Dundas businesswoman Joanna Chapman has agreed to drop her demand for compliance audits of some city council candidates in exchange for the candidates admitting receipt of improper election donations. Councillors Bill Kelly, Tom Jackson and Terry Whitehead, and defeated candidates George Morasse and Peter Martin have accepted Chapman's offer, which has also been extended to Marvin Caplan, Anne Bain and John Best.
"All the candidates acknowledged inconsistencies in their election donations," said Chapman's lawyer Eric Gillespie, "and they have agreed to correct these problems."
While discussions are still ongoing, it appears likely that the only audit request that Chapman will pursue is of Mayor Larry Di Ianni's campaign finances. She has cited more than 30 apparently illegal donations to his campaign that were revealed in his March financial submission. CATCH has found several more similar problems with Di Ianni's August filing.
The allegations of improprieties against the other candidates involved less than five donations to each. Chapman identified the costs of the court action as a factor in her decision. "None of them have said I'm wrong", she pointed out, "but this is costing me, the candidates and the courts far more than the amounts of their over-contributions."
Chapman originally asked city council to do an audit of the campaign finances of the mayor, three councillors and five defeated candidates. When council refused, she appealed to the courts. But what was supposed to be a simple procedure of asking a judge to rule on Chapman's appeal has instead become a legal quagmire with seven of the candidates obtaining intervenor status in the case.
Peter Martin readily admitted problems with his donations, but Caplan and Morasse, and lawyers for DiIanni, Jackson, Kelly and Whitehead, have spent the fall arguing that Chapman's appeal should be stopped. And though the court has ruled against their objections, these preliminary matters have already occupied parts of six days in the courts. Last month the candidates' lawyers asked for ten more days to be set aside for the actual court hearing itself.
The developments call into question the viability of the Muncipal Elections Act procedure. The Act was established to provide a simple process for citizens to get answers about questionable donations. While the legislation takes away the right of an elector to simply lay charges, the citizen is empowered to ask council to order a formal audit to determine if any election financing rules may have been broken.
That's what Chapman did, but city councillors were reluctant to "sit in judgement" over their colleagues, even though most agreed that an audit was needed. The Act offered Chapman the right to appeal to the Ontario Court of Justice. And that's when the legal bills started to pile up.
The fact that Chapman is the first to test the law has played a part in the legal wrangling. Both the courts and the lawyers are moving gingerly as they explore new legal territory.
The appeal is scheduled to resume on February 7 before senior regional Justice Timothy Culver. Earlier CATCH coverage of these matters can be found on the CATCH website including:
