Tory's election holds up

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Stephen Harper (CP)

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Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press Tory MP Ted Opitz thanked the Supreme Court for confirming his election. (CP)

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper is prepared to look at updating Canada's election law after a divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday a Conservative MP legitimately won his seat in 2011 despite numerous procedural irregularities.

Harper said he's "very happy" the top court, by a slim 4-3 margin, affirmed Ted Opitz's razor-thin, 26-vote victory in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre over Liberal incumbent Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

Nevertheless, he did not dismiss out of hand Liberal calls for an overhaul of the Canada Elections Act to keep pace with technology-driven abuses and what they described as more brazen dirty tricksters.

"Obviously, we'll always take a look at a law. As you know, we promised to look at some reforms to our election laws," Harper said on his way out of the House of Commons, accompanied by a smiling Opitz.

"But in this case, the important thing is that it was the voters who made the decision, and that's the way a democracy is supposed to work."

Elections Canada had no immediate comment on the ruling other than to say the watchdog agency would "take time to carefully review" the decision.

However, chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand has said in the past he may recommend changes in the law to better regulate the use of technology, such as automated call centres and the massive voter-identification databases amassed by parties.

He's also said the law needs to be changed to ensure exorbitant legal costs don't prevent individuals from challenging dubious election results.

Wrzesnewskyj reportedly spent as much as $300,000 in his legal battle to overturn the May 2011 results in Etobicoke Centre.

He won an Ontario Superior Court ruling that set aside Opitz's victory because of procedural irregularities with 79 ballots, most involving missing or improperly filled out forms for voters who were not on the voters list or had no identification. Opitz appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

The high court overturned the lower court ruling because it said 59 of those rejected votes should have been allowed to stand. That means Opitz essentially won his seat by a mere half-dozen votes.

Three justices, led by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, disagreed, saying Ontario Superior Court Justice Thomas Lederer made "no palpable and overriding error."

In a statement, Opitz thanked the court. "As the court decision confirmed, a fair election took place, the result was clear, was then confirmed on a recount and the result has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court of Canada," he said.

Opitz, who was awaiting the ruling before joining a Canadian observer mission to ensure a free and fair election in Ukraine, was greeted with handshakes and applause from his fellow MPs when he showed up for a vote in the House of Commons shortly after the decision.

The court emphasized the case did not involve fraud or corruption by any candidate but was strictly a matter of clerical errors by Elections Canada officials.

Wrzesnewskyj alleged there was evidence of voter suppression and intimidation in his riding. He couldn't take that up with the court, however, because the law deals only with whether ballots were properly cast, not whether people were prevented from casting them.

He called for changes to the law to deal with irregularities -- not just the kind that plagued his riding, but also voter-suppression tactics allegedly employed in the 2011 campaign through automated calls that misdirected voters in dozens of ridings to the wrong polling stations.

"Technology has changed," Wrzesnewskyj said. "You couple that with a change in the political landscape, where there are political actors out there willing to do things that I don't believe people were willing to do in the past, and the combination of those two speak to the fact that it's time to update the laws."

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae echoed the call to bring the election act "well into the 21st century," including more procedural safeguards, rules on so-called robocalls and the ability to force byelections in ridings where the winning candidate exceeds the campaign spending limit.

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 26, 2012 A15