MISSISSAUGA

Never mind Superman, she is the Woman of Steel.

By the skin of her teeth, the 92-year-old dynamo that is Hurricane Hazel has survived another allegation of conflict of interest, making it three times she has managed to evade the arrows launched in her direction.

Now she can finish out her 12th and final term as mayor of Mississauga, the “joy” of her long life, with some semblance of tarnished dignity, chastened but still insistent that she’s done nothing wrong.

And by the letter of the law, Justice John Sproat has agreed that she did not. His reasons for tossing the conflict of interest case against her were hardly a ringing endorsement of the way she intermingled her darling son’s business with the city she’s championed for more than three decades, but it wasn’t enough to get her sacked from her job.

Mississauga resident Elias Hazineh, longtime friend of McCallion’s arch-enemy Carolyn Parrish, had alleged the mayor breached the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act in 2007 when she voted on Region of Peel bylaw amendments which potentially could have saved her son Peter’s company $11 million in development fees.

Sproat dismissed the case for a number of reasons: he said the company, World Class Developments, wouldn’t have even qualified for the lower, grandfathered development charges that McCallion had voted for because it hadn’t paid the full $500,000 application fee or filed a complete site plan in time to be eligible. “On that basis alone Mr. Hazineh’s application must be dismissed.”

He also found McCallion had nothing financially to gain.

“The chance that WCD would qualify under the Transition Provisions was miniscule. A reasonable elector would have concluded there was no likelihood that Mayor McCallion’s deemed financial interest would influence her vote,” Sproat wrote in his decision.

And finally, he dismissed the case because he found Hazineh had read a National Post article about the potential conflict back in July 2010 — despite his protestations to the contrary — and had six weeks to file his claim but didn’t launch his case until the fall of 2011.

Case dismissed and McCallion can keep her Mayor 1 licence plate.

“I’m glad this case is over even though it has not affected my work on behalf of the people of Mississauga,” the jubilant mayor told reporters Friday. “I will continue on until the end of my term in 2014. It’s just a joy to be mayor of Mississauga.”

Still, it was a close call for the mayor.

McCallion had insisted she had no idea her son had an ownership stake in WCD which was seeking to realize her dream of building a $1.5 billion hotel and convention centre in downtown Mississauga.

Despite the many meetings noted in her dayplanner with her son and others closely tied to WCD, McCallion told the court she kept the project at arm’s length and wasn’t aware of its progress.

Like most of us, the judge didn’t buy it.

“Mayor McCallion was aware that Peter was an owner of WCD,” Sproat wrote. “Mayor McCallion was willfully blind to the status of the WCD development,” he added. “For all she knew the Transitional Provisions could have saved WCD millions of dollars on the initial phase of the project.”

The feisty mayor doesn’t see it that way. At her press conference, she unflinchingly maintained that the judge got that part wrong. In her imitable way, there are no regrets and no apologies.

So she is destined to end her remarkable career three times lucky. Found guilty in 1982 of contravening the act, McCallion hung on to her job because the judge found her conflict of interest had been an error of judgment. In 2011, the Mississauga Judicial Inquiry found she’d violated the spirit of the law by using her office to strong arm people to move her son’s project along, but technically hadn’t breached the act.

And now this final victory.

The tiny untouchable Queen of Mississauga launched a few arrows of her own at her enemies — take a bow Parrish and the local newspaper — and after hugs from her many supporters, Her Worship sailed off to take care of the city she loves.