Karygiannis ousted again over election spending
Appeals court overturns decision that allowed councillor to return
Scarborough Coun. Jim Karygiannis has once again been removed from office with the Court of Appeal overruling an earlier decision.
The decision from a panel of three judges was released in writing Wednesday morning after a virtual hearing in the case last month.
Karygiannis, who represents Ward 22 (Scarborough-Agincourt), was first removed from office in November after his campaign financial statement showed he had grossly overspent a strict limit in the 2018 municipal election.
But later that month, a Superior Court judge agreed with the councillor’s lawyer that an error in his campaign paperwork had been made “inadvertently” and that an “absurdity” in the law existed that didn’t allow for relief from that automatic penalty.
Toronto resident Adam Chaleff, a fair elections advocate, challenged that decision at the Court of Appeal. He argued the lower court judge did not have the discretion to return Karygiannis to office under the provincial laws that apply to municipal elections. He also argued that even if the judge was able to reinstate the councillor, he shouldn’t have in this case, calling Karygiannis’ overspending a “blatant violation” of the rules.
The unanimous Court of Appeal decision on Wednesday concluded that while the penalties set out under the Municipal Elections Act were “harsh” in some cases, “forfeiture is clearly what the legislators intended.” The decision noted that had Karygiannis filed his statement earlier and not at the filing deadline, there would have been an opportunity to correct and refile any inadvertent errors.
“Granting relief from forfeiture would amount to rewriting or repealing the statute, revoking the very consequence for breach of the statute that the legislature prescribed,” according to the written ruling.
For those reasons, the judges found the court did not have jurisdiction to reinstate him and therefore the rules under the Act that saw Karygiannis automatically ousted in the first place still apply.
While they didn’t rule on whether reinstatement should have been granted in any case, the judges said they were not convinced the filing showing the excess spending was simply a “clerical error” as Karygiannis claimed.
Karygiannis could not immediately be reached for comment.
Chaleff told the Star Wednesday he felt justified by the decision. “It was a difficult pill to swallow when the Superior Court decided to rewrite, in effect, the Municipal Elections Act and it’s gratifying as a citizen who feels that elections are a really important part of our democratic processes that the Ontario Court of Appeal is upholding some of the must fundamental checks and balances involved in our local elections,” Chaleff said.