MORE UNDECLARED EXPENSES UNEARTHED FROM MAYOR SHANTZ'S ELECTION

These previously unreported and unknown election expenses as defined by the Municipal Elections Act (MEA) were discovered by myself shortly before Christmas. Fortunately I found them hiding in plain sight prior to my scheduled and appropriate and proper meeting with the judicial authorities and hence was able to pass them along. That said I can understand some of the obstacles in the path of sucessfully prosecuting these MEA charges. They are procedural and they are real.

On October 26, 2015 at the last MECAC meeting Chairman Carl Zehr put it to mayor Shantz directly. Far more directly than the inaccurate (& dishonest?) Draft Minutes posted on the Woolwich Township website indicate. Chairman Zehr categorically and clearly asked mayor Shantz if there were any remaining expenses, major or minor that she had to date failed to declare in her Amended and Supplementary Financial Statements. Mayor Shantz just as categorically and clearly stated that she absolutely had not omitted any expenses from her latest election campaign financials.

At that final MECAC meeting, the MECAC members repeatedly put it to me to come up with yet more and more undeclared expenses by mayor Shantz. I repeatedly made it very clear that the threshold for them to order a forensic audit was my reasonable belief of but one contravention of the MEA. The onus was not on me to prove anything. The onus was not on me to find multiple contraventions of the Elections Act as I had prior to the July 2/15 MECAC meeting and then continue to find further contraventions with each and every new Financial Statement that either the courts (Superior) or MECAC allowed the mayor to refile. This was the scam that MECAC pulled on me and the public with the able assistance of Woolwich Township throughout the process. Those parties twisted beyond all recognition the initial responsibility of the candidate (mayor Shantz) to provide a full and complete Financial Statement and Auditor's Report by the March 27/15 filing deadline. They came up with all kinds of irrelevant excuses, deflections and distractions as a smokescreen to avoid ordering a forensic audit.

These currently undeclared expenses by mayor Shantz are substantial as in several hundreds of dollars more. While her expenses already exceeded the $10,000 threshold (for an audit) even before any of her subsequently completed privately done audits; the obvious problem from the very first Financial Statement she submitted back in February 2015 was that she has never filed a full and complete Financial Statement. This I pounded home to MECAC, over and over, and told them that the only possible way to learn exactly how much she received in donations and how much she spent, was through an ordered Forensic Audit. A Forensic Audit compared to her privately done audit is the difference between a jet fighter and a rubber band airplane.

In approximately 25 1/2 hours I will be at Provincial Offences Court 77 Queen St. Kitchener. At that time I will learn the fate of the current ten MEA charges laid against mayor Shantz. It is out of my hands until then.