HAS THE WOOLWICH OBSERVER KNOWINGLY PUBLISHED INACCURATE INFORMATION?

Today's Woolwich Observer carrys a brief story in regards to last Monday's court actions involving Councillor Scott Hahn. Mr. Hahn is facing four charges under the Municipal Elections Act laid by a private citizen namely myself. The charges are Sections 89(h), 89(m), 92(5)(a) and 94. Essentially these charges allege that Mr. Hahn furnished false or misleading information, filed documents (Financial Statements) that were incorrect and that he contravened multiple provisions of the Municipal Elections Act namely Sections 69(1)(d), (e), (f), (g), (l), (m). These "apparent contraventions" are all spelled out clearly and in detail on pages six and twelve in the August 11,2015 "Compliance Audit Report For the Township of Woolwich Re: Scott Hahn". This report was prepared by Froese Forensic partners and the $12,000 cost paid for by Woolwich Township.

Today's Woolwich Observer has published a story titled "Adjournment until Nov. 14 in latest legal challenge for Hahn". In it the following sentence caught my attention: "A review and forensic audit found that while the councillor's initial paperwork was inadequate, the problems weren't significant enough to pass the file over to the provincial court for legal action.". Really?

This sentence is simply inaccurate and false on a number of points. Stating that the "initial" paperwork was inadequate implies that his followup paperwork was adequate. If that was the case then why does the forensic audit on page six have a Paragraph (2.8) titled "Apparent Contraventions-Initial Financial Statement and then on page twelve a Paragraph (3.36) is titled "Apparent Contraventions- Amended Financial Statement? While both these Paragraphs have four separate apparent contraventions listed the second one in regards to Mr. Hahn's Amended Financial Statement, filed months later, has new ones including suggesting that companies owned by Mr. Hahn's family members may have also contravened the Municipal Elections Act.

The Observer's sentence above in my second paragraph also states that "...the problems weren't significant enough...". I'll get to that inaccuracy in a moment. Another problem is the start of that sentence namely "A review and forensic audit...". Wow that is lumping the conclusions of the review namely MECAC (Compliance Audit Committee) along with the conclusions of the independent forensic auditor Froese. MECAC had a plethora of excuses, reasons and inappropriate criteria which they used to refuse to send the Audit and Mr. Hahn along to the courts. They included his alleged lack of bad intention, his age and inexperience as well as even attempting to pre-judge what any decision of the courts might be. The Forensic Audit absolutely made no such statement regarding sending or not sending Mr. Hahn on to the courts. They simply laid out the apparent multiple contraventions.

To my knowledge and I attended the MECAC hearings MECAC did not say that Mr. Hahn's contraventions "weren't significant enough to send over to the provincial court for legal action." They did give a litany of reasons for not doing it some of which I've stated above and I and other citizens attending generally found them to be excuses versus appropriate and proper reasons.

Now the final point. If the Woolwich Observer published this article without doing their due diligence in regards to its' accuracy then I could only say "To err is human". However that is not the case. I read this sentence (my second paragraph above) two days ago when it was on-line at the Observer's website. After I called the reporter Liz Bevan I was advised of two things. Firstly the on-line version could quite quickly be amended and secondly that she was taping our conversation. During our conversation I as carefully as I could pointed out the errors in that particular sentence. I then asked Liz if she had any questions or any difficulties with what I had just advised her. She said no. Hence you the readers can see why I have asked the question in the title to today's posting and included the word "knowingly".


P.S. I saved the above posting rather than publishing it until I had gone out to Lazer Video to pick up today's copy of the Observer. Lo and behold they have made one tiny but significant change on their printed version. They have removed the word "initial". This I had advised Liz Bevan (Observer) as per my third paragraph above. Good. That's a start. Now I believe you also need to correct your other errors in your article.