Town of Oakville
Nav Nanda
Ward 7 town and regional councillor Nav Nanda's campaign finances will be audited to see if she properly disclosed her spending in last fall's municipal election.
But the newly elected councillor says the investigation will show that she did nothing wrong.
"We maintain that all campaign expenses were properly recorded and that any audit will only confirm the accuracy of Ms. Nanda's financial disclosure," says a written statement from Nanda and her lawyer.
The town's Municipal Election Compliance Audit Committee ordered the audit after considering a complaint from resident Gobinder (Gobe) Randhawa.
That complaint accused Nanda of failing to accurately report expenses related to her website, her phone and internet use, and several campaign-related parties during last October's municipal election.
Randhawa's lawyer argued that Nanda under-reported her spending by more than $7,000.
"Gaps identified in the candidate's financial statement warrant a compliance audit," said Vikram Singh.
Read more: Ward 7 councillor accused of violating election finance rules
Under the Municipal Elections Act, candidates are required to file financial statements outlining how much they spent on their political campaign, as well as who gave them money.
During a nearly three-hour online meeting on August 1, the compliance audit committee heard from lawyers representing both Randhawa and Nanda, then went into a private session to consider the complaint.
The committee returned to public session to order the audit, noting that a written decision would soon be issued and posted on the town's website.
"The committee is of the opinion that expenses related to website hosting were not accurately reported in the financial statement," said chair Evan Read.
The committee did not specifically address other areas of Randhawa's complaint, which are outlined and responded to in documents attached to the meeting agenda.
But Jack Siegel, a partner and election lawyer with Toronto law firm Blaney McMurtry, said the upcoming audit would investigate anything related to the campaign's financial management that the auditor thinks is appropriate to consider.
He said the auditor will provide a report to the committee offering an opinion on whether violations of the rules appear to have taken place.
"It's very uncommon to find none," said Siegel. "It's a complex, convoluted set of rules and often things are found that are less than earthshaking."
The committee will receive the auditor's report in a public meeting and offer both the complainant and councillor a chance to respond. It will then decide if prosecution under the Provincial Offences Act is appropriate.
"In a lot of cases, the committee says no, it's not significant enough to warrant the public expense and bother, it's not in the public interest to do this, and that's the end of the story," says Siegel.
If the matter is sent to trial and Nanda was to be found guilty, Siegel notes that she could be removed from her seat and barred from holding any municipal office in Ontario until after the 2026 election.
However, a judge could also conclude that the offence was inadvertent or not knowingly committed, he added.
Election night party was actually family Diwali gathering, Nanda claims
Nanda defeated incumbent Ward 7 councillor Pavan Parmar in last fall's election after losing to her in 2018 by a 79-vote margin.
Randhawa, who made the complaint against Nanda, is married to Parmar's former campaign manager.
Nanda's lawyer John Carlo Mastrangelo sought to have the complaint thrown out. He argued that Randhawa lives in Ward 6 rather than Ward 7, so he wasn't entitled to vote in the election as required by the legislation.
The committee rejected that interpretation of the legislation. Siegel says it has previously been decided that "an elector means an elector in the municipality, not necessarily in the ward."
Mastrangelo also said that Nanda did not fail to claim expenses for several parties because they were not campaign-related events.
He said an election night gathering at Boston Pizza was actually a family event to celebrate Diwali. Friends and supporters simply dropped by to congratulate Nanda on her win when they heard the news. Her campaign manager was invited to the dinner as a close family friend.
He also said that a breakfast event promoted as an early voting gathering was cancelled because of a lack of RSVPs. Instead, Nanda invited friends and family to meet at her house before heading to vote but did not serve food or coffee and did not incur any costs for the event.
Photos and "a previously written text" about the event were posted to social media by a volunteer as a result of miscommunication, with the posting deleted after the mistake was discovered, Mastrangelo added.
"A campaign finance audit is intrusive; it's costly, and it's time-consuming. It ought to be reserved for cases where there are true credible concerns of campaign finance irregularities and an intention to mislead," he said.
