The party filed a 750-page legal brief Tuesday night, complete with highly political denunciations of The Council of Canadians, a citizen advocacy group sponsoring the challenge of election results.
The motion is based on an obscure and ancient legal prohibition against “champerty and maintenance” — meddling in another party’s lawsuit to share in the proceeds.
It seeks to dismiss the legal challenges, backed by the council, which are aimed at throwing out election results in the seven closely contested ridings across the country. The ridings involved were all won by Conservative candidates.
The applications all claim voters received misleading telephone calls intended to suppress the vote. The applications were filed in Federal Court on behalf of identified voters in each riding and the council is not itself a party to litigation.
In the motion made on behalf of the Conservative candidates, the party argues that the cases should be thrown out because the council is not an elector and has brought the legal action to damage the Conservative brand.
The council’s “involvement is for the improper motive of attacking only Conservatives, consistent with their very vocal opposition of and malice towards the Conservative Party of Canada,” the motion claims.
The motion also claims the council is using the publicity from cases to raise money on its website and calls the group’s national chairwoman, Maude Barlow, a “professional agitator” and “virulent critic” of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The motion, from Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton, even assails his opposing counsel Steven Shrybman, calling him “an avowed adversary” of the party. It is backed up with an affidavit from another lawyer in Hamilton’s firm that traces the union connections of council board members and support for the Occupy movement and asserts the council “is of like mind with labour union elites.”
The affidavit includes dozens of exhibits containing hundreds of pages of documents tracing the history of the organization and its opposition to the Conservatives and Stephen Harper, and argues that it is not interested in advancing democracy, as it claims, but is motivated by “animus.”
Each legal challenge filed by the council claims electors received misleading or misdirecting phone calls intended to discourage them from casting a ballot. A study sponsored by the council and entered into evidence concluded that about three per cent of votes in these ridings were suppressed by the calls.
Under the Elections Act, any elector can ask a judge to void the results of an election based on a claim that illegal or fraudulent activity affected the result.
Last week, the Conservative party also filed a motion alleging that the applicants did not present any evidence that an individual elector was denied a vote. The party further contends in the motion that the applications, filed in March after news of the robocalls scandal broke, came outside the 30-day window for making such claims. The court has yet to rule on either motion.
Champerty and maintenance forbids legal cases in which the litigant has no legitimate interest, but engages in “wanton or officious intermeddling” by a the litigant with an “improper motive.”
Champetry hinges on showing that an agreement exists to share in the proceeds of litigation. In this case, the Conservatives argue that because The Council of Canadians is raising money to fund the case on its website, it is able “to share in the ‘proceeds’ of the litigation before the applications are decided.”
The council is hardly profiting from the case, says executive director Garry Neil.
“That’s the funniest part for us, that this is somehow a gold mine for us,” he said Thursday. “If only it were. I would be delighted.”
Neil said the party is trying to bog down the council’s lawsuit with costly paperwork.
“The purpose is twofold,” he said. “One, is to delay the process as much as they can. And two, to sling mud. Because they think if they sling enough mud some of it will stick.”
Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey says the council is the one slinging mud.
“It’s a bit rich to accuse us of slinging mud when their entire purpose since they were formed is to attack Conservatives, as the affidavit clearly lays out,” he said. “As I’ve said before, this is a transparent attempt to overturn certified election results simply because this activist group doesn’t like them.”
Neil said he intends to launch a counter motion so that the council can get a judge to examine “what we believe is pretty strong evidence.”
Last week, an Ontario court upheld a challenge of the election results in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre, brought by losing Liberal candidate Borys Wrzesnewskyj. The Conservative MP for the riding, Ted Optiz, has until Monday to file an appeal with the Supreme Court of Canada. Otherwise, the prime minister is to set a byelection date within six months.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor
No comments:
Post a Comment