From Jun 2, 2024: As we announced in an earlier update, we've recently filed our appeal in the Charter Challenge for Fair Voting. In our initial appearance last fall in the Ontario Superior Court, we argued that our current First-Past-the-Post voting system violates our Charter rights to effective representation and meaningful participation, and discriminates against women, visible minorities, and other minority groups.

Unfortunately, the initial judgment went against us, but our lawyer, Nicolas Rouleau, felt that we had strong grounds to appeal, so we recently filed our appeal, which will be heard this coming November in the Appeal Court for Ontario.

Over the next few weeks, we'll share some highlights from our filing so that you can better understand what we're arguing. Below, we present a brief overview of our appeal.

Basis for Appeal:

In short, the judge at our initial hearing (Justice Ed Morgan) made several key findings of fact that strongly support our argument, but we believe he "fell into error" by not drawing the appropriate legal implications from these findings.

Importantly, he found that our current voting system "reduces the voices of voters in government and Parliament’s democratic legitimacy; it violates the principle that all votes should count equally, resulting in the unfair representation of small party voters and in the frequent exercise of minority rule; and it engenders voter dissatisfaction and apathy."

The evidence also showed that "the type of electoral system is arguably the most important variable to explain differences" in the numbers of women elected under proportional and majoritarian systems. [But] despite the consensus of experts ..., the Judge [inappropriately] imposed a heightened causation threshold" and failed to accept that our current voting system significantly contributes to under-representation of women and other minority groups.

We therefore argue that "Once these errors are corrected, this Court must find that SMP breaches ss. 3 and 15. Courts should not accept “inequities”, “anomalies”, and “abuses” in our voting system “merely because they have historical precedent”. SMP is a relic of a past era where representation in Parliament was restricted to propertied white men. It stands against Canada’s current pluralistic society. By striking it down, this Court would protect the democratic rights of all Canadians."

In the coming weeks, we'll walk you through more of the specific issues that Nicolas raises in our written submission.