RCMP confirm they’re investigating reports of “financial irregularities” following an audit of expenses from Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore’s office.
The report from Halifax’s auditor general, Andrew Atherton, highlighted legal and consulting services that violated the municipality’s procurement policy.
Atherton released two audit reports on Monday: one looking into capital budgeting, and the second into the Office of the Mayor expenses.
He presented the reports to the Audit and Finance Standing Committee meeting on Monday afternoon, and told the committee he wasn’t initially going to audit the mayor’s office, but concerns were brought to him earlier this year.
“It was not part of our original audit plan but came to us through concerns identified by senior management within the municipality about some transactions which originated in the mayor’s office. I decided we would dig into these four transactions quickly this spring,” he said.
Two of the transactions were related to “external” legal fees, one was the hiring of an HR consultant, and the fourth was the hiring of a speechwriter.
Atherton said the mayor has since paid back the legal fees, around $7,700 in total, from his own personal funds.
He told the committee he had also forwarded his findings to police.
“There were elements of some of them that moved past the line of clearly just ‘not compliant’ and started to make me ask whether they were a little worse than ‘not compliant,’ Atherton told reporters afterwards.
“It’s not my job to assess whether something is illegal. So I felt it was important to bring in folks who could do that and asked police to have a look.”
In response to the audit, Mayor Fillmore said he accepted the report’s conclusion and told reporters his staff has now undergone procurement training.
“The staff is now up to speed on current policy,” he said, adding that there was a lot of change going on at the time of these incidents and they were short-staffed at the office.
He pointed out the fees for legal services that were audited were related to two separate code of conduct complaints launched against him — and were not personal legal issues.
“The complaints for which I sought legal advice were brought against me as the holder of the office of mayor,” he said. “These were not personal legal expenses.”
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Fillmore said he only learned that the matter was referred to police today when the auditor general revealed it during the committee meeting.
He said he still has full confidence in his staff, including his chief of staff, Joanne Macrae, who was mentioned in the audit several times. Macrae worked with Fillmore during his time as MP For Halifax, and during his transition into the mayor’s office in the fall of 2024.
“We were both experiencing at the same time coming into a new bureaucracy and learning the rules very quickly as we went and have had a lot of learning along the way and this is one of them,” he said.
Atherton said the report offers no recommendations because “really the only recommendation I could make here is comply with the procurement policy.” He said a broader procurement audit will be undertaken by his office.
Report’s findings
The report looked at four transactions, and concluded that all four were noncompliant with HRM’s procurement policy.
Two of the transactions were fees paid to bring on consultants.
The first was a consultant to assist in the review and reorganization of the mayor’s office in late 2024. The audit found that senior staff at the time said they did not agree that this should be an alternative procurement, and that it should actually go through the competitive process.
“Further, they stated that the Office of the Mayor communicated a preference for the vendor to them early in the process,” the audit found.
The initial value of the procurement was valued at $50,000 but it later nearly doubled.
“When the scope of the engagement rose to over $90,000, the contract with the vendor was not amended accordingly,” the audit also found.
The second procurement was valued at around $14,000 for a speech-writer for the mayor’s 2025 state of the municipality address to the Chamber of Commerce.
According to the audit, this procurement didn’t follow a competitive process and the mayor’s staff said the speech-writer had been used by the previous mayor for similar work so they approached the vendor without considering procurement methods such as a tender or using a vendor roster.
The audit noted there was also no contract for this work and the payment was arranged through a cheque approved by the mayor’s chief of staff.
Two of the transactions were external legal fees.
The first was dated June 2025 for $1,425 was caught by senior management before it was processed. It was “ultimately approved for payment as a one-time exception by the municipal solicitor, who also reminded the mayor’s chief of staff of the authorization requirement in writing.”
An invoice dated November 2025 for $6,272 was approved by the mayor’s chief of staff, Macrae, and charged to “Other Goods and Services.” The Office of the Mayor does not have a budget for legal services, the report added.
“The requisition was processed by municipal staff, and the invoice was paid in December 2025, even though external legal expenses, as noted previously, should have been authorized by the municipal solicitor,” the report said.
“Management indicated to us that they have provided additional training to staff on the need for pre-approval of external legal services by the municipal solicitor.”
According to the report, the acting CAO required the mayor to reimburse HRM for the charges and the mayor has done so for both invoices.
Concerns referred to police, “past my comfort zone”
“I referred my concerns to Halifax Regional Police for a couple of these because I felt that this was a little past my comfort zone,” Atherton told the committee.
“And they felt a little too close to the situation so they passed it along to the RCMP and as I understand it the RCMP are doing their investigation.”
In a statement to Global News, an RCMP spokesperson confirmed they received a referral from the municipality’s own police force — Halifax Regional Police — on May 22 “due to a potential conflict of interest.”
“(T)he Nova Scotia RCMP’s Commercial Crime Section began an investigation into reports of financial irregularities at an address on Argyle St. The incidents under investigation occurred between June 2025 and February 2026. The investigation remains ongoing; there’s no further information to share at this time,” wrote Allison Gerrard.
–with a file from Mitchell Bailey