From November 5, 2024:

Today was our big day - we presented our appeal in the Court of Appeal for Ontario in front of a panel of three judges - Justices Grant Huscroft, Jonathan Dawe, and Gary Trotter. If you'd like see a play-by-play commentary of what went down, check out our tweets here.

Lawyer Nicolas Rouleau (centre), Irene Hunter (one of our affiants, left), Antony Hodgson (Fair Voting BC, right)

Our "Hot Take" on What Happened

Our lawyer, Nicolas Rouleau, opened the day by laying out our argument for appeal. His main point was that the modern conception of democracy requires that voters have an elected representative aligned with their political views advocating for those views in Parliament, and our current system denies that to half the voters.

He also argued that many voters' right to meaningful participation is infringed by our current voting system because it discourages them from voting at all, or forces them to cast a strategic vote rather than one that honestly reflects their true preference.

He questioned whether the trial judge inappropriately considered possible "balancing" concerns (various supposed "strengths" of FPTP) before deciding whether FPTP infringes on our section 3 right to vote - these considerations are supposed to come in later, in what's known as a "section 1" analysis.

Nicolas then went on to outline reasons why the judge's reasoning about the impact on women's representation was incorrect - mainly that the judge found that the voting system is not the primary factor behind their under-representation in Canada, but Nicolas pointed out that the standard is simply that it has to be a contributing factor, and the evidence strongly supports that.

Nicolas advanced many other arguments, and one of the interveners supported our claim that political opinion should be considered a basis for protection from discrimination under section 15, in accordance with international law. Other interveners also spoke in support of many of Nicolas' arguments.

The government of course argued against all these points, and another intervener argued that FPTP is "constitutionalized" and therefore beyond the reach of the courts. Naturally we disagree.

The judge who chaired today (Huscroft) asked the majority of the questions (many about how the concerns we raised were linked to constitutional law rather than being questions of public policy), and Justice Dawe also asked a number of them (he seemed to be very interested in the question of whether any system could conceivably satisfy our definition of effective representation - ie, requiring electing an MP aligned with our political views).

Nicolas made a final rebuttal to the government's presentation, and then the appeal wrapped. Now we wait for the court to issue its ruling (likely about 2-4 months from now).