NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED OR A PREEMPTIVE STATING OF THE FACTS UPFRONT

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail which may well have been sitting there for a few days it being Christmas time and all. It was from Elections Ontario and in fact was addressed to the local candidate for last June's provincial election who I had agreed to be the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for. This candidate, a personal friend and environmental colleague, ran for a much lesser known party and knew he had a snowball's chance in hell of even coming close to winning but he supported their platform and thus ran for them. Unlike municipal elections, provincial elections insist upon a Chief Financial Officer to be named for each candidate. I was asked and immediately said that I was not an accountant or a lawyer nor was I familiar with provincial election law. My friend said something like: Alan you weren't familiar with municipal election rules and laws but you immediately made monkeys out of the Woolwich Clerk, incoming mayor and a multi term councillor. Well first off that wasn't the purpose of my looking into their election finance statements. I saw what I believed were some pretty basic and obvious significant errors and decided that I would do a little research to confirm that indeed Sandy, Scott and Mark had messed up badly. Now credit must go to Dr. Dan Holt as he was the one who started the ball rolling with Scott Hahn's absolute mess of a Financial Statement. If that was an attempt on Scott's part to deceive then he must have been told not to worry that they are a formality and that nobody will check them. Oops.

Anyway last summer while I was in the process of filling out my friend's provincial Financial Statement, I advised him that I wouldn't be doing these forms in a rush because it was important to do them as carefully and accurately as possible because I knew that somebody would be checking them, plus if anything went wrong there would be a bevy of irate local politicians just looking for the opportunity to jump all over me, especially. Hence I took my time, read all the instructions, checked and double checked each and every addition, subtraction and calculation to ensure accuracy. Despite my care and attempt to do an excellent job nevertheless I had them signed by me and returned to the candidate literally months before the deadline in December 2018. He advised me that he wouldn't be directly sending them to Elections Ontario but instead to the Party Auditor who apparently was to check all the candidates forms over before sending them to Elections Ontario. That surprised me but as I had returned the forms, to the best of my knowledge properly and accurately completed, to the candidate literally months before the deadline I understood that my duties had been completed.

The Elections Ontario letter has arrived and communications are already underway between the candidate and the Party. Supposedly reassurances have been given by the Party to the candidate but I just have a funny feeling on the back of my neck. Somebody, somewhere has messed up. The question is how strict are the provincial laws? Believe me the Municipal Election Act is a complete joke and farce. With probable bad intent, incompetence and every error being a self-serving one, all three municipal candidates walked from the consequences. Yes they suffered some embarrassment but even that they somewhat mitigated by having their friends involved in the so called investigative process. With good intent, serious and honest effort and absolutely zero self-serving errors made, the candidate and his CFO (me) should have no difficulties. Let's see how this shakes out.