Okay, Democracy Watch: ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for tardiness after waiting more than three weeks into the campaign before actually filing an application for an expedited hearing on that whole fixed-election-date-law-violating thing:
Okay, Democracy Watch: ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for tardiness after waiting more than three weeks into the campaign before actually filing an application for an expedited hearing on that whole fixed-election-date-law-violating thing:
OTTAWA – Today, Democracy Watch released details about the application it has filed in the Federal Court of Canada challenging the legality of the recent federal election call. (To see the Notice of Application, click here; To see Democracy Watch’s legal arguments, click here; To see Democracy Watch Coordinator Duff Conacher’s Affidavit, Part I – click here; Part II – click here)
Democracy Watch has filed a motion to have a hearing of its application before the October 14th voting day. The motion will be considered by the Federal Court on Thursday, October 2, 2008 at The D’Arcy McGee Building, 90 Sparks St. in Ottawa after 9:30 am. (To see the motion, click here)
Democracy Watch has applied for an order that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s advice to the Governor General of Canada on September 7, 2008 to dissolve Parliament and call an election violated the fixed election date measures that Bill C-16 added to the Canada Elections Act because a vote of non-confidence in the Conservative government had not yet occurred in the House of Commons, and therefore the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of the election was illegal.
Don’t worry, ITQ will be there – although it’s unlikely I’ll be able to liveblog it in realtime, since the federal court is awfully fussy about BlackBerries, which is downright medieval, but that’s another rant for a different time.