Dean A. Del Mastro | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament forPeterborough | |
| In office 2006–2014 | |
| Preceded by | Peter Adams |
| Succeeded by | Maryam Monsef |
| Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada | |
| In office 2011–2013 | |
| Succeeded by | Paul Calandra |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1970-08-16)August 16, 1970 (age 54) Peterborough, Ontario |
| Political party | Independent Conservative(2013–2014) |
| Other political affiliations | Conservative(2006–2013) |
| Spouse | Kelly Del Mastro |
| Residence | Peterborough |
| Alma mater | Odette School of Business (University of Windsor) |
| Profession | Used Car Dealer |
Dean A. Del Mastro (born August 16, 1970) is a formerCanadian politician. He representedPeterborough in theHouse of Commons of Canada as a member of theConservative Party from January 23, 2006 until November 5, 2014. He resigned from parliament after being convicted of breaking the Elections Canada Act during the 2008 election. He had previously served as theparliamentary secretary to thePrime Minister of Canada and theMinister of Intergovernmental Affairs.[1]
Del Mastro was born to anItalian Canadian family inPeterborough, began high school inLakefield, and graduated from theAdam Scott Collegiate and Vocational Institute. He graduated from theOdette School of Business at theUniversity of Windsor and holds an Honours Bachelor of Commerce degree.[citation needed] The Del Mastro family founded an automobile dealership that now sells RVs.[2][3][4]Del Mastro had been a supporter of theLiberal Party of Canada, but he has said he became disillusioned with the party after the1993 federal election.[5]
Del Mastro won the Conservative nomination for Peterborough over six other contenders in May 2005, defeating former party nominee James Jackson by only eight votes on the final ballot.[6] He was elected in the2006 federal election, narrowly defeating hisLiberal Party opponent. The Conservatives won aminority government in this election, and Del Mastro entered parliament as abackbench supporter ofStephen Harper's administration. He was re-elected with an increased majority in the2008 election, as the Harper government increased its seat total but fell short of amajority.
He was appointed as parliamentary secretary to the minister of Canadian Heritage on November 7, 2008.[7] According to his website, he was also the parliamentary secretary to theminister of Sport.[8] He was theparliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.[1]
After the 2006 election, Harper charged Del Mastro with coordinating the Conservative Party's outreach toLebanese Canadian voters.[9] Del Mastro planned to participate in a parliamentary delegation to theMiddle East organized by theNational Council on Canada-Arab Relations in August 2006, during the period of the2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. He withdrew from the trip at the last minute, and there are conflicting reports as to the reasons for this decision.[10] Some charge that the Prime Minister's Office pressured him not to participate in a trip that would challenge the government's pro-Israel line, although Del Mastro denied this and cited security concerns.[11]
Del Mastro spoke against aprivate member's bill introduced by LiberalMember of ParliamentMassimo Pacetti in 2010 that called on the government to issue an official apology for the internment ofItalian Canadians inWorld War II. Del Mastro argued that the bill was poorly drafted and could leave the government vulnerable to lawsuits, and said that most Italian Canadians were satisfied with an informal apology issued byPrime MinisterBrian Mulroney twenty years earlier.[12] The bill was approved by the House of Commons, without Conservative support.[13]
In 2007, Del Mastro lobbied the Harper government to reopen a passenger train service link from Peterborough toToronto that was cut byVia Rail seventeen years earlier. He estimated that the track upgrades would cost $150 million and that the service would be used by nine hundred people daily.[14] In February 2008,Finance MinisterJim Flaherty announced that his government would reopen the line. Although locally popular, this plan was widely criticized as impractical, improperly planned, and designed for political gain. Some editorials noted that the line would travel through several Conservative ridings, including Flaherty's own.[15] A 2010 study commissioned by the provincial and federal governments estimated that capital costs for the project would run between $541 million and $1.5 billion. Del Mastro criticized these figures and accused the study's creators of bias, while acknowledging that the project would probably not move forward if assessed solely on the basis of that one report.[16] In 2011, Del Mastro promised that the first passenger train would leave Peterborough on July 1, 2014.[17]
Del Mastro has also led a non-partisan House of Commons Rail Caucus and has lobbied for a high-speed link connecting Toronto,Montreal, andOttawa.[18]
Del Mastro is asocial conservative. In 2006, he supported an unsuccessful government motion that would have reopened the parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage (which has been legal in Canada since 2005).[19] He has also taken part inanti-abortion rallies onParliament Hill, including one organized by theCampaign Life Coalition in 2007.[20]
Del Mastro was charged as being responsible for the Conservative response to theRobocall scandal.[21] He has called the robocall scandal "baseless smears."[22] He has asked Elections Canada if it had leaked details around the robocalls. Elections Canada replied such an accusation was smearing Elections Canada by indicating that details of the robocall scandal were purposefully leaked.[23]
In June 2012 Elections Canada was investigating Del Mastro for overspending during the 2008 elections. The investigation surrounds a payment of $21,000 made by a personal cheque to Ottawa-based polling firm Hollinshed Research Group for which Del Mastro was not reimbursed, exceeding his personal spending limit of $5,000. Del Mastro has insisted he has not broken any election law and claimed that the $21,000 cheque was for a riding-mapping software called GeoVote that Holienshed intended to launch, and not for telephone calls to constituents during the campaign.[23][24][25]
In June 2013, Del Mastro, speaking in Parliament and protected fromdefamation law, accused Frank Hall, a witness in the Elections Canada investigation, of having "concerning details" in his background that required investigation.
Del Mastro was charged by Elections Canada with four breaches of the Elections Canada Act on September 26, 2013. The charges carried a maximum penalty of five years in jail with a $5,000 fine.[26]
On October 31, 2014, Justice Lisa Cameron of theOntario Court of Justice found Del Mastro guilty of violating the Canada Elections Act by overspending his elections limit and attempting to cover up the violation.[27][28][29] As a result of the convictions, Del Mastro resigned in a speech to theHouse of Commons on November 5, 2014.[30][31][32] Del Mastro was scheduled to be sentenced on January 27, 2015.[33][34]
During the sentencing hearing held on January 27, 2015, Dean Del Mastro's new lawyer argued that the judge should set aside the previous election overspending guilty verdicts.[35] On February 18, 2015, Justice Cameron dismissed Del Mastro's application for amistrial.[36][37] He was scheduled to be sentenced on February 19, 2015.[38][39][40]
At a hearing on 23 February 2015, prosecution lawyer Tom Lemon stated that Del Mastro's activities "were planned and deliberate and involved a high degree of sophistication". He asked for a sentence of at least nine to twelve months. "Mr. Del Mastro does not seem to get the consequences of his actions—or the seriousness of those actions."[41]On June 25, 2015, Justice Lisa Cameron, calling Del Mastro's crimes an "affront" to Canadian democracy, sentenced him to a month in jail, four months'house arrest, and 18 months' probation.[42] She also banned him from holding any public office while serving his conditional sentence, and from running federally for a period of five years.[43] Del Mastro appealed the conviction.[44] On 13 September 2017, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld his convictions, dismissing his appeal.[45][46] Leave to appeal to theSupreme Court of Canada was refused on April 5, 2018.[47][48]
Del Mastro was a Conservative representative on the House of Commons Ethics Committee in 2007 and took part in the committee's work on the controversial business dealings betweenKarlheinz Schreiber and Brian Mulroney.[49]
In 2009, he spoke against a proposal that would have allowed Canada's broadcasters to bill cable and satellite companies for transmitting their signals.[50]
In 2012, Del Mastro claimed in the House of Commons that the Liberal Party used an American telemarketing firm during the 2011 federal election when it was in fact a Canadian company. It was later revealed that his own campaign was one of 14 Conservative Party campaigns to enlist the services of Ohio-basedFront Porch Strategies.[51] Del Mastro maintains that none of these activities are tied to the so-called "Robocalls" controversy.
In 2012, veteran CBC parliamentary reporter Kady O'Malley wrote a scathing article accusing Del Mastro of going "in camera" too often thereby contradicting his own party policy of openness and transparency.[52]
While addressing criticism of the digital locks provision within proposed copyright legislation under Bill C-11 (formerlyC-32, andC-61 andC-60 before that), Del Mastro compared format-shifting to the act of buying socks from a retailer, only to return later and take a pair of shoes without paying.[53]
On October 28, 2014, in aFacebook posting, he made allegations of sexual blackmail against an unnamed member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery.[54]
WhenJohn Tory resigned as leader of theProgressive Conservative Party of Ontario in 2009, Del Mastro was briefly rumoured as a candidate to become his successor.[55] Nothing came of this, and he later announced his support forChristine Elliott's candidacy.[56] Elliott is the widow of Del Mastro's former Tory colleague in the House of Commons the former Finance Minister the lateJim Flaherty.
In March 2013, New Democratic Party MPCharlie Angus called on Prime MinisterStephen Harper to remove Del Mastro from theCanadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Del Mastro has missed 26 consecutive meetings since June 2012. Prior to his last meeting in June theOttawa Citizen revealedElections Canada was investigating Del Mastro for alleged campaign overspending during his 2008 re-election campaign. Del Mastro's annual salary is $173,565 but does not include extra pay for sitting on the committee.[57]
After his conviction, Del Mastro was sentenced to one month in jail, of which he served the night of June 25, 2015, before being granted bail pending an appeal to be heard in 2016.[58] As part of his sentence he was banned from politics for five years, therefore Del Mastro could not run in the2015 federal election.
On April 5, 2016, Del Mastro's appeal was dismissed by Ontario Judge Bryan Shaughnessy.[59] Justice Shaughnessy called the former Conservative MP's contravention of election spending limits and deliberate attempts to avoid detection a "grave offence," and ordered Del Mastro to serve the balance of his original sentence.[59][60]
Del Mastro ran for deputy mayor ofCavan Monaghan in the2022 municipal elections, but lost.
| 2011 Canadian federal election:Peterborough | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Expenditures | |||
| Conservative | Dean Del Mastro | 29,393 | 49.67 | +2.27 | $89,982.35 | |||
| New Democratic | Dave Nickle | 14,723 | 24.88 | +10.96 | $44,675.03 | |||
| Liberal | Betsy McGregor | 12,664 | 21.40 | -10.20 | $76,896.98 | |||
| Green | Michael Bell | 2,105 | 3.56 | -3.35 | $2,858.90 | |||
| Independent | Gordon Scott | 189 | 0.32 | – | $202.50 | |||
| Canadian Action | Michael Bates | 104 | 0.18 | – | none listed | |||
| Total valid votes/expense limit | 59,178 | 100.0 | $95,207.51 | |||||
| Total rejected ballots | 170 | 0.29 | +0.01 | |||||
| Turnout | 59,348 | 65.31 | +1.99 | |||||
| Eligible voters | 90,870 | – | – | |||||
| 2008 Canadian federal election:Peterborough | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Expenditures | |||
| Conservative | Dean Del Mastro | 27,630 | 47.40 | +11.50 | $111,988 | |||
| Liberal | Betsy McGregor | 18,417 | 31.60 | −0.77 | $83,805 | |||
| New Democratic | Steve Sharpe | 8,115 | 13.92 | −11.76 | $47,973 | |||
| Green | Emily Berrigan | 4,029 | 6.91 | +1.86 | $10,235 | |||
| Marxist–Leninist | Elaine Couto | 98 | 0.17 | none listed | ||||
| Total valid votes/expense limit | 58,289 | 100.00 | – | $92,567 | ||||
| Total rejected ballots | 164 | 0.28 | −0.04 | |||||
| Turnout | 58,453 | 63.32 | −6.34 | |||||
| Electors on the lists | 92,317 | |||||||
| Conservativehold | Swing | +11.6 | ||||||
| 2006 Canadian federal election:Peterborough | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Expenditures | |||
| Conservative | Dean Del Mastro | 22,774 | 35.90 | +3.98 | $80,784 | |||
| Liberal | Diane Lloyd | 20,532 | 32.37 | −11.18 | $68,799 | |||
| New Democratic | Linda Slavin | 16,286 | 25.68 | +6.67 | $61,606 | |||
| Green | Brent Wood | 3,205 | 5.05 | −0.47 | $7,949 | |||
| Marijuana | Aiden Wiechula | 455 | 0.72 | none listed | ||||
| Independent | Bob Bowers | 179 | 0.28 | none listed | ||||
| Total valid votes/expense limit | 63,431 | 100.00 | – | $86,008 | ||||
| Total rejected ballots | 207 | 0.33 | −0.01 | |||||
| Turnout | 63,638 | 69.66 | +4.47 | |||||
| Electors on the lists | 91,361 | |||||||
| Sources:Official Results, Elections Canada andFinancial Returns, Elections Canada. | ||||||||