Former Tory MP Del Mastro jailed for cheating on expenses
Was once PM’s parliamentary secretary
— Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro was taken by police van Thursday from the courthouse in his hometown of Peterborough, Ont., to a maximum-security jail, ferrying him into history as the first former member of Parliament imprisoned for violating Canada’s election law.
Del Mastro, 44, was sentenced Thursday to one month in jail for overspending on his 2008 election campaign, breaking his own spending limit, then filing a false campaign report.
Ontario Court of Justice Judge Lisa Cameron said Del Mastro bears a high “moral culpability” for the spending and his “significant attempts” to hide it.
“He was prepared to be deceitful about it,” she said, calling the offences “an affront to the principles of our democratic system (that) must be regarded as quite serious.”
Del Mastro began serving his sentence immediately, but could be released on bail, pending an appeal of the guilty findings, at a hearing Friday morning.
The jail sentence marks a stunning fall for the former parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
At the height of his career, he sat on the House of Commons ethics committee and regularly defended the Conservative Party in question period on allegations about the illegal robocalls sent to voters in the 2011 election.
But Thursday, a flushed and shaken Del Mastro was led from the courtroom by police while his wife, Kelly, and other family looked on.
Cameron additionally imposed a second one-month jail sentence to be served concurrently with the other and a four-month conditional sentence of house arrest, followed by 18 months of probation.
Del Mastro must also repay $10,000 the judge said he owed the Peterborough Conservative riding association.
In October, Cameron found Del Mastro hid the costs of voter contact and get-out-thevote calls made for his campaign in the riding of Peterborough by paying the supplier, the now-defunct Holinshed Research, with a personal cheque for $21,000.
Had the amount been properly included in his election spending report, his campaign would have exceeded its legal spending limit.
He was also found guilty of breaking the personal campaign cap of $2,000 and of filing a false return with Elections Canada to conceal the overspending.
Del Mastro’s official campaign agent, Richard McCarthy, 68, was given a two-month conditional sentence of house arrest and 12 months of probation for his role in the offences. He may not serve as an official agent for five years.
Cameron said Thursday it wasn’t possible to know if the spending affected the outcome in the 2008 election, which Del Mastro won easily, but that this wasn’t material to the sentence. “Cheating is cheating,” she said. Del Mastro’s lawyer, Leo Adler, said his client was disappointed by the sentence.
“I think it’s a shock to anybody who has gone through their life without a single criminal blemish to all of a sudden be told that you have to go to a jail,” he said.
Adler’s appeal cites what he contends are numerous errors in the way Cameron considered evidence at trial.
Crown prosecutor Tom Lemon had suggested a sentence of nine to 12 months in jail, but said he was satisfied that Del Mastro will serve time behind bars.
“Given the nature of the conduct here, I think anything short of jail was not appropriate,” Lemon said outside the court.