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MIXED RESULTS IN LATEST ELECTION ACT RULING
(This article is from the Sept. 1-15/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
Ontario PV Bureau
THE AUGUST 16 ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal on the Communist Party's constitutional challenge to parts of the federal Election Act was a "split decision," according to CPC leader Miguel Figueroa.
"It was a good news-bad news decision," Figueroa says. "We welcome the fact that the Appeal Court upheld certain important aspects of the Molloy [lower court] judgement. In the main, however, we are disappointed with the Appeal Court's inconsistent and contradictory decision."
In March 1999, Ontario Justice Anne Molloy ruled in favour of the Charter Challenge brought by the Communist Party that several sections of the Canada Election Act were unconstitutional because they discriminated against smaller political parties and infringed on the rights of Canadians to free expression and free association. The Ontario Court decision dealt with Ottawa's appeal of a key part of Justice Molloy's decision, which struck down the rule requiring registered parties to run a minimum of 50 candidates in every general election, and the associated prohibition on identifying the affiliation of candidates of a political party which falls short of that threshold. In place of the 50-candidate threshold, Molloy ruled that two (2) candidates is the appropriate number for a party to become and remain registered under the Act.
The ruling of the Appeal Court was mixed. On one hand, the three-judge panel upheld Molloy's ruling that it is unconstitutional to withhold the party identifier on the ballot for parties which nominate less than 50 candidates. The Court agreed that party affiliation is essential information for voters, and that therefore the threshold for placing party affiliation on the ballot should be lower than 50 candidates. However, the judges refused to set that lower threshold; instead they directed Parliament to reconsider the matter and amend the current legislation within six months.
"While this part of the ruling is welcome, it is also problematic," says Figueroa. "By throwing the question back into Parliament, the Court is returning the issue to the very body which legislated the anti-democratic aspects of the Election Act in the first place. After all, Parliament is dominated by the large, established parties which have a shared vested interest in keeping the threshold as high as possible in order to discourage or prevent smaller or alternative parties from entering the federal political fray."
But the most damaging part of the ruling was the Court's judgement that the 50-candidate rule per se was not unconstitutional, and that the main benefit of party registration - the ability to give tax receipts to contributors - is a privilege which should be extended only to "political parties [which] assume a meaningful level of participation in the electoral process."
"This ruling maintains an extremely narrow, electoralist conception of the role of political parties in the democratic process, and in society as a whole," Figueroa stated. "It is the traditional notion underlying bourgeois parliamentary democracy - that political parties exist only to run in elections, to form majority governments and/or to serve as `her majesty's loyal opposition'. It is precisely this narrow and dated concept that Justice Molloy challenged in her historic decision."
If it is not overturned, this ruling will maintain the current discriminatory situation whereby members and supporters of the CPC, and of other smaller parties which have not met the 50-candidate threshold, are denied access to tax benefits, while Canadians who donate to parties like the Liberals or the Canadian Alliance can receive those benefits.
"This is not only patently unjust, it is also a means to weaken and marginalize smaller political parties, especially working class and people's parties without corporate backing, to prevent them from participating in the federal arena," Figueroa points out.
The CPC's Central Committee will decide soon whether to appeal part or all of the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.
"Launching a Supreme Court appeal will be a big undertaking for our party," says Figueroa. "We will be consulting with other smaller parties to see if they would be interested in supporting such an appeal. And of course, we would need the continued support of our members and friends, and of Canadians in general, who support our efforts to fight for democratic change."
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