Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton argued in favour of the motion in Federal Court in Ottawa on Tuesday, saying the court must impose the financial surety on the applicants because the law is “open to serious abuse in the hands of the wrong elector, or candidate or proxy group, such as the Council of Canadians.”
Council of Canadians lawyer Steven Shrybman, who represents the applicants, says a Conservative attempt to force his clients to pay $250,000 would be a “crushing financial burden” and contrary to the public interest in seeing elections are conducted fairly.
“It would be unjust and inconsistent to impose a statutory scheme that would surely test the financial resources of anyone but the wealthiest individuals in our society,” Shrybman told the court.
Hamilton argued that that “crushing burden” is in fact justification for the higher surety than is required by the act.
“These proceedings are taking on a form more akin to a trial,” he said. “There is significant expense attaching to each of these applications.”
Since the cases were launched in March, the Conservatives have made a series of motions that Shrybman complained were “litigious and adversarial,” designed to drive up the cost of the cases for the applicants.
Hamilton argued that raising the amount of the security deposit would not discourage the applicants from continuing. He said they have all been indemnified for their costs by the Council of Canadians, the left-of-centre advocacy group that is backing the legal action. The Council, he says, is expecting to raise $240,000 through a fundraising drive on its website.
Hamilton argued the case is a “zero sum game” because it has only two possible outcomes: dismissal or invalidation of the election results, which would require new elections in those ridings.
He restated an argument made in an earlier, unsuccessful motion that attempted to have the case thrown out as “frivolous and vexatious,” arguing that it has been brought by “a group of individuals ... who can’t accept that the voters in those seven ridings chose Conservative candidates.”
Roza Aronovitch, the prothonotary hearing the case, interrupted Hamilton at one point, insisting that he stop referring to the case as being brought by the council, rather than the voters who are named as applicants in the seven cases.
When Hamilton attempted to point to what he calls shortcomings in the affidavits of the applicants, Aronovitch said that she didn’t see the relevance of his argument to the specific motion before the court, and asked that he and Shrybman arrange to make submissions regarding costs.
Shrybman had argued that the court ought to award costs to the applicants for dealing with the motion, saying it is an attempt to delay getting at the evidence, and the court ought to discourage further delays by awarding costs.
In an interview with reporters afterwards, Hamilton disputed Shrybman’s suggestion that the Conservative motion was designed to delay the case.
“Have you seen one piece of evidence that the Council of Canadians has been slowed by this?” he said. “I have not. We don’t initiate something to the court unless there’s a reason for it.”
Shrybman said in an interview that the Conservatives are seeking to avoid discussing the merits of the case, and pointed to Conservative affidavits that attacked the Council of Canadians and pollster Frank Graves as anti-Conservative.
“We’ve described their strategy as defame and divert,” Shrybman said. “Defame Frank Graves. Defame the Council of Canadians. Divert the course of the litigation so it gets sidetracked with these collateral defamatory fights so the real merits of the case are obscured by all the mud thrown.”
In Toronto this week, lawyers will cross examine witnesses in closed-door hearings ahead of an open hearing where a federal judge will hear arguments in December.
The lawsuits were launched in March after media reports on an apparent pattern of deceptive and fraudulent calls designed to suppress opposition votes in the 2011 federal election. The suits do not assign responsibility for the calls.
In July, federal prothonotary Martha Milczynski ruled that “the applications raise serious issues about the integrity of the democratic process in Canada.”
Elections Canada says it is investigating almost 1,400 specific allegations of such calls across the country, including the “Pierre Poutine” robocall in Guelph, which sent dozens of voters to the wrong polling station.
Elections Canada investigators have followed a long chain of evidence in that case up repeated blind alleys, finding that the perpetrator used a disposable cellphone and prepaid credit cards to hide his digital trail.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER
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