Rival candidate says long-time councillor ‘cheated’ in the last municipal election, Canada Reviews

Coun. Frances Nunziata’s campaign “cheated” in the 2022 election, according to Chiara Padovani, who ran as a candidate for Ward 5–York South-Weston two years ago but came in second place to Nunziata. The statement comes in the wake of a city integrity commissioner’s report released last Wednesday, which found that Nunziata’s campaign improperly used constituent emails in her 2022 re-election campaign.

“I just found out that Councillor Frances Nunziata’s campaign cheated in the last election – the one I lost by 94 votes,” Padovani stated in an X post on Monday, providing an editorialized summary of the Integrity Commissioner’s report and some of her thoughts.

In her video, Padovani said that when she first decided to run for office, every political insider told her it’d be “impossible.” She says it was an even greater uphill battle than she expected since the commissioner’s report found that Nunziata’s campaign “broke the rules” during the election.

“Obviously, it makes me wonder what the election results would have been had the councillor followed the rules since it was so close,” Padovani said in the X video.

In a report by Jonathan Batty, the city’s Integrity Commissioner, constituent email addresses in Ward 5 (reportedly obtained from Nunziata’s chief of staff in 2022) ended up on campaign mailing lists without their express consent. Some of these residents were emailed asking for their votes in the upcoming election, which violated two articles in the council’s code of conduct.

“Before the 2022 municipal election, when constituents signed up for Councillor Nunziata’s e-newsletter, they were told it would only be used by the City Hall office for e-newsletter distribution,” the report stated.  “When constituents share their personal information with their member of Council, they expect it will be used only for the purpose it was provided. If due care is not exercised, it erodes public trust.”

“The unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information by governments, businesses or other organizations is an important public concern.”

The report added that Councillor Nunziata “had no intention to mislead” the Integrity Commissioner’s office and that Nunziata “did not know the truth” until Batty’s investigation revealed it.  Nunziata accepted Batty’s findings and is reportedly taking steps to apologize to her constituents and the complainant directly.

“Councillor Nunziata accepts that she and her office did not exercise due care and has undertaken to review the policies and guidance governing the management of constituent contact information with her staff and undertake the training available to prevent this from happening again. I encourage all members of Council, and their staff, to do so.”

Batty is recommending that city council vote to formally reprimand Nunziata at the council meeting on Wednesday.

Still, some of Padovani’s supporters believe that the improper use of emails may have given Nunziata an edge in the election.

“Stealing data in that way from a private company would generally be grounds for termination with cause,” one X user stated. “Morally, I don’t see why it should be any different in this instance although legally it may be. It’s also entirely plausible that having access to that quantity and type of private data would allow the campaign to have swung the result by 96 votes.”

As for Padovani—she said that when she lost the election by 94 votes, a lot of people told her she should have gotten a recount and call the whole election into question.

“And I didn’t because I really did believe in the integrity of our democratic and electoral systems,” Padovani said in the X video. “And I still do, but if you ask me today if I still believe that Frances Nunziata won the election fair and square, I mean, I’m going to be honest with you—I’m not sure about that anymore.”