The Auditor’s Report Agrees: We Caught Faith Goldy Violating Campaign Finance Law

Evan Balgord 
Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Source: YouTube

Faith Goldy, now largely disappeared into digital exile, was a self-proclaimed “propaganda arm” for the alt-right neo-Nazi movement. She guested on a neo-Nazi podcast and recited and defended using the 14 words, a slogan used by the movement for over 20 years to self-identify. Running for mayor of Toronto in 2018, the former Rebel Media personality finished a distant third. Now an auditor’s report has found that Goldy apparently broke election laws, both by accepting donations from supporters outside of the province and continuing to accept contributions and incurred at least one election expense months after election day, and after the deadline for her to do so had passed. 

I filed an official complaint about her campaign finances in 2019, which triggered a hearing. Lawyer Jack Siegel represented us pro-bono in making the complaint (thank you Jack). Goldy, whose real name is Faith Bazos, had plagiarized his published work in her written defence. Goldy was defiant at the hearing, but the committee agreed there was enough evidence to order an audit of her finances

Not only did Goldy apparently seriously violate the Municipal Elections Act, but the audit took so long because Goldy did not cooperate with the audit, and may well have falsified information contained in documentation she provided to the auditor.

Full disclosure: Before founding the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, I worked on Toronto Mayor John Tory’s campaign in 2014, and was briefly a special assistant in his office. The only time I contacted Mayor Tory during the 2018 campaign was when I asked the leading candidates to refuse any public events or debates that would include Goldy, because of her background and what she represented. 

This was never about politics or money, as Faith Goldy claimed during the 2019 audit hearing. It was, and is, about countering neo-Nazis whenever and wherever they try to take up public space.

I think she’s going to face a steep penalty now. But even if she doesn’t, it’s always a good day when we can expose a far-right grifter.

“In my opinion, candidate Faith Goldy contravened the requirements of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 because the prescribed Financial Statement … filed by Goldy was not prepared in compliance with the act and did not reflect her election campaign finances,” said William Molson, the accountant who wrote the report. 

He adds that Goldy “incurred and did not report $86,398.49 in campaign period expenses,” and “accepted and did not report” over $56,000 in contributions from Ontario residents prior to December 31, 2018, as well as over $12,000 more after December 31, 2018.

During the campaign, Goldy apparently accepted and did not report or account for $71,577.94 in contributions, “including contributions from ineligible contributors,” as well as accepting $29,540.06 in 2019, well after the expiration of her campaign period. 

“The Candidate apparently also exceeded the $25,000 limit on contributions that she was entitled to make to her own campaign for the office of Mayor, by $56,388.63.”

At the urging of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Bell Media refused to run ads from Faith Goldy during the 2018 election. She took Bell to court over the decision, lost, and was also ordered to pay Bell Media’s legal expenses. Her legal expenses in the matter (totalling over $83,000) were apparently under-reported in the documents provided by Goldy, who pegged the amount at $25,000.

While fundraising for this legal action, she put out a call “defenders of democracy worldwide,” and she noted that the “money is going to my account, not my campaign’s,” despite also calling the case “Goldy Campaign v Bell Media” during her videos, according to the report. 

As a content creator, Goldy often funded her work and advocacy by asking for money. This ran alongside her appeals for campaign funds. Even a person acting in good faith would probably find it very hard to keep the two separate. Emails included in the report do show her returning donations from outside jurisdictions, but in the same message indicating that personal donations could be made to another email address. 

There will be another meeting of the City of Toronto’s compliance audit committee to review the findings on February 8 – the Canadian Anti-Hate Network will be there to ask the committee to commence a legal proceeding against Faith Goldy.

The City of Toronto should throw the book at Faith Goldy. Not only did she seriously, and, in my opinion willfully, break the rules, she’s a neo-Nazi. That’s reason enough. 

Again, Goldy once called herself the “propaganda arm” of the alt-right neo-Nazi movement. Her history as a font of hateful material – including appearing on a Daily Stormer podcast directly following the deadly 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, and later that year she would appear on another podcast where she cited the 14 words – is required context for the committee to consider.

In August 2017, Goldy told Stefan Molyneux that the alt-right had “robust” and “well thought out ideas” about the JQ, or the Jewish Question - the antisemitic debate over how to handle and treat the Jewish people. 

Her appearance on a neo-Nazi podcast ultimately got her fired by Rebel Media. 

“She had kept hidden from me that she was participating in at least this one explicitly racist, I would even say neo-Nazi [podcast],” Ezra Levant says in an interview with True North. “Of course I’m firing her. It’s not just that she lied to me. You don’t go on a Nazi podcast.” 

Goldy would go on to be banned from major platforms, and went to Telegram, where she called us “evil Jews.” She’s since deleted her online accounts.

The report raises more questions than it answers because Goldy wouldn’t cooperate and, as the report suggests, she may have even falsified records. I think it’s quite possible that she might even have used the campaign to divert money into her personal accounts.

“I expected outrageous and got it,” Siegel told us, remembering a committee meeting that featured not only Goldy, but a series of members of the public who came to cheer and speak on her behalf. Among them was Kevin Johnston, a twice-failed mayoral candidate and Islamophobic streamer who recently was arrested in the United States after fleeing there to avoid jail time in Canada for contempt of court after defying a judge’s order that he stop defaming Order of Canada recipient Mohamad Fakih. 

Adding that he was “obviously optimistic” that the committee will decide to proceed with a prosecution, Siegal said, “I have never, in all the years this process has existed –  and I was involved in one of the very first of these cases some 20 years ago- – I have never seen a report that talks about how uncooperative the candidate was. Now, let me rephrase that. I have never seen a report that says that the candidate was at all uncooperative.” 

p.s. A generous, anonymous donor, is matching all gifts made to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network until the end of January. All proceeds are going towards our toolkit and education program, to help educators and parents stop hate and neo-Nazi groups from grooming and recruiting kids.