Accusations of plagiarism fly as councillor websites show eerie similarity
Ward 41 candidate Sandeep Srivastava’s website appears to have a lot in common with several others.

thestar.com
July 28, 2014
By Jennifer Pagliaro

Two council candidates running in different wards claim to care about fiscal responsibility, accountability and respect at city hall.

Problem is, up until Monday morning they were claiming those goals in online campaign platforms that were word-for-word identical.

“Everyone in public service should be held accountable for their actions and behaviour,” stated the websites of Jason Colterman, running in Ward 43 Scarborough East, and Sandeep Srivastava, running in Ward 41, Scarborough-Rouge River.

The Star’s review of Srivastava’s website found several passages that appeared to be copied and pasted from at least four other councillors’ websites. In some cases, the same passage appeared on three separate websites. Srivastava denied copying Colterman’s website. He did not immediately respond to allegations of further plagiarism.

It came as a shock to Colterman that his website had been copied onto another page in a different race entirely. He said he learned Sunday night about the alleged plagiarism when he checked his website traffic.

He noticed a spike of attention on his platform page that had been directed from Twitter - where city hall enthusiasts and other candidates were questioning the similarities.

The Ward 43 candidate said he emailed Srivastava asking him to remove the offending passages - 10 paragraphs under “My Views” on both websites. He also said he sent an email to the candidate’s website host, GoDaddy.com, asking they be removed.

As of Monday morning, Srivastava’s website had changed to include a series of bullet points.

“I was really surprised, especially the parts that talked about Ward 43, on a website for Ward 41,” said Colterman, who teaches first aid for St. John Ambulance and is running for the first time. “It didn’t make too much sense. It was frustrating to see someone copied my work like that.”

Colterman said he has since spoken to Srivastava, who denied his site was copied.

When the Star reached Srivastava, who says he is a professor at George Brown College, he denied plagiarizing the site.

“It’s under construction right now. It’s not finalized yet,” he said. “Don’t worry. It will be totally different.”

A closer examination of Srivastava’s site appears to show more copied statements: additional passages from Colterman’s site; a mission statement that matches Ward 39, Scarborough-Agincourt, candidate Christopher Blueman’s website; an appeal for citizens to vote from Ward 9, York Centre, candidate Danny Quattrociocchi’s website.

In at least one case, several sentences that appear on Srivastava’s site also appear on Quattrociocchi’s site and Ward 1 Etobicoke North candidate Avtar Minhas’ site. In some cases, the sentences have been altered slightly to reflect the ward each is running in.

All three used the slogan: “A vote for me is a vote for you!” prominently on their sites.

The Star was unable to confirm where the paragraphs originated.

Minhas told the Star he was not aware of the similarities, but denied he copied anything.

Quattrociocchi told the Star his website was up first and said the others are copying from him.

“This is terrible. I’m actually really pissed off,” he said, adding he can prove his site went live first. “I’m going to send them an email...I spent a lot of time on this.”