The Price of Protecting FailureBy The Hamiltonian Editorial Team
When an employee or a number of employees mistake drains millions of dollars from public coffers, the path forward should be obvious: investigate, establish responsibility, and take decisive corrective action—including termination, if warranted. Anything less is not leadership—it is protectionism.
Failing to remove someone or people, responsible for such a catastrophic error tells every other employee that standards don’t matter, accountability is negotiable, and the cost of failure will be absorbed by taxpayers rather than borne by those at fault. This breeds a culture where carelessness is tolerated, where policies become window dressing, and where the next disaster is only a matter of time.
In the public sector, the stakes are even higher. Money lost is not “the city’s” loss—it is the public’s loss; it is our loss, it is your loss. Every dollar squandered could have repaired a road, funded a shelter, or improved emergency services. Choosing to shield individuals instead of safeguarding the public interest erodes confidence in City Hall, damages the city’s credibility with insurers and partners, and leaves ratepayers wondering whose interests are really being served.
Hamilton’s February 2024 cyberattack is a case in point. The city’s failure to fully deploy multi-factor authentication—a basic security requirement—cost taxpayers millions and led its insurer to deny coverage. This was not a harmless oversight; it was a preventable lapse with enormous consequences. Yet to date, no senior staff member appears to have been removed from their role. The message this sends is clear: in Hamilton, you can preside over a multi-million-dollar loss and keep your job. That is not accountability—it is an abdication of duty.
Consider the impacts of the cyber attack.
- How many people were told that they cannot receive the service they would otherwise expect, or were unduly delayed from receiving the service, on account of the damage the cyber attack has done?How many times have you been transferred to a phone extension, only to learn that the cyber attack had knocked that phone extension out, leaving you to reach a dead end.
- How many times have you been passed a city worker’s business card, only to find that the email address on the card fails?
- How many of our seniors and other vulnerable people have suffered as a result of the degradation in services?
- How long did it take to restore the payroll system? Our sources tell us that some people are still not being paid through a regular system.
- How many others have impacted in ways that we likely cannot imagine?
Message To Mayor Horwath and Each City Councillor: We recognize that as a City Councillor and as the Mayor, you are managing competing priorities and sometimes it is difficult discerning what you should focus on, given limited resources and time. All the more reason to sharpen the focus.
If Hamilton wants to graduate to a city that is approaching a centre of excellence, accountability is a cornerstone. It is proven good statecraft.
Respectfully, we issue a challenge to each of you on behalf of Hamiltonians.
Prioritize and put concerted effort into:
1. Holding people accountable. Particularly when people in position of leadership who are well paid to and expected to deliver, do not. Do it fairly.
2. Insist on and see to it that the City Manager has a formal performance contract that identifies deliverables, measurables against timelines and that leads to fair and prudent performance evaluations.
Prompting this piece, was an email The Hamiltonian sent to Mayor Horwath, City Manager Marnie Cluckie and each City Councillor . See this exchange below:
To: Mayor Andrea Horwath and/or City Manager Marnie Cluckie
The Hamiltonian is writing to address the City’s actions, both taken and planned, in response to the recent cyberattack.
As you know, this incident dealt a severe and lasting blow to Hamilton’s automated systems and processes. The effects are still being felt across the city. Millions of taxpayer dollars have been lost, and the City’s ability to deliver timely and essential services to Hamiltonians has been significantly compromised.
We acknowledge that terminating employees is a difficult decision in any organization. However, given the magnitude of the losses and the now-confirmed failure to properly defend against the attack, accountability at the personnel level is warranted. The City’s own admission that it did not meet a key term of its cyber insurance policy — full deployment of multi-factor authentication across the enterprise — resulted in the insurer denying the claim. There appear to be no valid grounds for appeal.
Clearly, one or more individuals were responsible for ensuring the City’s IT infrastructure met critical security requirements. Such positions are typically well-compensated, with the expectation that those entrusted with this responsibility will deliver. In this case, the failure was costly — not only financially, but in the erosion of public trust.
To restore that trust, Hamiltonians deserve a direct answer:
* How many individuals will be terminated as a result of this gross failure?
* What positions do they hold?
To be clear, we are not seeking names. We are seeking evidence that the City is serious about accountability.
Respectfully, Hamiltonians are weary of platitudes and assurances without consequence. While improvements for the future are essential, the serious lapses that enabled this attack cannot be left without real and visible repercussions.
Response from Ms. Cluckie, presumably on behalf of Mayor Horwath and each City Councillor:
The City of Hamilton takes the cyber incident, its impacts on our community, and our responsibility to protect public resources extremely seriously.
We understand the community’s concerns around accountability, and our leadership team accepts collective responsibility for addressing the gaps identified. While we cannot comment on personnel matters involving past or current employees due to privacy and confidentiality, we are taking decisive action to strengthen our systems and processes.
This was a highly sophisticated attack on an external, internet-facing server that resulted in unauthorized access to City of Hamilton systems. We are rebuilding our IT infrastructure in a financially responsible way, applying lessons learned to further enhance cybersecurity and improve City services.
We remain committed to operating with integrity, communicating openly, and putting residents at the centre of everything we do - demonstrating that commitment through transparency, accountability, and the consistent delivery of high-quality service to our community.
The Hamiltonian, from time to time, will have an automated dispassionate system analyze replies for the presence of "spin doctoring". In past decades, much was accomplished by using spin doctoring techniques. The technique proved effective in distracting the public from the real issues and deflecting. These techniques do not work at The Hamiltonian, and we respectfully call them out where employed, We also question the tax dollars spent to produce spin doctored pieces, in place of real answers. The following is a dispassionate analysis of the response provided by Ms. Cluckie on behalf of Mayor Horwath, herself and your city councillor:
OVERALL SPIN SCORE: 8.4 / 10
Brief Summary & Assessment:
Marnie Cluckie’s response is a polished example of institutional spin:
Avoids addressing the core accountability question—Were any individuals disciplined or removed?
Invokes privacy unnecessarily, when names weren’t requested.
Shifts blame to the complexity of the attack.
Focuses on improvements, but avoids responsibility for the specific, known failure (lack of MFA deployment).
Leverages values language without measurable commitments or transparency.
Verdict:
This is high-level bureaucratic spin: expertly crafted to appear responsive while saying almost nothing concrete. Hamiltonians asked for evidence of accountability. They received an eloquent deflection.
