OTTAWA—The lawyer representing eight voters challenging the narrow victories of six Conservative MPs based on alleged dirty tricks argued the absence of the proverbial smoking gun does not mean there was no widespread electoral fraud.“There is no loaded gun,” said Steven Shrybman, a lawyer who is representing the eight applicants in a Federal Court challenge seeking to overturn the results of the 2011 federal election in six ridings.
Shrybman argued affidavits of the eight applicants and other witnesses, email correspondence obtained by Elections Canada, documents pertaining to the Elections Canada investigation into the “Pierre Poutine” robocalls in the riding of Guelph, Ont., and a survey that Frank Graves of EKOS Research conducted for the Federal Court case all show a pattern that is greater than the sum of their parts.
“I’m not going to be able to produce for this court electors who did not vote, let alone any large number of them, but it’s about the pattern of activity that is confirmed by virtually every piece of evidence that we have been able to acquire or that has come to our attention,” Shrybman argued Tuesday on the second day of hearings expected to last all week.
The case stems from allegations of vote suppression that surfaced this year following media reports that voters received robocalls directing them to the wrong polling stations.
Last month, it surfaced that Elections Canada, which is not supporting the application before the Federal Court, expanded its investigation into these tactics to 56 of the 308 federal ridings.
Earlier Tuesday, Peter Engelmann, another lawyer for the voters, told Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley that allowing the Conservatives to shut down the robocalls challenge because it is supported by the Council of Canadians would have a chilling effect on public interest litigation.
The left-leaning advocacy group advertised for people who allege dirty tricks during the election campaign to step forward after media stories about Guelph first appeared and is covering the legal costs of the applicants.
On Monday, Arthur Hamilton, the lawyer representing the six Conservative MPs named in the case, argued the arrangement was “champerty and maintenance,” an obscure legal term describing the forbidden act of intermeddling in and benefitting from a lawsuit brought forward by someone else.
Engelmann argued Tuesday that granting the Conservatives the motion and shutting down the challenge would extend the principle of champerty and maintenance too far and would prevent many ordinary Canadians from being able to have their day in court.
“If this court, in my respectful submission, were to grant this motion, it would be an extension of champerty and maintenance beyond any that we have seen and it would be changing the law tremendously,” Engelmann argued.
“It would, in my respectful submission, have a chilling, a possibly chilling effect, on any public interest litigation in this country.”
Mosley is reserving his decision on the champerty and maintenance motion.
The Council of Canadians has dismissed the suggestion that it was profiting from the court challenge and issued a news release Tuesday saying that it had raised just over $300,000 through the fundraising campaign and that the legal costs — discounted by 40 per cent — have already reached $560,000.
The eight voters are seeking to overturn the election results in the hotly contested ridings of Nipissing—Timiskaming in Ontario; Elmwood—Transcona and Winnipeg South Centre in Manitoba; Saskatoon—Rosetown—Bigger in Saskatchewan; Vancouver Island North in B.C., and Yukon.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Joanna Smith
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