinced he was in the wrong and “still believed his conduct was justified,” which concerned the investigator even further.

“Throughout my investigation, and in preparing this report, an old adage has repeatedly come to mind: two wrongs don’t make a right,” Harding, an investigator with the firm Young Anderson, said in his report.

The entire audio clip spanned more than six minutes, portraying a very different context than the one-minute clip Sarai sent to Hamer-Jackson in September 2024. Sarai told Harding he wanted the mayor to “back off.”

“In a moment of anger, I decided to send him the clip so that he would think twice about lying about how the conversation went on that day, that it was his actions that caused me to lose my temper,” Sarai told Harding.

Sarai lied to Hamer-Jackson and said someone sent him the recording, so Hamer-Jackson complained to police that a third-party was secretly recording his office conversations. That’s when Sarai was forced to admit to Kamloops RCMP Supt. Jeff Pelley he made the recording himself. Even then, he wouldn’t admit the recording was his own publicly until the full recording was released to iNFOnews.ca.

Asked by Harding why he issued the apology, Sarai said there was “a constant barrage, so much negative pressure put on (his) council colleagues.”

Sarai initially admitted he breached “a couple paragraphs” of his oath of office, but he later reneged on that. Harding concluded Sarai did, in fact, breach the oath because his actions lacked integrity and respect for his colleague, Hamer-Jackson.

Harding finished his report on April 30, recommending council issue a letter of reprimand to Sarai. That letter, along with a response Sarai might write, should be published, he said.

Whether council has decided to adopt the recommendations, or move on any sanctions against Sarai following the $38,641.62 investigation, isn’t known.