BACK TO COURT NEXT WEDNESDAY AT 9 am.

Once again I'm in the dark as to what exactly is going to happen next Wednesday (February 24) in Provincial Offences Court, 77 Queen St. Kitchener. The last court date was January 6, 2016 and we were advised by the Crown prosecuter, Mr. Alexander Andres, that he was sending the case to an independent, outside prosecuter. My recollection is that Mr. Andres did not specify the exact reasons for so doing although I personally feel that similar to the Todd Cowan case, regional politicians should not be investigated by regional police and perhaps in a similar vein a regional politician (mayor Shantz) should not have the decision to prosecute her made by a local, regional prosecuter. None of this is to imply any impropriety or even any clearcut conflicts of interest. However when it comes to conflicts of interest it does not have to be a direct pecuniary conflict but rather the appearance of a conflict of interest can be equally as important. This fine point is totally lost upon persons of lesser perception such as a municipal clerk, municipal CAO and the Region of Waterloo's Compliance Audit Committee (MECAC).

Mayor Shantz is facing ten Municipal Election Act charges. Several of them I would refer to as straightforward and routine contraventions of the Act. Simply put she failed to include all her Contributions and all her Expenses by the March 27, 2015 filing deadline for her Financial Statements. On a larger scale is her failure to provide the mandated Audit which is part of her Financial Statements. She has also failed to include many more expenses and contributions by the deadline, although with significant coaching from me she has managed to "discover" them months after the deadline and include them in some of her followup Financial Statements.

Here is where things get a little sticky. There is some as yet unexplained evidence that would suggest that the mayor may have known prior to the March 27/15 deadline that her Financial Statements were not in order yet she did not fix them. If that is proven true then that is a much more serious matter. Also as I posted here twelve days ago (Feb. 4/16) there is the not insignificant matter of her failing to include more undeclared expenses after four Financial Statements, two MECAC hearings and one Superior Court hearing. MECAC Chair Carl Zehr pointedly asked her on the record last October 29/15 if there were ANY more either major or minor election expenses that she had not declared. She said no! Woolwich Township have taperecorded this entire meeting and currently they are desperately wondering if anybody else did the same thing.