One Year to the day from the last election call, Federal Court of Canada Justice Michael Shore heard arguments from the federal government and Democracy Watch, a watchdog group who works to maintain ethics in government. The issue at hand is the legality of the 2008 federal election.
At the heart of Democracy Watch's contention is the Harper legislation which set fixed election dates. Passed in 2007, the election law was a key point in the 2006 Conservative platform for accountability. However, in 2008 Harper went to the Governor General and asked to have Parliament dissolved, thereby forcing an election. The fixed election date was set to be Oct. 19, 2009.
Duff Conacher, the founder of Democracy Watch, said, "We believe that the prime minister should be found accountable because he introduced changes to the law, said they fixed election dates, and then for false reasons called a snap election in violation of those measures," continuing with, "And also, we want to prevent future prime ministers from doing the same kind of thing because it’s so unfair."
The Government lawyer Robert MacKinnon argued it is the Governor General's discretion to dissolve Parliament "as she sees fit." MacKinnon added, "Democracy Watch is wrongly asking a court to consider what is essentially a moral debate on political fair play - not a legal matter."
During the process of creating the bill, Rob Nicholson, who was the minster of public reform and is now justice minister said, "This prime minister will live by the law and spirit of this particular piece of legislation. He and this government are driving this democratic reform."
There is speculation that if found culpable, the Tories face class-action lawsuits against the Conservative party in order to recover the $350 million spent on the election in addition to reparations to the government for monies lost during the election.
This comes on the heels of the Federal Liberal Party declaring their intentions to cause a vote of no-confidence at the first opportunity in the next session of Parliament.
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Harper Ethics Challenged in Court
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- William Gibbs
- - September 21st, 2009
I would argue as many do that morality can influence the law in the sense that it can provide the reason for making whole groups of immoral actions illegal. For example, it could be argued that Mr. Harper introduced and passed the law for set election dates to prevent needless costly elections for opportunistic reasons. He had moral reasons for his actions. Then Mr. Harper thought that he could get a majority because he was up in the polls-opportunistic reasons. Thus Mr. Harper's actions to call an election prior to the set date would be an immoral action attacking the morality of the law his party created. The law and morality relationship is a huge ongoing philosophical debate with many different takes.
