[2] His father owned a real estate agency and a restaurant and co-started Ottawa/Algonquin Travel with Lowell Green, while his mother was a homemaker.
[5] At age 16, while attending St. Pius X High School[6] in Ottawa, Chiarelli formed the Ontario Students Alliance for Fair Funding (OSAFF) to fight for the equality that was promised in the Canadian Constitution.
OSAFF launched a legal challenge against the Government of Ontario’s treatment of separate schools and convinced Ian Scott, a prominent Canadian lawyer, to represent them in court.
As a result, Premier Bill Davis announced a change in the Province’s century old policy and granted full funding to separate schools.
Chiarelli, who had been a leading opponent of amalgamation, faced long-time Councillor Al Loney in what was thought would be one of the tightest election battles of the year.
His campaign focused on improving police and fire services in his ward and a desire to keep property tax increases to a minimum.
[14] He was again easily re-elected in 2014, an election which made him the longest serving city councillor (including his time on Nepean council).
During the campaign, he spoke out against illegal rooming house conversions and his ward becoming a "party scene" student ghetto for Algonquin College.
[19] Also, five women claimed they heard Chiarelli making inappropriate comments in the workplace, including a joke repeatedly told about "needing to sanitize one of the office desks because a former employee had had sex on it with another councillor".
[20] In response, Chiarelli issued a statement denying all the allegations: "This situation has reached a level of seriousness, and has adopted what I can only describe as an apparent ‘mob-mentality’ approach to the inaccurate characterization of past events, where I need to write this to step forward and defend my good name, reputation, and three decades of public service, irrespective of any potential adverse health consequences".
[4] The Commissioner found that Chiarelli's behaviour qualified as harassment under the City's policies by "...exploit[ing] the power dynamic of the situation, in which the Respondent held out the possibility of employment, to sexualize the discussion and questions in a manner that was upsetting and unacceptable" and that "such a comportment by an elected public office holder deeply harms the public interest and seriously damages the trust covenant with the citizens who elect them".
[4] By the end of the month, City Council voted to implement the recommended 270-day pay suspension, at the maximum allowed ceiling of 90 days per incident.
[24] On November 20, 2020 the second report was published and recommended Chiarelli be removed from all committees and have an additional six month's pay withheld for "incomprehensible incidents of harassment" against staff.
[30][31] In response to Kulhanek's post, several additional women came forward revealing inappropriate messages they received from Chiarelli.
On December 22, 2021, the Ontario Divisional Court ruled on Chiarelli's application for judicial review in respect to the July 2020 report and suspension.
[24][33] On November 4, 2022, the City's Integrity Commissioner published a third report on Chiarelli, finding that he had used the power he held as an employer to bully and harass a younger female staffer who worked in his office from 2013 to 2015 in violation of the Council's Code of Conduct.