Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a businessman who has spent more than $250,000 of his own money in a long court battle to get the razor-thin result overturned, says regardless of whether the Supreme Court agrees with an earlier court ruling there were enough voting irregularities to set aside the victory by Conservative MP Ted Opitz (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), the ground has shifted dramatically in Canadian politics and a massive overhaul of federal election law is required.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, who compares tactics he claims were used to suppress his vote while swelling ballots cast for Mr. Opitz in the election to the robocall tactics now under Elections Canada investigation in Guelph, Ont., says the 2011 election experience has shown vote suppression and other tactics that have become a part of U.S. politics have taken hold in Canada.
“There are two sides of the ledger, the [subtracting] of votes from your opponents, and the [adding] of votes for people that would support you,” Mr. Wrzesnewskyj said in an interview with The Hill Times. “Technically there are two ways, neither of which are ethical, that you can shift the odds in your favour, and this working premise that people won’t do this sort of thing in Canada no longer holds, that’s clear.”
The robocall affair is evidence of that, he said. “We’re working in a very different environment than in the past. Maybe it’s happened in the past. I doubt it’s happened to this degree. That speaks to something that’s clearly unhealthy in our polity right now. The legislation needs to be changed,” said Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, who held the riding for the Liberals from 2004 until his narrow loss to Mr. Opitz.
Although held by former Progressive Conservative finance minister Michael Wilson from 1979 to 1993, the riding had been Liberal since 1993 until former justice minister Allan Rock retired from politics in 2004.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and six other justices on the nine-judge Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal from Mr. Opitz on July 10 regarding a ruling from Ontario Superior Court Justice Thomas Lederer that set aside 79 of the votes cast in Etobicoke-Centre because of irregularities, including inadequate records of proof those who cast some of the ballots were eligible to vote in the riding, missing information, vouching irregularities and in some cases no evidence of proof of Canadian citizenship.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj during the interview displayed his anger with Elections Canada, which he has said in the past did not adequately follow up on his initial complaints after voting day. He also noted at the last minute prior to the Supreme Court hearing, Elections Canada introduced new last-minute evidence, not put before Judge Lederer, that a lawyer for the electoral agency argued shows that at least 44 of the 79 voters whose ballots were set aside were actually eligible voters.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj and his legal team have challenged the validity of the last-minute evidence. He told The Hill Times that although the names of the 44 voters are redacted from the court evidence, the identification numbers for the 44 that were left on the list tabled in court show the voters were actually from other ridings.
He said the length of time the Supreme Court judges are taking to rule on the appeal gives him confidence the justices understand the complexity of the case, and the precedent it will set for Canada’s electoral system. It is the first time an appeal from an overturned election result has been heard by the Supreme Court.
“Of course, the judges understand that, that’s why they came back from their summer recess to hear it, they understand the importance of a decision coming down without delay, as the legislation specifies, but this is historic,” he said. “That’s why I said when I came out of the hearing that win or lose, elections will be conducted very differently next time around. The assumption has been that these kinds of things don’t happen in Canada, and unfortunately guess what? They really do. So we have to look at how we run these elections.”
He said Elections Canada should be more transparent in their investigative process. “There are serious issues around Elections Canada. How do they go about investigating? The oxygen in a democracy is transparency. We have an open court system. Why do we have trust in the courts? Because it’s open. Imagine if it was a closed court system,” Mr. Wrzesnewskyj said. “Well, at Elections Canada, we don’t know what they’re investigating unless someone somehow finds out. We don’t know what the results are because they cut deals. That may have been fine in a situation where everything is above board, but we don’t have a transparent oversight body to investigate problems.”
An Elections Canada spokesperson said the election agency would not be commenting on the court case.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
No comments:
Post a Comment