City official used app in violation of policy: Complaint

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The complaint also alleges, among other things, a ‘toxic workplace culture’ at emergency management and a conflict of interest in Joanna Beaven-Desjardins’ promotion.

Published Jan 27, 2026 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 6 minute read

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Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, then with the Toronto Police Service, is seen at a press conference in July 2015. Some of her current subordinates with Toronto emergency management have reportedly filed a complaint about her, alleging a “toxic” workplace and that she has tried to circumvent record-keeping requirements. Photo by Veronica Henri /TORONTO SUN FILESArticle content

The City of Toronto’s emergency management boss has allegedly violated accountability policies, possibly in an attempt to thwart freedom-of-information law amid an investigation by the Toronto Sun.

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“A significant group of current and former staff from Toronto emergency management are writing to raise concerns regarding the leadership of executive director Joanna Beaven-Desjardins,” a complaint, purportedly made to one of Toronto’s deputy city managers, says. It was leaked to the Sun last year.

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“We do not submit this lightly and fully understand the gravity of raising such matters. Given the risk of retaliation by the executive director, staff are remaining anonymous at this time.”

The complaint alleges, among other things, a “toxic workplace culture,” a conflict of interest in Beaven-Desjardins’ promotion and that Beaven-Desjardins “issues directives” using the Signal messaging app, which “automatically deletes communications, undermining obligations related to public record-keeping and transparency.”

An employee at city hall told the Sun the complaint was sent to deputy city manager Kate Bassil in late April 2025. Bassil replied that June and the matter was effectively shelved, the person said. The Sun has agreed not to publish the employee’s name to protect the person from reprisals for speaking out.

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The complaint apparently closely followed freedom-of-information requests by the Sun. Beaven-Desjardins’ appointment calendar and her emails related to former deputy city manager Tracey Cook were requested on April 23, 2025.

Tracey Cook, then executive director of municipal licensing and standards, speaks at a press conference at Toronto City Hall in November 2014. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun files‘Personnel matter’

Asked about the complaint and the alleged use of Signal, a representative said city hall “cannot comment on the specifics of this personnel matter.”

“City staff are expected to conduct all city business through approved channels and in accordance with corporate policies. City staff are not permitted to use third-party messaging applications for official city business,” the statement said. (Beaven-Desjardins was not made available for comment.)

The Sun had been acting on a tip about Beaven-Desjardins’ management of the division and the alleged conflict in her promotion, to serve under Cook. In 2017, the Toronto Star reported Beaven-Desjardins “has been close with Cook since they did their police training together in 1987.” (City hall did not respond to a question asking for specifics as to who had a say appointing Beaven-Desjardins.)

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When Beaven-Desjardins came in, it ended a long stretch of turmoil atop Toronto’s emergency management team. Two of the three men who preceded Beaven-Desjardins served only as acting director, and one of them took on that position twice. The third, Charles Jansen, was the subject of front-page headlines as he was let go, without no rationale provided by the city, just as COVID began to grip Toronto in 2020.

In 2022, what had been Toronto’s office of emergency management became its own stand-alone division, called Toronto emergency management, and Beaven-Desjardins became executive director.

A document signed by city manager Paul Johnson, dated May 30, 2023, breaks down the powers and responsibilities Beaven-Desjardins has as executive director, including control over hiring and firing staff. Cook retired in May 2023.

According to budget documents, the team’s pool of emergency operations centre staff dropped by half in 2022. One document says training was hurt by “response priorities and staffing,” but after a change in approach the problem was remedied by 2023.

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This entry in Joanna Beaven-Desjardins’ appointment calendar appears to show a performance review was carried out by her boss Tracey Cook weeks before Cook’s retirement in 2023. The two have reportedly been friends since 1987. Photo by City of Toronto‘Arizona Cruise’

While the Sun requested texts between Cook and Beaven-Desjardins as well as emails, city hall said those would be impossible to provide, as their devices were wiped clean. Only two email chains were provided, one of which involved Beaven-Desjardins and Jill Bada — then Cook’s direct report as director of strategic policy and programs — debating who the nickname “Arizona Cruise” belongs to.

“Thank God we have you,” Cook wrote on July 8, 2022, after Bada pointed out a detail in an attached slide deck.

“You rock Arizona Cruise!” Beaven-Desjardins replied.

“No, remember – you are Arizona Cruise!!” Bada wrote.

While Beaven-Desjardins’ calendar does not appear to include appointments outside of work, it raises questions of a possible conflict. In Cook’s final year and a half or so on the job, starting from January 2022, there were 50 days in which Beaven-Desjardins had a documented meeting involving the deputy city manager.

One of those meetings, on March 15, 2023, is listed as a “2023 performance appraisal.” Meanwhile, on May 3, 2023, Beaven-Desjardins’ whole afternoon and early evening were blocked off for an apparent meeting labelled only as “Tracey Cook.”

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After learning of Beaven-Desjardins’ alleged unsanctioned app use, the Sun requested screenshots from her phone displaying settings for messaging software including Signal, iMessage and WhatsApp. On Tuesday morning, city hall sent a letter saying that after “a review of the requested records,” they were exempted as a personnel matter and would not be provided under freedom of information.

“Use of city mobile devices is governed by the city’s acceptable use policy. Enforcement of the (policy) is considered to be an employment-related matter,” the letter said.

Matt Malone is an expert on freedom of information law with the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. He told the Sun that while the request for a screenshot is atypical, it’s legally valid, as the concept of what counts as a government record evolves with time.

“This is the cat-and-mouse with FIPPA,” the law that governs freedom of information, Malone said. “Things move toward channels where they don’t have to be transparent, where they can maintain secrecy, and that way they can avoid accountability. It’s part of the purpose of using the apps.”

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The Office of the Provincial Land and Development, which now employs Cook, refused to relay a request for comment. Mayor Olivia Chow’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

jholmes@postmedia.com

This photograph taken on 11 January, 2021 in Toulouse, southwestern France, shows the logo of Signal mobile messaging service. Photo by Lionel BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images filesSIGNAL’S MIXED

For an app that has been associated with staying out of the news, Signal has made a lot of headlines.

The messaging app isn’t very different from similar platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat or Discord. However, Signal’s encryption is prized by some users, and it’s the first selling point on the app’s website, signal.org.

“State-of-the-art end-to-end encryption — powered by the open-source Signal Protocol — keeps your conversations secure. We can’t read your messages or listen to your calls, and no one else can either,” the website says.

Matt Malone, a Balsillie fellow with the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, specializes in freedom-of-information law. He said politicians and government officials use apps like Signal for the same reason as anyone else – “because they want privacy.”

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“But when you’re a government official or an elected official, the zone of privacy shrinks considerably,” he said. “The legislation is being rendered utterly useless because you’ve got these people who are just saying, ‘Well, we keep something to document the business decision,’ but that’s a trust-me approach, right?”

Signal has been a hot topic in government circles. Last year, a senior U.S. official used it to discuss sensitive details about striking military targets – and a journalist was mistakenly included in the chat.

More recently, the use of Signal to organize attempts to obstruct the operations of immigration agents in Minnesota has reportedly prompted an FBI investigation.

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Malone said while Signal is grabbing headlines right now, the broader issue goes back more than a decade.

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“The function of having these apps on your phone is to have conversations that disappear in a very short timeline, usually a timeline that’s shorter than the period in which the government must respond to a freedom-of-information records request,” he said.

“You can’t prove what you don’t know, you can’t ask for what you don’t know, and the way governments deal with this stuff is they sort of draw these distinctions.”

Some communications such as texts or emails are seen as a “transitory record” — something not truly involving the business of government, Malone said, and therefore not necessary to be archived.

The problem is while that’s true for a lot of records, it can be used as “a kind of catch-all … to justify” withholding something a government doesn’t want to get out, Malone added.

“They say these are transitory records,” he said, “so they don’t keep them. There’s no review going on. There’s no oversight.”

City official used app in violation of policy: Complaint

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