Students join lawsuit against election bill
Requirement to produce ID the main issue
The Council of Canadians and the Canadian Federation of Students announced Thursday they will challenge the Harper government’s new election bill, hours before Gov. Gen. David Johnston was to grant royal assent, making it law.
The council and federation will go to Superior Court of Ontario to challenge the law because it violates section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the “right to vote in an election of the members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”
The two groups intend to challenge voter-ID provisions that critics say will make it harder for students, aboriginals and seniors to vote, and changes that limit the mandate of the chief electoral officer to promote voting.
Lawyer Steven Shrybman intends to file applications seeking “to declare as unconstitutional certain provisions of the Fair Elections Act for infringing on the right of certain Canadians to vote,” he said Thursday.
A spokeswoman for Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre said Thursday that he is confident the bill can withstand a constitutional challenge.
“As you know, the new law will require every single voter show a piece of ID before they get their ballot,” said Gabrielle Renaud-Mattey.
“Voting without any ID is no more, and no one will be allowed to have someone ‘vouch’ for who they are. After millions of errors and several confirmed cases of fraud with the Voter Information Card, it will no longer be considered acceptable ID.”
As the bill was debated, political critics, academics and representatives of advocacy groups complained that the government was tightening ID requirements although there is little evidence of voter fraud, suggesting the goal is to suppress the votes of voters who are less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and aboriginals.
Shrybman says the application will challenge the law on several grounds. He will ask a judge to stop the government from stripping powers from Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer.
“What we’re primarily concerned about is the fact that the government has taken power away from the chief electoral officer, which we think is necessary in a democratic society to not only facilitate but encourage Canadians to exercise their democratic rights by voting,” he said.
One particularly contentious section of the bill restricts the ability of Mayrand to promote voting, particularly to groups of voters “most likely to experience difficulties in exercising their democratic rights.”
Conservatives have complained that in practice that has meant that Elections Canada works to promote voting among groups that typically vote for other parties. Poilievre has insisted that Elections Canada can best promote voting by letting people know when, where and how to vote.
Shrybman hopes to have a judicial order nullifying sections of the act before the next election.
“There’s a fundamental problem in a democratic society when only 60 per cent of the people vote, or in the case of students, when it’s less than 40 per cent,” he said.
“That’s a problem and in our view the chief electoral officer should have the authority to address it.”
Jessica McCormick, national chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, says her organization decided to challenge the law because the Fair Elections Act will further reduce the youth vote.
“We already have extremely low turnout,” she said Thursday. “Only 38 per cent in the last election. That means 1.8 million young people didn’t vote. I think these changes to the election act could increase that number.”