A legal dispute over a single ballot that decided a federal election in a Montreal suburb is underway, with lawyers arguing the outcome sends a 'disastrous message' to voters. The case centres on the riding of Terrebonne, where Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste won by one vote over Bloc Québécois incumbent Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné after a judicial recount.
The recount, triggered automatically because the margin was less than 0.1% of valid votes, initially showed Sinclair-Desgagné ahead by 44 votes before being overturned. Auguste received 23,352 votes to Sinclair-Desgagné's 23,351. However, resident Emmanuelle Bossé claims her postal ballot for Sinclair-Desgagné was not counted due to an Elections Canada error: a misprinted postal code on the return envelope.
Bossé told CBC's Radio-Canada she mailed her ballot on 5 April, but it was returned on 2 May. 'Elections Canada glued this label on the envelope. I had nothing to fill,' she said. Sinclair-Desgagné's lawyer, Stéphane Chatigny, argued in court that Bossé's Charter rights were violated and that upholding the result would 'send a disastrous message to voters that even Elections Canada can make mistakes, but that there will be no consequences despite the decisive impact on the outcome'.
Justice Éric Dufour is presiding over the three-day hearing. He referenced a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, Opitz v Wrzesnewskyj, which stated that simple clerical errors are insufficient to annul an election; there must be proof that ineligible votes could have changed the outcome. The Liberals currently hold 169 seats in the House of Commons, just shy of a majority, while the Bloc Québécois holds 22.
