A case hinging on a single decisive vote in a Canadian federal election could send a “disastrous message” to the public that “some votes count more than others,” warned the lawyer representing a former MP, as a Quebec court weighs whether to void the result and order a new election.
Legal teams are midway through a three-day hearing examining whether an administrative error and one uncounted ballot swayed the outcome of the April election in Terrebonne, a suburban district north of Montreal.
Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné narrowly lost the seat to Liberal Tatiana Auguste. The result carries national significance: the Liberals currently hold 169 seats in the House of Commons, just three short of the 172 needed for a majority. The Bloc holds 22 seats.
The Canadian Federal Election was plagued by confusion from the start. Initial tallies showed Auguste ahead by 35 votes, prompting projections that she had won. However, during the official validation process on May 1, Sinclair-Desgagné was found to have gained the lead by 44 votes. Under Canadian election law, such a close margin automatically triggers a judicial recount when the difference is less than 0.1% of valid votes cast.
Canadian Federal Election
Days later, Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bossé revealed that her ballot, which she said was cast for Sinclair-Desgagné, was never counted. Bossé told Radio-Canada that her mail-in vote was returned to her because of a postal code error made by Elections Canada, not by her.
“I wasn’t the one who wrote the address,” she said. “Canadian Federal Election put the label on the envelope. I just had to insert my ballot and mail it.” Bossé sent her vote on April 5; it was returned nearly a month later, on May 2 after the count was completed.
In court, Sinclair-Desgagné’s lawyer, Stéphane Chatigny, argued that Bossé’s Charter rights were violated when her vote was excluded, and that upholding the election result despite the error would erode trust in the democratic process.
“By refusing to cancel the Canadian Federal Election, the court would be saying that some votes count more than others,” Chatigny said. “Such an outcome would permanently undermine public confidence.”
Presiding Judge Éric Dufour referred to a 2012 Supreme Court of Canada ruling, Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj, which held that simple clerical mistakes are insufficient grounds to overturn an election. The court determined that an election can only be annulled if there is clear evidence that the number of affected votes could have changed the result.
