A court decision handed down this morning rejected attempts to prevent a compliance audit of the campaign election donations of Mayor Di Ianni and three city councillors. Justice Anton Zuraw was not convinced by their lawyers' arguments that the court action by Dundas businesswoman Joanna Chapman should be halted.

Jeffrey Levy, lawyer for the Mayor, had tried to persuade the judge that Chapman should not be allowed to begin an audit request until sometime after March 1 next year - the date by which Di Ianni is required to make his third and final submission revealing additional donations and expenses he has collected since June.

Chapman's lawyer Eric Gillespie had countered that such a delay was unreasonable and would make the law absurd because the Municipal Elections Act disallows laying charges more than a year after a person obtains knowledge of the apparent violation of the Act.

Zuraw said he saw merit in both sides of the argument, but that he was not convinced to dismiss Chapman's appeal. However, he suggested that his ruling to allow it to proceed could be revisited by the judge assigned to hear the case. The four appearances so far before Zuraw, plus one more scheduled for December 9, are all preliminary to the actual hearing.

Zuraw announced that Justice Timothy Culver will hear the case. Culver is the Regional Senior Judge for the Central West Region of the Ontario Court of Justice. A meeting between him and the various lawyers in the case is set for next Wednesday morning to work out a trial date.

The potential duration of that trial erupted as an issue in the court today. Levy argued for a lengthy trial because he plans to cross-examine witnesses including Chapman. Gillespie countered that this was not appropriate in an appeal of the city council decision. Zuraw left that decision up to the new judge, but noted that allowing Chapman to be questioned would also open the way for Di Ianni and other candidates to be called to the witness stand.

Council candidates were allowed to receive campaign donations up until the end of December last year for the November 2003 election. They then had to file sworn statements of their donations and expenses by March 31 of this year, but some, including Di Ianni, also obtained permission to continue fundraising until the end of this year to cover deficits in their campaigns. Levy argued that that extension meant no citizen could challenge the donations of those candidates until after they finished fundraising and made final submissions.

Chapman reviewed all the March 31 submissions and identified dozens of apparently illegal donations to Di Ianni and eight other candidates including councillors Tom Jackson, Bill Kelly and Terry Whitehead, as well as defeated candidates Anne Bain, John Best, Marvin Caplan, Peter Martin and George Morasse. Chapman asked city council to order compliance audits of each in order to determine if the law had been broken.

Council denied that request in July, and Chapman has appealed their decision to the court. Zuraw noted that the council appeared to be concerned about the cost of the audits and about sitting in judgement over their colleagues, but that they failed to discuss the merits of Chapman's allegations.

Di Ianni filed a second submission at the end of August covering donations he received in the first half of 2004. A CATCH investigation found seven additional instances in this filing of apparent violations of the Act, including three donations from the same company totalling more than the $750 limit.

Earlier CATCH coverage of the compliance audit requests and court appearances can be found on the CATCH website.