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