When politicians don't stand up for our civil rights, it's up to citizens to fight for those rights in court. Nobody else can do it for us.

Since the Canadian Charter of rights and freedoms was established in the 1980s, the courts have been ruling in favour of fair and equal representation in Canadian and provincial elections. In 2019, we asked the courts to decide whether Canada's voting system, known as "first-past-the-post" was actually unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the courts did not see it our way, and in April 2026 the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear our appeal. This website summarizes the history of this challenge.

Check out our explainer video to learn about the key elements of the argument we put to the court:

Note that this video summary was generated automatically by NotebookLM from the factum we submitted to the Ontario Superior Court. Small errors may exist.

  • Latest from the blog

    Springtide Chair
    posted by | 9sc
    April 02, 2026

    Supreme Court Declines to Hear Appeal

    On April 2, 2026, the Supreme Court announced that it had declined to hear our appeal in the Charter Challenge for Fair Voting (they considered 19 requests and granted one). While this news is both frustrating and deeply disappointing, it is not the end of our fight for a democracy that truly represents all Canadians.
    read more
    Springtide Chair
    posted by | 9sc
    December 30, 2024

    Thank you, thank you, thank you

    Amazing Milestones! As 2024 draws to a close, we're so grateful for all the support we've received over the past year. Thanks to all of our wonderful supporters, we were able to prepare and present our appeal in the Charter Challenge for Fair Voting at the Court of Appeal for Ontario last month, and just a couple of days ago we closed out our fundraising round to support preparing a "leave to appeal" application to the Supreme Court of Canada that we expect to submit sometime in late spring or early summer of 2025 (special thanks to a generous contributor who topped up donations over the past month by 25%!).  
    read more
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Key Events in the Case:

  • The Supreme Court declined to hear our appeal in April 2026
  • We filed our reply to the government in November 2025
  • We submitted our application to the Supreme Court for leave to appeal in October 2025
  • Justice Huscroft dismissed our appeal in August 2025
  • We submitted a response in March 2025 re: the relevance of the SCC Working Families case
  • We presented our appeal in the Court of Appeal for Ontario in November 2024
  • We submitted our appeal factum in April 2024
  • We filed our Notice of Appeal in December 2023
  • Justice Ed Morgan issued his ruling in November 2023 and unfortunately dismissed our application
  • The case was heard in September 2023 in the Ontario Superior Court
  • We received the government's affidavits in fall 2022
  • We served the government with our affidavit and evidence package in May 2021
  • We filed the case with the Ontario Superior Court in October 2019

What Now?

Unfortunately, now that Supreme Court has declined to hear our appeal, we have come to the end of the Charter Challenge. We are maintaining this website as a record of our efforts. Thank you to all who have supported us along the way. Note that we are still accepting contributions to support our ongoing work of filing interventions in various cases and educating the public about the impacts of how we currently vote. Please visit our Donations page if you would like to support this ongoing work.