Charter Challenge Update - In Court Next Month!

Our date in court is approaching rapidly and there is important and exciting work underway. 

The Charter Challenge for Fair Voting will be heard in the Ontario Superior Court in Toronto next month (Sep 25-27). The hearings will be open to the public, and we’ll send you all the details as soon as we have them confirmed.

In the meantime, here’s an update on the work over the past month and a half. At the end of June, we told you that, thanks to your generous support, we had reached the very significant milestone of having submitted our factum (the written argument for the case).  

Since then, four external organizations have submitted supplementary arguments of their own (called interventions) - three supporting our case, and one arguing against.

  • Fair Vote Canada submitted a review of electoral reform attempts throughout Canadian history, clearly demonstrating that previous efforts were thwarted by partisan self-interest and urging the court to act to defend voters’ democratic rights.

  • The UK-based Electoral Reform Society reinforced many of our core arguments, and noted that the issues we identified play out with similar effects in the UK.

  • Apathy is Boring is a Canadian advocacy organization seeking to improve engagement and participation of youth in our democracy. Their submission argues that our current voting system creates a number of significant barriers to participation by and representation of younger voters.

  • Finally, the Canadian Constitution Foundation doesn’t directly take a position on the relative merits of different voting systems, but argues that our first-past-the-post system is “constitutionalized” and that the court cannot force the government to change it. We disagree, and our lawyer, Nicolas Rouleau, submitted a compelling and well-argued response to their submission. 

What’s Next?

The federal government is expected to submit their written argument very shortly, at which point all the written documents will be released publicly. The team will read the government’s argument very carefully, and take it into account as we prepare oral arguments.

Thank you for your continued support. More to come soon!

Jesse Hitchcock, Springtide & Antony Hodgson, Fair Voting BC

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  • Jesse Hitchcock
    published this page in Blog Updates 2023-08-18 13:42:20 -0300


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Key Events in the Case:

  • We're currently awaiting the appeal decision (expected in spring 2025)
  • 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.

How you can help

The main way you can help is to support the case financially. We are now asking for pledges totalling $60,000 to support us appealing to the Supreme Court of Canada, if they grant us leave to appeal in mid-2025.

What to expect

At each step, we set new pledge or donation goals based on our estimate of the costs for the next stage of the process, and invite our supporters to contribute towards that goal to ensure the case can continue to move forward. We don't ask for or collect funds until we're sure we're going to take the associated step.