Hampstead Fired Whistleblower Who Made Corruption Claims

Hampstead’s director of communications was fired after reporting her employers to Quebec’s anti-corruption task force.

In a November 2021 email to her bosses, Laurie Kezas claims there was “manipulation” in the town of Hampstead’s awarding of an $85,000 contract to rebuild its website. She also alludes to overcharging by the contractor and payments for work that never materialized.

Perhaps most shockingly, Kezas wrote that when she had previously told her bosses about the irregularities, they punished her for it. The email ends with a stark warning: 

“As required by the Code of Ethics, I contacted the appropriate authorities: Commissaire à l’intégrité municipale et aux enquêtes (CIME), Unité permanente anticorruption (UPAC), Autorité des marchés publics (AMP). Investigations are in process.”

Kezas was fired less than a month later. 

The former communications director promptly sued her employer for wrongful termination and won an out-of-court settlement last winter. 

Until now, the terms of Kezas’ dismissal were covered by a non-disclosure agreement and were unknown outside a small group of lawyers and upper management at the town of Hampstead. But amid growing allegations around Hampstead’s toxic workplace culture and misuse of public funds, sources inside the town leaked a cache of emails to The Rover that outline Kezas’ concerns and Hampstead’s response.

Hampstead is an on-island suburb of Montreal with a population of 7,000.

In an email to The Rover, the town of Hampstead denied any connection between the firing of Kezas and her status as a whistleblower. Kezas refused to comment on, confirm or deny any of the allegations she brought forth in 2021, citing the non-disclosure agreement.

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If the director’s dismissal was connected to her denunciation, Kezas’ firing is a violation of the province’s whistleblower protection law. Under the law, penalties for reprisals against whistleblowers range from $15,000 to $250,000.

“First of all, reprisals for having denounced a reprehensible act are, for us, unacceptable,” said Mathieu Galarneau, spokesperson for UPAC, Quebec’s anti-corruption task force. “(The law) clearly states ‘it is forbidden to exert reprisals against a whistleblower or against anyone collaborating with an investigation into a reprehensible act.’”

In a series of emails unfolding over a six-month period in 2021, Kezas identifies problems with the $85,000 contract Hampstead signed with an outside firm to rebuild its website. The contract, she repeatedly argues, was more than triple the price of three bids Kezas sourced from companies that have done similar work for the City of Westmount and other municipalities.

There was, according to internal emails, a $10,000 charge for animated videos that never materialized. Later, when the town needed a digital calendar on its site, Kezas offered to deal directly with Hampstead’s content management system, WordPress.com, to buy a plug-in for $200. Her boss insisted she pay the web design company $3,000 to do the work. In another email to her superiors, Kezas writes that she believes Hampstead may have been double-billed by the firm.

In June of 2021, just after Kezas rang the alarm, she was still in her six-month probationary period as the newly hired communications director. After she emailed Hampstead’s director general Richard Sun with questions about the contract, he moved to extend her probation by three months.

In theory, extending Kezas’ probation period made it possible to fire her without cause. But in practice, things were about to get messy for Sun and the town of Hampstead.

Bill Steinberg, mayor of Hampstead at the time, worried that action might leave the town exposed to a wrongful termination lawsuit. In a June 26, 2021 email to the council, Steinberg called the extension of Kezas’ probationary period “highly questionable if not outright illegal.”

“There is not one single negative note, email, or letter about (Kezas’) performance from Richard (Sun),” the email reads. Quoting the town’s own legal counsel, Steinberg said the chances of Hampstead succeeding in the event of a wrongful termination lawsuit were “almost nonexistent.”

“(Kezas) has sent us what she has done in the past six months, and she has backup emails from numerous staff with whom she has worked singing her praises,” Steinberg’s email reads. “She has given us objective statistics proving how effective her work has been.”

Ignoring Steinberg’s warnings, the town’s councillors adopted a resolution to extend Kezas’ probationary period during a council meeting the following month. Even so, Kezas continued pressing her employers about the website contract and other apparent irregularities, providing them with a report of her findings on Oct. 18, 2021.

After that didn’t yield any change, she reported her findings to UPAC, according to a source at the anti-corruption task force. A spokesperson for the town said that it would be wrong to imply Kezas’ communication with UPAC led to her firing.

“The Town of Hampstead can confirm that the information you referenced regarding the reason for Ms. Kezas’ termination is incorrect,” wrote Sarah-Eve Longtin, Hampstead’s communications director. “However, as this pertains to a human resources matter, and in keeping with our commitment to confidentiality and due process, the Town is not in a position to provide further comment.”

Ultimately, UPAC did not investigate the use of public funds at the town of Hampstead, but the Commission municipale du Québec (CMQ) did.

The CMQ found that Sun committed “reprehensible acts” by using Hampstead’s credit card to fund trips to Disney World, Las Vegas and other lavish spending, according to a report published in January 2024. 

Sun resigned last year following the CMQ’s report.

Though Sun’s firing isn’t connected to the website contract, Kezas told her colleagues she believed he punished her after she started looking into it, according to multiple emails reviewed by The Rover. The employee overseeing the website contract, Thierry Houle Gingras, was a close associate of Sun’s who had previously worked with him at the city of Côte-Saint-Luc. When Sun was hired as Hamsptead’s director general, he brought Houle Gingras with him.

Kezas’ only defender on council, Mayor Steinberg, lost his bid for re-election to Jeremy Levi in 2021. During Levi’s first council meeting as mayor, in Dec. 2021, the town adopted a unanimous resolution to terminate Kezas’ employment. 

Though none of the claims outlined in Kezas’ emails were tested in court, the town’s lawyers rushed to make her lawsuit disappear, with Hampstead paying tens of thousands of dollars to their former communications director in exchange for her silence.

With municipal elections set for November, Mayor Levi is facing growing pressure to act on allegations about a toxic workplace and management bonuses more than doubling under his watch. Steinberg confronted Levi at a June 9 town hall meeting, badgering him with questions about 40 per cent pay raises for councillors before someone called 911 on the former mayor. Police removed 77-year-old Steinberg from the premises.

Since Levi took over, the town has twice paid to have an outside firm investigate claims of psychological harassment at Hampstead and even paid a security firm to re-investigate Richard Sun after the damning CMQ report. Levi has insisted he’s a good steward of public finances and reminded voters that he donates the entirety of his mayor’s salary to local charities. 

During a meeting of the city’s on-island mayors last week, a constituent of Levi’s asked him to comment on The Rover’s investigation into allegations of racism, psychological harassment and misuse of public funds at the town of Hampstead.

Levi remained silent.

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