15-05-2025
Bloc to ask court to overturn election outcome in riding that Liberals won by single vote
The Bloc Québécois is going to court to seek a new election in a Montreal-area riding where the Liberal candidate won by one vote.
Elections Canada says the outcome – the result of a judicial recount – is final, but Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet says lawyers for the party will go to the province's Superior Court to overturn it.
'I will not comment on the legal process per se because I am not a lawyer,' Mr. Blanchet told a news conference Thursday on Parliament Hill.
'We will initiate a process to ask the court to order a new election to be held in the riding of Terrebonne as quickly as possible.'
The Liberals have 170 seats in the House of Commons – just two shy of a majority – to the Conservatives' 143. The Bloc has 22, the NDP seven and the Green Party one.
Mr. Blanchet acknowledged that the case may eventually end up in the Supreme Court of Canada.
At issue is the situation in the riding of Terrebonne, where Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste defeated Bloc candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné by a single vote.
A Bloc voter in the riding said her mail-in ballot was returned to her on May 2, four days after the election, apparently because of an incorrect postal code on the envelope's preprinted address.
Had her vote been counted among the more than 60,000 cast ballots, the race might have ended in a tie.
Elections Canada spokesperson Matthew McKenna said in a statement that, in the event of a tie, the Chief Electoral Officer would have informed the Speaker of the House of Commons and a new election would have been held.
Asked about the Bloc's legal plans, Mr. McKenna said Thursday that the results in Terrebonne have been validated and the recount is final.
However, he said, if the legal effort to contest the election is successful, the result becomes null and void and a by-election must take place.
'Elections Canada's role is to provide courts with all necessary information in a completely neutral way,' he said.
Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné, who attended the Bloc's news conference, said the situation has been an emotional roller coaster.
'We went from being ahead to losing by one vote,' said the former economic adviser to the City of Montreal, who was initially elected in 2021 and was seeking a second term.
'This is an issue that goes beyond party politics. It's an issue of trust in our democratic institutions,' she told journalists.
'It's important, in our case, to go right as far as we can to ensure that citizens of Terrebonne have a legitimate member of Parliament.'
Mr. Blanchet said he did not want to aggravate the unusual situation by suggesting the electoral system should be changed.
'We're talking about a specific case where the citizens have a right to be properly represented in a case of this irregularity, meaning a new election is necessary. That will come from an order of the court.'
There are three more judicial recounts scheduled, though Mr. McKenna said there is still no timeline for completing them. Such exercises occur when there is a difference of less than 0.1 per cent between the leading candidate and the second-place candidate.
Recounts are under way in the Toronto-area riding of Milton East-Halton Hills South, where Liberal candidate Kristina Tesser Derksen leads Conservative candidate Parm Gill by 29 votes, and in the Newfoundland and Labrador riding of Terra Nova-The Peninsulas, where Liberal Anthony Germain leads Conservative candidate Jonathan Rowe by just 12 votes.
A third, in the riding of Windsor-Tecumseh-Lakeshore, is not scheduled to begin until next Tuesday. There, Conservative challenger Kathy Borrelli leads Liberal incumbent Irek Kusmierczyk by 77 votes.
