GRACE SUDDEN TO THE RESCUE AGAIN ?

Recently Breslau residents were witness to two former Woolwich Councillors stepping up for their community. Both Bonnie Bryant and Grace Sudden stepped up and spoke out on behalf of their community regarding the proposed sale of parkland to the Catholic School Board. Both former Councillors felt that the best interests of the community lay in not selling their beloved and well used parkland.

Now it appears as if in a more subtle fashion, Grace Sudden may have also stepped up in her role as a member of the Municipal Election Compliance Audit Committee (MECAC). This committee has certainly been taken to task by yours truly over their mishandling and egregiously biased decisions regarding two current Woolwich Councillors. Councillor Hahn was found to be in contravention of approximately seven different Municipal Election Act rules by the forensic audit done by Froese & partners. Despite this MECAC chose to not send him to the courts for possible prosecution. Considering the severity of the violations and the questionable, after the fact, paper trail of receipts and invoices, that decision was unsupportable.

Similarily MECAC abandoned all pretense of independence and nuetrality with their mockery of their role to order a Compliance (forensic) Audit if any contraventions of the Municipal Elections Act even reasonably appear to have occurred. In fact mayor Shantz admitted at the first MECAC public meeting last July 2/15 that she had violated the rules by failing to file an audit, accepting an overdonation from a corporation and of miscalculating her total Contributions (donations) by nearly three thousand dollars. Despite these and other later proven and admitted contraventions MECAC twice refused to do their duty and order a forensic audit of the mayor's Financial Statements.

I have claimed both bias and conflicts of interest with a number of MECAC members. Indeed one member to his credit voluntarily chose not to attend the last MECAC meeting (October 26/15) after being called out by two citizens for his alleged conflict of interest. Now it appears that Grace Sudden actually has added more evidence to my claim that MECAC were biased to the point that they were essentially operating as an arm of Woolwich Council which by definition includes mayor Shantz. I mean really it now appears, thanks to Grace, that MECAC are in fact no more than a typical, totally under the control of Council, committee of Council.

All of us who have been members of committees of Council like to think that we are independent. We absolutely are not. As long as we follow what Council wants and supports, everything is good. Simply look at how this Council treated, maligned and abused the Chemtura Public Advisory Committee last year. The old Council supported CPAC, the incoming one did not. The new Council knew they had no legitimate grounds for dismissing them, so they made up the grounds and got away with it because afterall they do totally control their own allegedly independent committees.

The amateurishly written and sadly inaccurate MECAC Minutes of October 26/15 are posted on Woolwich Township's website.
Page 5 at the bottom and page 6 at the top, tell the tale. Grace Sudden had seconded the Motion dismissing my Application starting with "Whereas the Municipal Election Compliance Audit Committee (MECAC) of the Township of Woolwich...". Grace Sudden then asked for clarification that MECAC represented all the area municipalities not just Woolwich. Chairman Carl Zehr responded that while "..the Committee was jointly created by all the municipalities in the Region of Waterloo, however individual cases were handled by the affected municipality. The wording in the first sentence was correct.". Therefore thanks to Grace and Carl we have clarification that MECAC are no more than a bunch of political appointees under the direct authority and control of the local municipality. They are not independent and they are no more honest or ethical than the municipality in charge of them.