Judge drops charge against city councillor
Grimes had been accused of improperly filing $26,000 in 2014 campaign expenses
A judge has withdrawn a Municipal Elections Act charge against Mark Grimes in connection with the Toronto city councillor’s 2014 campaign expense statement.
The non-criminal charge, laid in November 2018, accused the councillor for Ward 3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore of improperly filing $26,000 in campaign expenses after his successful 2014 re-election campaign.
Invoices for polling and research done by the firm Campaign Research about the race in Grimes’s ward were sent to developer Dunpar Homes, and not properly reflected in the audited campaign statement that Grimes filed after the election, police said at the time.
Council candidates are subject to strict campaign limits to ensure fairness and must officially account for their election spending.
If the case had proceeded and Grimes had been found guilty, he could have been fined or banned from running in the next two municipal elections. Campaign Research has said it has no record of the invoice being sent or paid by Dunpar, which has denied any wrongdoing.
“The Crown is in possession of evidence to suggest that during the 2014 Toronto municipal election, that the campaign of Mark Grimes received the benefit of polling data from a company called Campaign Research that was not claimed on his financial statement or auditor’s report,” assistant Crown attorney Michael Wilson told a Toronto court Monday.
“The Crown, however, is not in position to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Coun. Grimes personally requested or received this data, or that he deliberately failed to report the receipt of that data (when) filing his financial statement and auditor’s report,” Wilson said.
Justice Karen Erlick of the Ontario Court of Justice then withdrew the charge.
Grimes did not attend Monday’s hearing, but said in a statement, “From the beginning, I have maintained that there was no wrongdoing on my part.”