{"id":12259,"date":"2020-10-19T12:22:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T16:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/?p=12259"},"modified":"2025-05-25T07:17:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-25T11:17:20","slug":"democracy-watch-filing-lawsuit-against-premiers-election-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/democracy-watch-filing-lawsuit-against-premiers-election-call\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy Watch filing lawsuit against B.C. Premier\u2019s election callDemocracy Watch filing lawsuit against B.C. Premier\u2019s election call"},"content":{"rendered":"

Case is not to stop election \u2013 just to have the court declare election call was illegal<\/span><\/h3>\n\n

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:<\/b>
Monday, October 19, 2020<\/p>\n\n

OTTAWA \u2013 Today, Democracy Watch announced that it will soon file a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court challenging B.C. Premier John Horgan\u2019s advice to the Lieutenant Governor to call the provincial snap election. The case is not aimed at stopping the election. Instead, DWatch will only ask the court to declare that the Premier\u2019s action violated the fixed election date measure in B.C.\u2019s Constitution Act<\/em><\/a> and the constitutional convention<\/a> that has been created by premiers calling elections only on the fixed date in 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n

B.C. was the first jurisdiction in Canada to enact fixed election date measures with Bill 7 in 2001. The B.C. NDP showed it was in favour of fixed election dates when it introduced Bill 5 in 2017 to change the fixed election date from May to October. The fixed date for the next provincial election was set for the third Saturday in October 2021.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cBy calling a snap election instead of waiting for the fixed election date a year from now, Premier Horgan acted like an old dictator not a new democrat,\u201d<\/em> said Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch. \u201cHopefully the B.C. courts will rule that the Premier violated the law when he called the snap election.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Snap elections are unfair not only to opposition parties (as they are usually called when having an election favours the ruling party), but also to people who want to run as a candidate but can\u2019t afford to suddenly drop everything and run. That\u2019s why the federal Parliament, and every province except Nova Scotia, followed B.C.\u2019s lead and enacted fixed election date measures<\/a>. The UK Parliament<\/a> has also enacted fixed election date measures.<\/p>\n\n

Democracy Watch will be represented in the case by Emily MacKinnon<\/a> and Sarah Chaster<\/a> of Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP in Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n

– 30 \u2013<\/p>\n

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:<\/strong>
Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179
Cell: 416-546-3443
Email: info@democracywatch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Democracy Watch\u2019s Democratic Voting System Campaign<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Case is not to stop election \u2013 just to have the court declare election call was illegal<\/span><\/h3>\n\n

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:<\/b>
Monday, October 19, 2020<\/p>\n\n

OTTAWA \u2013 Today, Democracy Watch announced that it will soon file a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court challenging B.C. Premier John Horgan\u2019s advice to the Lieutenant Governor to call the provincial snap election. The case is not aimed at stopping the election. Instead, DWatch will only ask the court to declare that the Premier\u2019s action violated the fixed election date measure in B.C.\u2019s Constitution Act<\/em><\/a> and the constitutional convention<\/a> that has been created by premiers calling elections only on the fixed date in 2005, 2009, 2013 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n

B.C. was the first jurisdiction in Canada to enact fixed election date measures with Bill 7 in 2001. The B.C. NDP showed it was in favour of fixed election dates when it introduced Bill 5 in 2017 to change the fixed election date from May to October. The fixed date for the next provincial election was set for the third Saturday in October 2021.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cBy calling a snap election instead of waiting for the fixed election date a year from now, Premier Horgan acted like an old dictator not a new democrat,\u201d<\/em> said Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch. \u201cHopefully the B.C. courts will rule that the Premier violated the law when he called the snap election.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Snap elections are unfair not only to opposition parties (as they are usually called when having an election favours the ruling party), but also to people who want to run as a candidate but can\u2019t afford to suddenly drop everything and run. That\u2019s why the federal Parliament, and every province except Nova Scotia, followed B.C.\u2019s lead and enacted fixed election date measures<\/a>. The UK Parliament<\/a> has also enacted fixed election date measures.<\/p>\n\n

Democracy Watch will be represented in the case by Emily MacKinnon<\/a> and Sarah Chaster<\/a> of Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP in Vancouver.<\/p>\n\n

– 30 \u2013<\/p>\n

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:<\/strong>
Duff Conacher, Co-founder of Democracy Watch
Tel: (613) 241-5179
Cell: 416-546-3443
Email: info@democracywatch.ca<\/a><\/p>\n

Democracy Watch\u2019s Democratic Voting System Campaign<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Case is not to stop election \u2013 just to have the court declare election call was illegal FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Monday, October 19, 2020 OTTAWA \u2013 Today, Democracy Watch announced that it will soon file a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court challenging B.C. Premier John Horgan\u2019s advice to the Lieutenant Governor to call the provincial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18454,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions\/18454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/democracywatch.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}