Del Mastro out of jail
Supreme Court of Canada receives application for leave to appeal elections overspending conviction
Former Peterborough Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro was released Thursday from the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay following his appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada on his conviction for overspending on his election campaign in 2008 and taking steps to cover it up.
Del Mastro applied to the Supreme Court of Canada for leave to appeal on Sept. 15. The court has replied with a letter acknowledging receipt that was issued Sept. 18.
Scott Fenton, Del Mastro’s lawyer, wrote in an emailed statement to The Examiner that his client was released from jail Thursday morning on bail and is not on house arrest.
Del Mastro had went back to jail Sept. 13 after his appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal was unanimously rejected by a panel of three judges.
He spent nine more days in jail, on top of one day when he was first convicted, in the early summer of 2016, another six days after losing his divisional court appeal, plus one more day while his Ontario Court of Appeal appeal was being heard.
Del Mastro was found guilty in 2014 and was sentenced in 2015 to 30 days in jail and four months of house arrest.
After spending his first night in jail, he 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 the appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal.
He also spent one other day in jail in June, as his Ontario Court of Appeal appeal was being heard in court in Toronto.
At issue is a $21,000 cheque De 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.
Fenton 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, 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.”