Del Mastro loses appeal
Former MP back in jail after Ontario Court of Appeal decision; appeal to Supreme Court of Canada mulled
Former Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro returned to jail in Lindsay on Wednesday after losing a second appeal on election act violations, but his lawyer stated they are now considering an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Scott Fenton, Del Mastro’s lawyer, wrote in an emailed statement to The
Examiner that his client is “very disappointed” with the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision.
“We are actively considering an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada,” he wrote.
The appeal was heard by a panel of three judges; the decision was unanimous.
Ontario Court of Appeal Chief Justice George Strathy wrote the decision, which was released Wednesday.
The other two judges – Justice Mary Lou Benotto and Justice Bradley Miller – agreed with the dismissal of the appeal.
It is the second appeal for Del Mastro, who was convicted of having overspent on his election campaign in 2008 and of having taken steps to cover it up.
He was found guilty in 2014 and was sentenced in 2015 to 30 days in jail and four months of house arrest.
Wednesday was Del Mastro’s ninth day spent in jail.
He spent one night in jail after he was first sentenced, in the early summer of 2016, and was released on bail the following day to file his first appeal.
After losing that appeal in Oshawa court, he was returned to jail for six days before filing an appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
He spent one day in jail in June, as that appeal was being heard in court in Toronto. Then on Wednesday, he was returned to jail when that appeal lost.
At issue is a $21,000 cheque Del Mastro wrote to Holinshed, his voter-calling firm. Fenton had argued before the Ontario Court of Appeal that the trial judge, Justice Lisa Cameron, failed to consider the commercial value of the services he ordered from Holinshed.
The president of Holinshed, Frank Hall, testified at trial that the cheque was meant to cover voter-calling. He also said Del Mastro had asked him to backdate the invoices so it appeared the work had been done outside the election period.
But Fenton argued that the expense shouldn’t count because there was “no way in the world” that Del Mastro had received $21,000 in services from Holinshed.
The trial heard that the firm’s record-keeping was shoddy, so there was no proof of the number of calls made for Del Mastro.
F en ton explained it this way, before the Ontario Court of Appeal: if a candidate spent $100 on lawn signs but only half of those signs were ever planted in people’s yards, then the candidate should only account for half the cost.
But Strathy wrote in the decision that this interpretation doesn’t square with the intent of Parliament.
He wrote that if candidates were to account only for commercial value rather than money spent, keeping track of campaign expenses would be “uncertain, unworkable and impractical.”
“The reporting of election campaign expenses would become a nightmare if these sort of calculations were required,” he wrote.
“The auditing and investigation of expenses for hundreds of candidates across the country would be impractical, time-consuming and expensive. Instead of being simple and transparent, the reporting, auditing and disclosure of election expenses would be confusing and opaque.”