Former mayoral candidate faces charges
Far-right activist Faith Goldy charged with seven counts of breaking campaign finance rules
Faith Goldy, the far-right figure who finished a distant third in Toronto’s 2018 mayoral election, faces seven charges over her campaign finances that could result in fines of up to $25,000 each.
Goldy, whose controversial past includes promoting white supremacy, is scheduled to appear in court April 12 on the charges laid by the city under the provincial Municipal Elections Act, a city spokesperson confirmed.
Charges against Goldy include, failing to report all campaign expenses; failing to report all campaign contributions; accepting donations from people not entitled to make them; donating, with her husband, more than allowed to her own campaign; accepting donations outside the campaign period; and failing to ensure all donations went into her election campaign bank account.
If convicted, she could face fines of up to $25,000 per offence. The act provides for possible jail terms for those found to have knowingly broke the act, or who engaged in intentional “corruption,” but legal observer say that’s extremely rare.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
Asked for comment Wednesday, Goldy’s lawyer, Julian Heller, said, “We are continuing to defend Ms. Goldy on these charges.”
At a hearing last year, Goldy urged members of a city committee to find that any errors she made were in good faith. Instead, they asked a prosecutor to review an auditor’s findings and that led to the charges she faces now.
Goldy got 25,667 votes in the October 2018 election that was won by John Tory with 479,659 votes. Her campaign happened a year after she appeared on a neo-Nazi podcast and one year before she was kicked off Facebook and Instagram over “white nationalist sentiments.”
During her campaign she crashed campaign events to which she was not invited, promising to expel “illegal immigrants” from Toronto’s shelter system and to monitor the finances of mosques.
She begged for funds in online videos, including an appeal for money “from defenders of democracy worldwide” to pay for a failed lawsuit trying to force Bell Media to broadcast her campaign ads.
“The money is going to my account, not my campaign’s, so it’s a wide-open field,” she said in the video, which was noted by the cityhired auditor who found that Goldy failed to disclose more than $150,000 in campaign donations, illegally accepted donations from non- Ontarians and improperly mixed her personal and campaign finances.
Goldy was also accused of not cooperating with the campaign finance audit that was triggered by a complaint from Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
An emotional-sounding Goldy told the committee in February 2022 that her accounting errors were made “in good faith” arising from her lack of experience and oversight, She vowed to rectify them and refund any illegal donations.
Goldy added she hadn’t been in public life for two years and did not plan to seek elected office again.
“I am a wife, wholly devoted to my private life who wishes to close the chapter surrounding my campaign’s compliance in a way that respects — I mean this — and preserves the integrity of Toronto’s electoral process.”
On Wednesday Jack Siegel, the lawyer who represented Balgord at the committee meeting, called the charges “pretty significant.”
Goldy did not run in the 2022 mayoral race and has given no indication she intends to contest the June 26 byelection triggered by Tory’s shock resignation.
That doesn’t mean extreme views won’t be aired during the campaign.
Chris “Sky” Saccoccia, an antivaccination campaigner and conspiracy theorist, who has called accounts of the Holocaust “fake,” recently announced he plans to run for Toronto mayor.