Former Toronto councillor Georgio Mammoliti committed four potential breaches of Ontario's campaign finance laws during the 2023 mayoral byelection, an audit of his campaign said.
The audit was requested by Toronto resident Kevin Wiener and completed on Nov. 26, after Toronto's compliance audit committee agreed to order it earlier this year.
Delta Consulting Group's audit report pointed to several apparent contraventions of the Municipal Elections Act in relation to the byelection, where Mammoliti placed 13th in the race to become mayor.
The former councillor garnered 1,105 votes, or 0.15 per cent of the popular vote.
The auditors said that Mammoliti:
- Failed to file audited financial statements for his campaign
- Contributed $4,900 in cash to his campaign, well above the $25 limit on cash contributions
- Exceeded contribution limits to his own campaign by about $35,000, when campaign expenses paid by him and contributions are combined
- Paid for campaign expenses totalling about $15,000 on his personal Visa card (expenses are all supposed to be paid by the campaign directly) that were not reimbursed to him by the campaign
Wiener said he undertook the audit request because from watching the campaign it appeared obvious Mammoliti spent more than the $10,000 cut off that requires candidates to file an audited financial statement.
"I filed complaints for any candidate in the last byelection who didn't file a statement and where there was evidence that they were clearly running a campaign and incurring expenses," Weiner explained in an interview with TorontoToday.
"It was clear he spent more than $10,000 on his campaign, but he never filed a statement. So I felt, just for the purposes of transparency, that an audit should be ordered to determine what happened on this campaign, how much was spent."
Mammoliti had a long career in Toronto municipal politics, having been first elected to the former North York council in 1995, and then to the amalgamated Toronto council between 1998 and 2018. Previously, he served a term as an Ontario MPP in former premier Bob Rae's NDP government, though his political positions later shifted more to the populist right.
After 2018, his political career faltered: he moved to Wasaga Beach and ran unsuccessfully for mayor there in 2022.
Following his Toronto mayoral loss last year, he was nominated as the People's Party of Canada's candidate in Simcoe—Grey.
"I don't know what was going through his head,” Wiener said of Mammoliti’s failed mayoral bid.
“I don't know what the plan was. Certainly, he was not successful in making himself one of the seriously considered candidates for mayor in a pretty crowded field."
"I think incumbency is a hell of a drug, and he was an incumbent for a long time, until Ford slashed council in half," Wiener added. Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 council cut led to Mammoliti’s long-held ward being dissolved. He placed second in the race for a nearby ward.
For his part, Mammoliti blamed the media for his lacklustre 2023 result.
“My campaign imploded when the media determined that they would not want me as a part of the core mayoral candidate group," he wrote in an emailed statement. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that after an almost 30-year career in politics, that I would have been shut out the way I was by media."
In 2014, Mammoliti pled guilty to election finance violations and paid a fine. The same year, in a separate matter, Toronto council docked him three months' pay for improper fundraising at an event in Woodbridge.
After his Wasaga Beach run, Simcoe County's compliance audit committee found he had violated election law by accepting a donation from outside the country but decided the breach was too minor to justify prosecution.
"On the one hand, obviously he has demonstrated a past willingness to fail to comply,” Wiener said. "On the other hand, you would think, having gone through that whole process, it would have taught him a lesson and he would have been more careful."
Mammoliti blamed his failure to file audited statements on an inability to find an auditor.
"I could not find an auditor to do my books. But legally you have to submit an audited statement, and because I could not find that auditor, I had no choice, I could not submit an audited statement. Therefore, finding myself in this position,” he told TorontoToday.
"Most qualified auditors I did talk to, said that 'they wanted to get paid.' The campaign had no funds to do that."
Wiener argued it isn't difficult to find an auditor.
"This is not Giorgio Mammoliti’s first rodeo. He has run, you know, in a dozen municipal elections. He's been a sitting city councillor. He's run for mayor multiple times. He knows what's required. He knows how one gets an auditor."
Delta Consulting Group's report will now be submitted to Toronto's compliance audit committee.
