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The prime minister has until July 30 to call a byelection in the Montreal riding.
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OTTAWA — As time runs out for the prime minister to announce a date for a federal byelection in Montreal, an ongoing — and record-breaking — election protest is ready to once again elongate the contest’s ballot as a protest against the government’s broken promise on electoral reform.
Under Canadian election law, the prime minister must announce the date to fill the vacant seat in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun between Feb. 12 and July 30. With that deadline just two weeks away, members of the Longest Ballot Committee — an activist group protesting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau breaking his 2015 election promise to enact electoral reform — are eager to once again snarl election night by stacking the ballot with a ridiculously long list of candidates.
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“We see the voting system is rigged for the winner, and the winners write the rules,” said Sébastien CoRhino Corriveau, leader of the Rhinoceros party and a regular participant in the election protests and lead organizer for the ballot stunt in the upcoming byelection in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun
The Conservatives won a shocking upset in a June 24 byelection in Toronto—St. Paul’s, with Don Stewart besting Liberal candidate Leslie Church by 633 votes. But the other story from that night was the counting of the results, which took more than seven hours, something Elections Canada blamed on the ballot of 84 names that ran nearly a metre long.
The Longest Ballot Committee’s 77 candidates garnered 932 votes combined, 125 fewer than the Green Party candidate but over four times as many votes as the PPC. One candidate who was part of the protest received a historic zero votes as he didn’t live in the riding he could not even vote for himself.
That upset sparked a flurry of conspiracy theories from Liberal partisans, accusing the Longest Ballot Committee of everything from electoral malfeasance to foreign interference — allegations CoRhino Corriveau dismissed.
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“The results speak for themselves. (Around) 40 per cent voted red, and 40 per cent voted blue. There was only around 500 votes between the two of them,” he said.
“I’m not putting dirty money in the game, I’m a poor artist from Rimouski. Who is rigging the election system? It’s the people who got elected for years and never changed the voting system, they’re the ones playing with the system.”
LaSalle—Émard—Verdun has been held since 2015 by former justice minister David Lametti, who announced his departure from politics earlier this year.
Lametti replaced former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould after she was booted from caucus by Trudeau for defying the Prime Minister’s Office during the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
The Longest Ballot Committee is run by brothers Kieran and Tomas Szuchewycz, who said that issues over promised changes to Canada’s election policy are still a big problem.
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“When it comes to electoral reform, MPs and political commentators of all stripes prefer to think up ways to ban long ballots and squabble over which democratic formula would deliver their preferred party the most seats,” the Szuchewyczes said in an emailed statement.
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“As we look to the next byelection in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun we continue to call on Canadians to exercise their Charter right to stand for election and demand that politicians recuse themselves from all decisions where they are in a conflict of interest such as election law, campaign finance law, MP salaries, as well as their ethics codes and related penalties.”
The byelection ballot for Toronto—St. Paul’s broke the previous record for ballot length set during last year’s 48-candidate byelection in Winnipeg South Centre, which was also targeted by the Longest Ballot Committee.
That election’s newspaper-page-sized ballot was so large it required an amendment to the Canada Elections Act.
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The PMO declined to comment Monday on when the date for the LaSalle—Émard—Verdun byelection will be announced.
McMaster University political scientist Peter Graefe said while the protest campaign’s efforts to inflate the ballots were impressive, he isn’t confident it will make much headway toward encouraging electoral reform.
“In the short term, it makes its point that there are people upset with the Liberal government’s decision to walk away from electoral reform,” he said.
“Is it an inconvenience for people going to vote who are flummoxed by a massive ballot? Yes. But is it really that annoying to the political parties contesting those byelections? No.”
Trudeau declared that when he was elected prime minister the 2015 election would be the last contested under the first-past-the-post system, a promise that he ultimately backed out of after his Liberal party won.
Graefe said it made sense for the Trudeau Liberals to make electoral reform an issue in 2015 as they were running a campaign from third place, but the idea clearly lost its appeal once a majority government was secured.
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“Once in power, and especially if you’re a party that thinks you have a regular shot at being in power, it’s not as interesting because a proportional (electoral) system would likely lead to ongoing coalition governments, or negotiated governments at the very least,” he said.
“(First-past-the-post) leads to majority governments and it’s really appealing to them, that’s probably the main reason that explains why Mr. Trudeau walked away from this.”
Byelection dates also have yet to be announced to fill three other vacancies: Elmwood—Transcona, after the March resignation of NDP MP Daniel Blaikie in Manitoba; Cloverdale—Langley City in B.C., to replace outgoing Liberal MP John Aldag; and the Nova Scotia riding of Halifax, after Liberal MP Andy Fillmore announced he is resigning to run to become the city’s next mayor.
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