Ulli Watkiss
Ulli Watkiss has served as the City Clerk for three of Canada's major municipalities, Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton. Prior to her 35+ year career in municipal management, Ulli was a real estate development and municipal lawyer in both the public and private sectors.
Ulli dedicated her career to providing ethical, independent, and impartial advice, counsel and support to enable citizens, elected officials, and the public service, to all play their part in nurturing and maintaining thriving local democracies.
Ulli executed statutory and legislative duties and powers on behalf of the municipalities, Provinces, and citizens she served to deliver fair elections, make government function effectively, and ensure that the information was accessible, at all times adhering to the principles of democracy: integrity, transparency, fairness, openness and accountability. Ulli pursued the development of a flexible, responsive and innovative public service, and provided support to both elected officials and accountability officers so as to enable them to perform their statutory functions in an independent manner. She sponsored the development and introduction of online tools to allow for real time access to city council agendas, reports, decisions and minutes, an online, publicly accessible, expense management and tracking system for councillors, and a training program for city staff dealing with vulnerable and difficult people, developed in conjunction with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto.
During her career she has had to deal with many difficult, litigious and ground-breaking municipal issues: City Council restricting the powers of a sitting mayor; restructuring an election, mid-process, to reduce the size of Toronto City Council from 47to 25 as a result of Provincial legislative intervention; and removing a Councillor from office for election finance transgressions.
Called to the bars of Ontario and Alberta, Ulli has a BA (Hons) in Political Science from the University of Waterloo, an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, an Executive Development Program Certificate from the University of Calgary, and a Master in Business Administration from Athabasca University.
Ulli dedicated her career to providing ethical, independent, and impartial advice, counsel and support to enable citizens, elected officials, and the public service, to all play their part in nurturing and maintaining thriving local democracies.
Ulli executed statutory and legislative duties and powers on behalf of the municipalities, Provinces, and citizens she served to deliver fair elections, make government function effectively, and ensure that the information was accessible, at all times adhering to the principles of democracy: integrity, transparency, fairness, openness and accountability. Ulli pursued the development of a flexible, responsive and innovative public service, and provided support to both elected officials and accountability officers so as to enable them to perform their statutory functions in an independent manner. She sponsored the development and introduction of online tools to allow for real time access to city council agendas, reports, decisions and minutes, an online, publicly accessible, expense management and tracking system for councillors, and a training program for city staff dealing with vulnerable and difficult people, developed in conjunction with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto.
During her career she has had to deal with many difficult, litigious and ground-breaking municipal issues: City Council restricting the powers of a sitting mayor; restructuring an election, mid-process, to reduce the size of Toronto City Council from 47to 25 as a result of Provincial legislative intervention; and removing a Councillor from office for election finance transgressions.
Called to the bars of Ontario and Alberta, Ulli has a BA (Hons) in Political Science from the University of Waterloo, an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, an Executive Development Program Certificate from the University of Calgary, and a Master in Business Administration from Athabasca University.
