Court challenge of 2008 election dismissed

A Federal Court judge has dismissed a case challenging the legality of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's snap election call last fall.

In his decision, Judge Michel M.J. Shore said the applicants who launched the suit "do not demonstrate a proper understanding of the separation of powers."

"This court disposes of this matter to ensure that political issues (in time and context) are not made to be legal ones. The remedy for the applicant's contention is not for the Federal Court to decide, but rather one of the count of the ballot box."

Shore also agreed with the federal government's lawyers that the law does not legally bind dates for elections because, in part, the government could fall at any time on a no-confidence vote.

Shore noted that no-confidence votes do not have a firm definition and often require the judgment of the prime minister.

"It is the court's conclusion that votes of [no confidence] are political in nature and lack legal aspects," he wrote.

The case, brought forward by Democracy Watch, a citizens group that monitors ethics in government, claimed Harper broke his own fixed-election-date law by calling last fall's election.

Duff Conacher, the group's founder, had said the only way an election could have been called then was if the government had fallen on a vote of no-confidence.

Under Harper's fixed-election-date law, which the Tories promised in the 2006 election campaign, the vote was not supposed to be held until Oct. 19, 2009.

When the law was introduced and passed in 2007, the minister of democratic reform, Rob Nicholson, who is now the justice minister, said the measures restricted the prime minister from calling an election unless a vote of no-confidence occurred before October 2009.

But government lawyers argued that the fixed-date law does not restrict the prime minister from asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament, as Harper requested last year.