Toronto mayor Rob Ford will suspend an appeal attempt and go ahead with a financial audit of his campaign expenses, he announced Thursday in a release.
The city's compliance audit committee originally decided to proceed with an audit of Ford's election campaign in May 2011 after citizens Max Reed and Adam Chaleff-Freudenthaler filed a 17-page audit request that claimed Ford spent almost $70,000 more than allowed in a municipal election.
The Municipal Elections Act allows up to $1.305 million in campaign spending.
Ford's lawyers appealed the initial audit request, and asked the court to conduct a new hearing under the Municipal Elections Act, which permits any elector to request an audit of the elections campaign.
This would have allowed Ford to present new evidence.
However, the judge scheduled to hear the appeal decided that the Municipal Elections Act does not require a new hearing. The first available court dates for a new hearing would not have been until the end of 2012, according to the release.
"It now appears that the way to have this matter addressed fully without delay is to proceed with an audit," Ford said in the release.
Ford said he will fully co-operate with any city-appointed auditor.
"Everything during the campaign was done in good faith with the intention of complying fully with election law," he said.
Chaleff-Freudenthaler sent out a release Thursday, saying his organization, Fair Elections Toronto, is pleased that Ford withdrew his appeal.
"We note that it comes almost a full year after an audit was ordered and on the heels of multiple judgements in other Ontario courts that made it abundantly clear that no court would side with the legal arguments advanced by the mayor to oppose an audit," said the release.
Fair Elections Toronto said it hopes the audit will now begin "within a matter of weeks."
