Elections Ontario urged by watchdog to investigate candidate’s husband

CAMBRIDGE — A national democracy watchdog says Elections Ontario should investigate whether the husband of Cambridge’s new PC candidate broke the rules around election financing.

Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher thinks the provincial election agency should be asking questions about the role Jim Karahalios played in his wife Belinda Karahalios’ campaign to win the Cambridge nomination on Saturday.

Karahalios is registered as a so-called “third party” — a legal designation for special interest groups intended to regulate political advertising — in the June 7 election. Ontario’s election laws prohibit third parties, which can spend up to $600,000 in a campaign, from colluding with candidates.

“I think he should be investigated,” Conacher said. “I would hope Elections Ontario would say ‘yeah, you colluded with her. You worked directly on the same issues, and that’s collusion.’”

Jim Karahalios insists he did nothing wrong, and was only exercising his “constitutional rights to speak, campaign and volunteer.”

Belinda Karahalios won the nomination by just 13 votes, leaving some local Tories to grumble about the amount of money she seemed to be spending on mail-outs and other advertising in the final weeks of the nomination race. But the new candidate dismisses concerns about her husband’s third party status as a partisan ploy by the Liberals. She said she was grateful for the trust of PC members and looked forward to winning the election in Cambridge.

“As for your concern about the rules — I think that’s a question for Elections Ontario — but this seems like yet another desperate attack from the Liberals,” Karahalios said, in an email.

It was in the middle of Saturday’s vote that the Liberal Party of Ontario sent out an email accusing Jim Karahalios of breaking the rules around election financing.

When first asked about the third party issue, Jim Karahalios threatened to sue The Record if it reported on the Liberals’ claim.

“Voters don’t have concerns with the PC win on Saturday as it was an ‘open, public and democratic’ nomination. The only people who have showed concern are the Liberals, because they know Belinda is going to turn Cambridge PC blue come election time,” he said. “I spent nothing on political advertising as a “third party” during Belinda’s campaign and so the rules don’t even come into play.”

David Clark, executive director of the Liberal party, said they’d be raising their concerns with Elections Ontario “given we now have a nominated candidate who is the spouse of a registered third party.”

Conacher argues Elections Ontario needs to take any alleged infractions of the rules seriously. The laws governing third parties play a critical role in democracy.

“Political parties and candidates have spending limits in order to make elections more fair and democratic,” he said. “If you allow them to partner with interest groups, or other third parties, and spend more than other candidates, it makes the campaign unfair and undemocratic.”