Ontario civil | Elections
FINANCES
Financial agent not permitted to extend deadline for filing nomination campaign return
Application by financial agent for nominated candidate in next federal election to extend deadline for filing contestant’s nomination campaign return. Under Canada Elections Act, financial agent’s failure to provide nomination campaign return was offence that was punishable by fine and imprisonment. Financial agent stated that her failure to file return was due to inadvertence or honest mistake of fact in that she believed that it would not be required and that only after the filing deadline did she learn that nomination campaign return had to be filed. Motion dismissed. To disregard requirement that application to extend deadline be filed with chief electoral officer, and two-week limitation on making application to court to seek extension of deadline imposed by Act, would be inconsistent with presumption that Parliament avoided superfluous or meaningless words. Both pre-conditions were not intended to be ignored.
D’Agostino v. Elections Canada (Mar. 6, 2015, Ont. S.C.J., M. Faieta J., File No. CV-14-518251) 251 A.C.W.S. (3d) 83.
