Should the mayor be audited? Committee decides Monday

The committee handling a possible compliance audit of Mayor Brian Bigger's election campaign finances will meet Monday.

A recommendation headed to the election compliance audit committee calls for the audit to be handled by the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, which also handles the annual audits of the city's books.

Under Ontario's Municipal Elections Act, all candidates must follow specific election campaign finance rules and file financial statements with the city clerk detailing their campaign finance activities.

Failure to do so can result in penalties ranging from a fine up to $25,000, removal from office or imprisonment.

The request from Bernard Garner for the audit alleges Bigger violated several sections of the Municipal Elections Act. Garner is reportedly a friend of Dan Melanson, who lost to Bigger in the October 2014 municipal election.

Garner alleges the mayor broke the rules in reporting some elements of campaign contributions and expenses. The full details of Garner's allegations can be found here.

The allegations include that expenses and revenue incurred during the campaign weren't reported in the initial filing of expenses, but were added in a supplemental filing.

To whit, a fundraiser at the Ambassador held in October 2014 wasn't reported in the initial filing.

That event was advertised as a $20 a ticket, but in the filing was listed as a “pass-the-hat” fundraiser.

That's significant, because if tickets were sold, donors would have to be listed, and their donations would be subject to donation limits. Not so with pass-the-hat fundraisers.

The Elections Act requires receipts to be given to anyone who donates more than $10, but no receipts were filed for the Ambassador event.

There are also some missing details regarding a fundraiser held Nov. 27, 2014. Specifically, the ticket price and the number of tickets sold. Also, if people at the Nov. 27 fundraiser had already donated the maximum $750 allowed under the Act, they would be in breach of the rules.

Bigger has hired the Toronto-based law firm Blaney McMurtry LLP to defend the case. His full response to the allegations can be found here. 

Bigger's lawyer concedes some errors were made in the filings, but says they were so minor that they don't justify a compliance audit. Lawyer Jack B. Siegel argues that minor mistakes in filings do not require an audit, and that Bigger followed the spirit of election finance rules.

“No additional information is to be gleaned from a compliance audit,” Siegel writes. “Any such exercise would in fact be futile, expensive and redundant.”

The committee meets Jan. 4 at 10:30 a.m. in room C11 at Tom Davies Square.