DOES THE MECAC SCAM CONTINUE?

In a nutshell, likely it does. This is the issue with provincial legislation affecting lower tier municipalities. There is little or no enforcement and in fact it's essentially lip service compliance. Even when formal complaints are made the attitudes and biases of the politicians are readily apparent.A huge part of the problem is the municipal clerks. While they are allegedly somewhat responsible to the relevant provincial legislation, in fact they are hired and promoted to their jobs as Clerks by the municipal council. They can also be fired by the municipal council so who do you think they pay the most attention to?

Last evening's Woolwich Council meeting discussed Terms of Reference for the Municipal Election Compliance Audit Committee or MECAC. That is the same bunch of biased, incompetent, politician loving folks who messed up so badly here in Woolwich during 2015. They utterly failed to remove Sandy Shantz from the mayor's chair after I demonstrated that she had failed to file an Auditor's Report with her Financial Statement. She inaccurately kept her expenses below $10,000 thus avoiding the mandated need for an Audit. Unfortunately her bookeeping skills weren't up to the task as I readily found thousands of dollars of unreported and or inaccurately reported expenses. To this day she still hasn't formally reported all of them, contravening the conditional reinstatement to the mayor's chair given by Justice David Broad of Superior Court in Kitchener. This is why I occasionally refer to her as the pretend mayor of Woolwich Township. I wonder when would be the best time to pull the plug on her?

Page 1 of 6 (pages 30-35) in last evening's Agenda gives some indication of how nearly automatic MECAC granting of a formal, independent Audit should be. It appears as if they can only deny one in the most obvious and egregious cases which is exactly the opposite of what occurred with Sandy Shantz. She went to the first MECAC meeting admitting many of her faults and failures and improperly resubmitting her Financial Statement and new Audit to MECAC. They did not have the authority to accept it late but they did so anyway. They also failed to immediately advise all and sundry that she was now automatically removed as mayor of Woolwich. That took my doing a few days later. The Clerk also screwed up royally in not immediately removing Sandy from the mayor's chair.

Page 3 of 6 also indicates how each municipal clerk can cherry pick their own representatives from the Regional pool of MECAC reps when an Application for a formal Audit has come to them. What a scam. It's like judge shopping in effect, whereby the accused would be allowed to pick a judge who he feels is soft on whatever his particular crime is.

Page 4 of 6 discusses Conflict of Interest issues. Again what a scam. Instead of a real conflict of interest policy it narrows it down to pecuniary conflicts of interest only. Therefore apparently it's just dandy for MECAC reps to be personal friends or political or business colleagues etc. of the politicians they are investigating. Again what a crock!

All in all after serious study I can assure you that the system isn't merely weak, it is broken.