The problem

What is happening?
Sarnia's city hall has a documented pattern of workplace harassment and a poisoned work environment centred on the mayor's treatment of senior staff. Two independent processes in 2016 reached the same finding: an Integrity Commissioner report in June and an external consultant's report in October. Council has also had to police conduct on its own benches: in 2024 the Integrity Commissioner found both Mayor Bradley and Councillor Bill Dennis in breach of the code of conduct, and Dennis has since been banned from attending council meetings in person.

Who is affected?
City staff, particularly senior managers; council; and residents who bear the cost of turnover, renovations and dysfunction. In 2016 council spent more than $70,000 on a key-card system to separate staff at city hall from politicians.

When did it become an issue?
Documented publicly since 2016 and continuing to 2024, so this spans a decade.

Inherited or self-inflicted

No. He created it. This is the one file in this set where the mayor is not the inheritor of the problem but its subject.

What was the situation before they took office?
Bradley has been mayor since 1988. There is no earlier administration to inherit from.

Did they create any part of the problem?
Yes. In June 2016 Integrity Commissioner Robert Swayze found Bradley contravened council's Code of Conduct and Workplace Harassment Policy, and council suspended his pay for 90 days. In October 2016 a consultant's report by Lauren Bernardi of Bernardi Human Resource Law found he engaged in "egregious bullying and harassment" of four complainants, including city manager Margaret Misek-Evans, and had created a "poisoned" work environment. Some of those senior staff have since left. Council locked him out of city hall on nights and weekends.

What they did

Votes and sanctions
June 2016: Integrity Commissioner report; council suspended Bradley's pay for 90 days.
October 2016: consultant's report found "egregious bullying and harassment"; council locked the mayor out of city hall after hours and, after dropping a plan to move his office to another building, approved a key-card system costing more than $70,000 to separate staff from politicians.
May 2017: Integrity Commissioner Swayze found Bradley bullied, harassed and intimidated city clerk Dianne Gould-Brown at a February council meeting and recommended a two-week pay suspension.
October 2024: Integrity Commissioner Benjamin Drory found Bradley breached the code of conduct on a complaint from resident Patrick Coutu, and recommended a two-day pay suspension. Council reprimanded him without financial penalty. The same night council reprimanded Councillor Bill Dennis on a separate finding.
November 2024: Bradley expelled Dennis from a budget meeting after a profane rant in which Dennis called the mayor a "cokehead" and a "damn crook."

Public statements
Bradley has said he made mistakes and took counselling, and has also called the 2016 process a witch hunt by some councillors. He has stayed active in provincial debates on municipal governance, clashing with Dennis in May 2026 over Bill 9, which would standardize municipal codes of conduct and create a new removal mechanism.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/sarnia-mike-bradley-harassment-1.3796345
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sarnia-mayor-mike-bradley-battle-city-hall-1.3875242
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/sarnia-mayor-mike-bradley-again-accused-of-harassment-1.4134001
https://sarnianewstoday.ca/sarnia/news/2024/10/29/dennis-bradley-reprimanded-without-financial-penalty
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/sarnia-council-bill-dennis-expelled-1.7395016

Better or worse

Worse

Worse, or at best unchanged.
The 2017 and 2024 Integrity Commissioner findings show the conduct pattern documented in 2016 was still drawing formal complaints eight years later. Sanctions have grown weaker, not stronger: 90 days' pay in 2016, a recommended two weeks in 2017, a recommended two days in 2024 that council reduced to a reprimand with no penalty. Councillors said in October 2024 that the penalties "rarely have an effect" and that the province should step in.

Verdict: Worse. Conduct problems now involve more than one member of council, and the local tools to address them have been exhausted.

Leadership

No leadership on this issue, because he is the issue.
Bradley has been reactive: he accepted counselling after 2016 and told CBC he had made mistakes, but he also called the process a witch hunt, and complaints against him continued in 2017 and 2024.

The countervailing fact, stated plainly: Bradley has been repeatedly re-elected since 1988 and is genuinely popular with voters. In 2018, two years after the sanctions, he won with 16,238 votes to 7,569 for his nearest challenger. In 2022 he won with 59% of the vote. Sarnia voters have had this information for a decade.

Were there warnings

Yes, and they were formal and repeated.
Experts: an Integrity Commissioner report (June 2016), an external consultant's report (October 2016), a second Integrity Commissioner report (May 2017) and a third from a different Integrity Commissioner (October 2024). Four named senior staff complained in 2016.

How did the municipality respond?
Sanctions: a 90-day pay suspension and an after-hours lockout in 2016, and a reprimand without penalty in 2024. Sanctions were applied and complaints continued, which says the available municipal tools are not sufficient. Councillors themselves said so in October 2024 and asked the province to legislate. That is a live argument for stronger provincial powers to remove municipal officials, which is part of the Bill 9 debate Bradley and Dennis have clashed over.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4584064/sarnias-re-election-of-mayor-mired-in-scandal-among-numerous-re-elections-in-the-region
https://www.thesarniajournal.ca/news/bradley-and-dennis-clash-again-this-time-over-bill-9-12346210

The alternatives

Five candidates were certified for mayor on August 24, 2026. Bradley, 71, filed hours before nominations closed on August 21. Councillor Bill Dennis filed on the first day he could. Forty-three candidates are running for nine council seats, which signals unusually high local engagement.

Bill Dennis has himself been in public conflict with Bradley, so his candidacy is partly a referendum on the mayor's conduct. But on this specific issue Dennis carries his own record: the Integrity Commissioner has found him in breach of the code of conduct several times, council banned him from attending meetings in person, a court ordered him to pay $33,000 for defaming the head of the Sarnia-Lambton Children's Aid Society, and a Walpole Island First Nation chief filed a complaint over social-media remarks he has declined to apologize for.

Carrie McEachran, CEO of the Sarnia-Lambton Chamber of Commerce on leave, has never held elected office and runs as an outsider on 'keep what works, build what's next.' Scott Molson, a tire-business owner, has no council record and no detailed platform. George Stanko, an engineer, has no published platform.

How are their plans different?
None of the challengers has published a governance or council-conduct platform. The difference is record: McEachran, Molson and Stanko have no conduct findings against them; Bradley and Dennis both do.

Best placed to fix it

Unclear

Challenger, on this specific issue. The evidence that the incumbent will change is weak: three formal findings across eight years reached the same conclusion. Councillor Dennis is not a clean alternative on conduct; his own record is longer and more recent than the mayor's. That leaves the three newcomers, none of whom has a governance platform to judge.

But this must be stated fairly: Bradley has been mayor since 1988, is popular, and voters have repeatedly returned him knowing this record. A researcher's read and the electorate's read have diverged here for a decade. On issues other than conduct, Bradley's long experience and provincial profile are real assets. This assessment is narrow to the governance question.