{"id":124305,"date":"2022-10-26T09:30:38","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T13:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/rwddev\/?p=124305"},"modified":"2022-10-26T09:36:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T13:36:55","slug":"crown-withdraws-charges-against-graydon-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/crown-withdraws-charges-against-graydon-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Crown withdraws charges against Graydon Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Less than 24 hours after losing his bid to become mayor of Bracebridge, Michael Opara has had his private charges against former Mayor Graydon Smith withdrawn by the Crown.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 14px;\"><strong><broadstreet-zone zone-id=\"45658\" keywords=\"\" soft-keywords=\"true\" zone-alias=\"\"><\/broadstreet-zone><\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>On October 25, a federal Crown for the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General concluded that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction for any of the private charges brought against the Town of Bracebridge; former Mayor Graydon Smith; Chief Administrative Officer Stephen Rettie; or Director of Public Works Geoff Carleton by Michael Opara. Accordingly, the Crown has intervened in the prosecution and, pursuant to s.32 of the Provincial Offences Act, has withdrawn all charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On June 21, 2022, Opara filed a private information against the Town of Bracebridge, former mayor and heads of staff accusing them of the mistreatment of Blanding\u2019s turtles, an at-risk species, by performing grading work on Peace Valley Road in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ontario Ministry for the Attorney General conducted an investigation to review Opara\u2019s allegations and found that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction. It was determined that it could not be proven that the Town\u2019s road grading activities harmed a species at risk or its habitat. Furthermore, the Ministry determined that there was insufficient evidence that Blanding\u2019s turtles were present in this area.<\/p>\n\n\n<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\">Don\u2019t miss out on Doppler!<\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Sign up <a href=\"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/dont-miss-out-on-doppler\/\"><u>here<\/u><\/a> to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories.<br \/>\nLocal news in your inbox so you don&#8217;t miss anything!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a style=\"background: #5cb85c url('https:\/\/d1iczxrky3cnb2.cloudfront.net\/red_logo.png') no-repeat 37px; color: #fff; text-decoration: none; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; padding: 15px 38px; padding-left: 75px; -webkit-border-radius: 2px; -moz-border-radius: 2px; border-radius: 2px; box-shadow: 0 1px 0 0 #1f5a89; text-shadow: 0 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.3);\" href=\"https:\/\/donorbox.org\/support-huntsville-doppler\">Click here to support local news<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><broadstreet-zone zone-id=\"45657\" keywords=\"\" soft-keywords=\"true\" zone-alias=\"\"><\/broadstreet-zone>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Less than 24 hours after losing his bid to become mayor of Bracebridge, Michael Opara has had his private charges against former Mayor Graydon Smith withdrawn by the Crown. On [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1904,"featured_media":124307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Crown withdraws charges against Graydon Smith - Huntsville Doppler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/crown-withdraws-charges-against-graydon-smith\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Crown withdraws charges against Graydon Smith - Huntsville Doppler\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Less than 24 hours after losing his bid to become mayor of Bracebridge, Michael Opara has had his private charges against former Mayor Graydon Smith withdrawn by the Crown. 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