Tag: election law

The Made-Up Law Made Them Do It

The Supreme Court’s made-up right to vote doctrine works its mischief at the Ontario Court of Appeal

Earlier this week, the Court of Appeal for Ontario released its decision in Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc v Ontario (Attorney General), 2023 ONCA 139, which considers the constitutionality of an extension, from six months before an election to a whole year, of the period during which political speech by civil society actors in Ontario is severely restricted. The Superior Court had previously found that this extension was an unconstitutional violation of the freedom of expression protected by s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the Ontario legislature re-enacted it, invoking the Charter’s “notwithstanding clause”, s 33. The Court of Appeal unanimously holds that s 33 was validly relied on, but also, by a 2-1 majority, that the law nonetheless violates the right to vote, protected by s 3 of the Charter, whose application cannot be ousted under s 33.

The outcome is a disturbing one. The idea that a law that does not affect anyone’s ability to cast a ballot or run for office ― the two rights protected by s 3 ― but rather censors individuals and groups who are not candidates at an election precisely because they are not candidates, is a violation of the right to vote is, to put it mildly, counter-intuitive. The problem with the impugned legislation is that it is rank political censorship. Yet one would think that, since it enables legislatures to disregard the freedom of expression, s 33 of the Charter enables just this sort of self-serving abuse of power. Yet it would be a mistake to blame the Court of Appeal. The majority’s decision is a plausible application of one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions of the last half-century: Harper v Canada (Attorney-General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 SCR 827.

Before getting to the main issue, a few words on the unambiguously correct and good aspect of the Court of Appeal’s ruling: the rejection of the argument that s 33 could not have been invoked in the first place. This too is a straightforward application of Supreme Court precedent, Ford v Quebec (Attorney General), [1988] 2 SCR 712, which held that the only implicit limit on resort to s 33 is that it cannot be retroactive; subject to this constraint, legislatures need not explain or justify suspending the enforceability of Charter rights. The applicants argued that Ford could be disregarded, either because election law was a special case or because the Supreme Court’s decision was no longer in tune with “the evolution of Charter jurisprudence since … 1988″ [56]. The Court of Appeal makes short work of both arguments, explaining that the importance of elections to the maintenance of democracy is sufficiently addressed by the fact that s 3 of the Charter is not subject to s 33, and that Ford has never been questioned, let alone overruled, by the Supreme Court.

This is quite right on both points. The fashionable academic theories on which the applicants relied, developed in the last few years in response to the resurgence of s 33, are unmoored from the Charter‘s text, and rely on fanciful extension of underlying principles about whose effects the Supreme Court is ambivalent at best. Of course, the Supreme Court remains free to make things up and reverse Ford. It may yet be urged to do so, whether if this case is appealed or indeed, as some have suggested, in a reference intended to limit the use of s 33. But I hope that the ease with which the Court of Appeal rejected the claim that Ford has been superseded by jurisprudential developments is indication of what is to come if that happens.

Section 2(b) of the Charter having been successfully ousted, the Court of Appeal moves on to the main event: the s 3 argument. This too is governed by Supreme Court precedent, Harper, which concerned the constitutionality of the federal scheme for silencing civil society political speech during (but not prior to) election campaigns. But the guidance it provides is nothing as clear as Ford‘s, and it is necessary to reproduce it here at some length.

Harper was mainly argued and decided on the basis of s 2(b), but s 3 was also raised. Bastrache J’s majority reasons on this point began by noting that it “cannot be” that “the right to meaningful participation” in elections, which is how the Supreme Court has long re-interpreted s 3, has an identical content “with the exercise of freedom of expression. … The right to free expression and the right to vote are distinct rights”. [67] Would that Justice Bastarache had stopped here! Instead, he declared that “[t]he right to meaningful participation includes a citizen’s right to exercise his or her vote in an informed manner”. [70] This drew on no s 3 precedent whatever, but rather on Libman v Quebec (Attorney General), [1997] 3 SCR 569, a s 2(b) case. Undeterred, Ba starache J had the following to say:

[E]quality in the political discourse is necessary for meaningful participation in the electoral process and ultimately enhances the right to vote. Therefore … s. 3 does not guarantee a right to unlimited information or to unlimited participation. Spending limits, however, must be carefully tailored to ensure that candidates, political parties and third parties are able to convey their information to voters. Spending limits which are overly restrictive may undermine the informational component of the right to vote. To constitute an infringement of the right to vote, these spending limits would have to restrict information in such a way as to undermine the right of citizens to meaningfully participate in the political process and to be effectively represented.

The question, then, is whether the spending limits … interfere with the right of each citizen to play a meaningful role in the electoral process. The trial judge found that the advertising expense limits allow third parties to engage in “modest, national, informational campaigns” as well as  “reasonable electoral district informational campaigns” but would prevent third parties from engaging in an “effective persuasive campaign” … [But] [m]eaningful participation in elections is not synonymous with the ability to mount a media campaign capable of determining the outcome. [72-74; paragraph break removed]

The outcome of Working Families turns on the meaning of this less-than-pellucid passage, of which the majority and the dissent take different views.

The majority, Zarnett and Sossin JJA sees it as setting out “two proxies, or methods of ascertaining whether the restriction” on voter information “is constitutionally offside”. [86] The first is asking whether the restriction is, in Bastarache J’s words, “carefully tailord”, which in turn “”The requirement that the restriction be carefully tailored “invites the court to examine the rationale, express or implicit, for the amount and duration of the spending limit – the express or implicit reasons why the lines were drawn where they were”. [87] This, the majority insists, is a very different matter from the analysis required by s 1 of the Charter, and in particular from its “minimal impairment” stage, which asks whether less restrictive alternatives to the impugned measure were (reasonably) available to the legislature. Here,

the question is whether the challenged spending restrictions draw the line at the point of preventing the well-resourced from dominating political discussion without being overly restrictive so as to undermine the right of citizens to meaningfully participate in the political process and to be effectively represented. A conclusion that a choice was in some other sense “reasonable” does not answer this question. [89]

Moreover, in this case, this assessment must focus not only on the legal end-state created by the impugned law, but specifically on the transition from the regulatory regime it displaced, which restricted political speech by civil society actors for six months rather than a year. It is the change from the one to the other that must “carefully tailored” in the above sense.

The majority holds that it was not. While explicitly rejecting the contention that the impugned legislation “constitutes partisan self-dealing by the incumbent government”, [102] it considers that “doubling the restricted period without increasing the quantum, a result that was twice as restrictive as what had been found appropriate, without explanation, does not denote careful tailoring”. [109] While the government argued that the new regime did not impede the voters’ participation, the majority takes the position that “[i]f at least some voters are prevented from exposure to political information of value from third parties in the 6 to 12-month period, their right to meaningful participation under s. 3 may be undermined”. [112] That the new restriction is one of a range of reasonable alternatives does not matter either ― that would be a consideration under s 1 of the Charter, but not at the point of establishing a s 3 infringement.

The second “proxy” is whether the restrictions leave room for at least “a modest informational campaign”. The majority finds that there was no evidence that this was so. The first-instance judge’s suggestion that affordable means of communicating with the voters were available and sufficient for a modest campaign was speculative. Moreover, the resources that could be used under the impugned law had to be deployed over a period of 12 months, which again threw the validity of the law into doubt.

Having briefly considered whether the restriction of s 3 rights could be justified under s 1 of the Charter, the majority concludes that it could not. The law is unconstitutional, but the declaration to this effect is suspended for a year to allow the legislature time to consider its next steps.

In dissent, Benotto JA rejects the majority’s interpretation of Bastarache J’s reasons in Harper. For him

[t]he controlling test is not whether the spending limits are carefully tailored but whether they restrict information in such a way to undermine the right of citizens to meaningfully participate in the electoral process, which includes the right to vote in an informed manner. [161]

This test is concerned with the effects of the impugned law, not with whether a justification for it exists. To look at justification is to conflate the s 3 analysis with that which ought to take place under s 1. In this case, moreover, it would be a mistake to focus on the change from s six-month period of restricting civil society speech to the one-year one; the longer period “had to stand or fall on its own. It was not the change that was determinative, but whether the legislation … was Charter compliant.” [176]

The dissenting judge considers there was enough evidence that the impugned law left some space for civil society actors to communicate their views to the voters, which was all that Harper required. The judge below made findings to this effect which were open to him and should not be disturbed.

I have no strong views on whether the majority opinion or the dissent is the better application of Bastarache J’s comments in Harper. I think both the majority’s reading, which emphasises the importance of the “careful tailoring” language and the dissent’s, which focuses on the way Bastarache J seems to have formulated the ultimate question before him are plausible. It is true, as the dissent charges, that the majority’s “careful tailoring” analysis is hard to tell apart from what would normally take place under s 1 of the Charter. I would add, moreover, that the “two proxies” approach will be unhelpful if the two point in different directions, which one might think was the case here: the law wasn’t tailored carefully, or indeed at all, but it arguably did leave some room for political speech. But the approach favoured by the dissent suffers from its own flaws. For one thing, it seems to ignore Bastarache J’s tailoring language altogether. For another, it is entirely impressionistic, and leaves an ostensible constitutional right at the mercy of the government producing an expert who will say, as a former Chief Electoral Officer did in this case, that the spending limit imposed on civil society was “not nothing”. Pick your poison.

For my part, I want to stress that this case highlights the rare feat achieved by Bastarache J (and, of course, the other judges who signed onto his opinion) in Harper: being at once vapid and pernicious. Vapid, because the discussion of s 3 in Harper is too vague and self-contradictory to mean much of anything, let alone provide real guidance to the courts that are nonetheless bound to apply it. To repeat, it is not the Court of Appeal judges’ fault that they have a hard time puzzling out whether “careful tailoring”, “modest informational campaign”, or “meaningful participation” is the test for a s 3 violation, and what any of these things mean. Pernicious, because it still opens the door to what is quite obviously a freedom of expression issue that should be dealt with under s 2(b) of the Charter ― or, as here, ignored because the self-dealing legislature so decreed ― to be considered under the aegis of a different right, unsuited to the exercise as a matter of both constitutional text and doctrine.

Of course it’s true that, as Bastarache J said in Harper, “[g]reater participation in the political discourse leads to a wider expression of beliefs and opinions and results in an enriched political debate, thereby enhancing the quality of Canada’s democracy”. [70] But it simply does not follow that this is a matter for s 3 of the Charter and that “the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly” includes a “right to exercise his or her vote in an informed manner”. [71] Not everything that is needed to make a given Charter right fully effective can be rolled into that particular right. A free press, and certainly the media’s ability to report on court proceedings, “enhance the quality” of the administration of justice and, for instance, the right to be judged by an independent and impartial tribunal. But it does not follow that restrictions on reporting on criminal trials are to be dealt with under s 11(d) of the Charter instead of s 2(b). Different Charter provisions have independent meanings and distinct doctrinal frameworks that give them effect, and confusing them is both wrong in principle and unhelpful in practice ― except, of course, for crassly results-oriented purposes.

In another controversy about election laws in Ontario, the Supreme Court put an end to similar confusion. In Toronto (City) v Ontario (Attorney General), 2021 SCC 34, it rejected the Superior Court’s re-branding of the franchise in municipal elections, to which s 3 of the Charter does not apply, as a form of expression protected by s 2(b). If given the opportunity, it should do the same with the re-branding of pre-electoral expression as “the right to vote in an election of members … of a legislative assembly”. This should be done in the clearest way possible ― that is to say, by rejecting Harper, at least on this point (until, in the fullness of time, its s 2(b) holding is also overturned). Harper‘s s 3 “analysis” was made-up, and it needs to be unmade in the place whence it came.

Common Power Grabs

A defence of Ontario’s use of the notwithstanding clause as “common good constitutionalism” is the same old tripe, under a new sauce

Over at Ius et Iustitium, Kerry Sun, Stéphane Sérafin, and Xavier Foccroulle Ménard (I shall refer to them collectively as SSM) have a new addition to the rather stale menu of notwithstanding clause apologetics: a post that attempts to justify legislative override of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a form of “common good constitutionalism”. SSM write

that the notwithstanding clause should be viewed as enshrining a form of coordinate interpretation. Under this approach, ideally, the invocation of s. 33 may be contemplated in those cases where a legislature seeking to advance the common good reasonably disagrees with the judicial interpretation of a rights provision

Except for the invocation of the “common good”, this is the usual fare. Legislatures are supposed to have their own views about what Charter rights mean and entail, and are justified in imposing these views on the citizens. Joanna Baron and Geoffrey Sigalet made one such argument over at Policy Options a couple of years ago (I critiqued it here), and more recently Professor Sigalet made a similar case in a National Post op-ed with Ben Woodfinden.

But the addition of the “common good constitutionalism” sauce is noteworthy. So far as it is possible to define, “common good constitutionalism” is a branch of right-wing anti-liberal thought which seeks to re-establish constitutional law on foundations ostentatiously grounded in traditionalist ideology and/or medieval natural law, and thereby to make it serve the general good, as understood by its exponents. In substance, “common good constitutionalism” often amounts to a celebration of political power at the expense of the rights of minorities. In form, it distinguishes itself not only by the aforementioned ostentatious traditionalism or medievalism, but also by its a refusal to seriously engage with non-adherents to the doctrine. (Its celebrity chef, Adrian Vermeule, is notorious for blocking people who have not attacked or sometimes even interacted with him on Twitter.)

Unfortunately, these traits are all present in SSM’s post. I address a number of specific faulty arguments it makes below, but first let me note that ― remarkably for a piece of scholarly writing ― it never quotes or even cites the people it disagrees with. They are merely nameless, faceless “critics” of this or that, and the only source SSM refer to for their views is the not-at-all critical op-ed by Professor Sigalet and Mr. Woodfinden linked to above. Mr. Ménard tries to make a virtue out of this in a subsequent Twitter exchange with Emmett Macfarlane, candidly admitting that he would “rather cite jurists who share” his fundamental premises “than political scientists with whom I share piecemeal views. It makes for better scholarship”, he says. No, it doesn’t. Participants in scholarly debate should endeavour to bring their opponents’ best arguments to their audience’s attention. Those who fail to do so risk becoming propagandists, no matter how many footnotes their writings include.

The entrée for SSM’s paean to the notwithstanding clause is the enactment by the Ontario legislature of the Protecting Elections and Defending Democracy Act, 2021, which invokes s. 33 of the Charter to override the decision of the province’s Superior Court of Justice in Working Families Ontario v Ontario, 2021 ONSC 4076. I will eventually post a detailed analysis of the Court’s decision, but as I have already noted in The Line, its conclusion is self-evidently correct. Section 1 of the Charter requires limits on the rights it guarantees to be reasonable and demonstrably justified. Yet the Ontario government simply provided no justification for extending the duration of very severe restrictions on the ability of civil society groups to engage in political advertising from six months before the start of an election campaign to a year. It own experts had previously said that the six-month period was reasonable. The law could not stand. But the legislature re-passed it in four days.

SSM’s presentation of the situation is misleading. For one thing, they claim that the “arguments” against Ontario’s legislation were “very similar to those raised in” Harper v Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 SCR 827. This is doubly wrong. First, the case actually decided by the Superior Court was focused on the lack of justification for the latest extension of Ontario’s censorship regime, not the validity of such a regime in principle. But even the original dispute about the six-month-long pre-campaign censorship period is far outside the scope of Harper. There the majority invoked the lack of restraint on political speech outside a five-week-long election campaign as evidence of the limited (and hence justified) nature of the restraints during that campaign. SSM further mislead their readers by suggesting that, “[a]s a result of the court ruling, Ontario would likely have no spending limits by unions, corporations, or other third parties in place prior to the next election period, slated to begin in the summer of 2022”. Needless to say, the Ontario legislature could have re-enacted a six-month (or shorter) restriction period just as easily is it re-enacted a year-long one. Its masters in the executive just chose not to do that.

This brings me to another weakness in SSM’s argument. Responding to critics of “the Ontario legislature’s failure to advance a justification for” invoking the “notwithstanding clause”, they insist that “a justification was in fact given in this case: preserving the fairness and integrity of Ontario’s provincial elections”. Leave aside its substantive merits for the moment, and notice the artful use of the passive voice: a justification “was advanced” ― by whom? The text does not say, but the footnote supporting this sentence refers to two sources. One is a passage from the Working Families judgment quoting the Attorney-General’s speech to the legislature about the bill it struck down; it simply has nothing to do with the use of the notwithstanding clause. The other is a news story quoting a statement by a spokesman for the government’s House Leader. Neither, in other words, reflect the legislature’s considered views about the notwithstanding clause. Instead, certainly the former and arguably the latter emanate from the executive rather than the legislature.

Without meaning to, SSM give away the notwithstanding clause defenders’ sleight of hand: while they denounce those who have but “a limited regard for the legislature’s capacity to reason about rights”, they are, in reality, apologists for executive power. Unsurprisingly, they repeatedly speak of the government, not the legislature, invoking the notwithstanding clause. Earlier, they cheerfully note that Premier Doug “Ford’s government controlled the legislature, and so the bill” that expanded the censorship of political advertising before elections “passed with little difficulty”. This all is, of course, of a piece of the “common good” movement’s embrace of executive and administrative power elsewhere. Professor Vermeule, for instance, is an advocate of “law’s abnegation”, as the title of one of his books has it, in the face of the administrative state. SSM themselves defend approaches to legal interpretation that would empower administrative decision-makers instead of holding them to the limits enacted by legislatures.

This power, moreover, is an unbridled one. Recall that, contrary to SSM’s insistence on (legislative) reasoning about rights, the Ontario government advanced no reason at all to justify its expansion of political censorship. To repeat, the Superior Court did not disagree with the government’s justification or rule that it was insufficiently supported by evidence ― though it’s worth pointing out that there never has been any evidence that the integrity and fairness of Canadian elections were compromised by the lack of a year-long gag on the civil society, or even by the absence of the much more modest restrictions upheld in Harper. The Harper majority specifically held that evidence was unnecessary ― a reason, among others, why Harper is one of the Supreme Court’s worst decisions of all time.

Be that as it may, the Working Families court found that there was no justification at all for limiting the freedom of expression of civil society groups for as long as the legislature had. For all that SSM claim to regard “law as a work of reason”, for all their insistence that “[t]hrough a prudent exercise of reason, the law-maker is free and apt to make a practical judgment in choosing among the many alternatives, the many legitimate and reasonable possibilities”, the law they actually extol is an unreasoned power-grab by the executive. By asking us to accept it in the name of reason, SSM show that this rhetoric is just a spice intended to mask the insipid taste of their actual position.

And, for all their contempt for legal positivism and posturing as the heirs to the natural law tradition, SSM are, in truth, asking us to accept the authority of law simply because it has been enacted by the state. They deprecate as simple-mindedly positivistic the view of “legal rights as solely the emanation of judicial decisions”, so that “a Charter right is effectively nullified if the legislature derogates from judicial review via the notwithstanding mechanism”. (SSM never say, of course, who actually holds these views.) For them rights, being emanations of the natural law, exist even if they cannot be enforced through the courts.

But individuals must accept the legislature’s ― or rather, as we have seen, the executive’s ― specification of these rights, even when, as in the case of Ontario’s censorship regime and its use of the notwithstanding clause, the legislature manifestly failed to turn its mind to the right in question. No other reason than the legislature’s authority, and the common good constitutionalists’ naïve believe in its ability to reason, is necessary. And of course, like all notwithstanding clause apologists, SSM trot out the historical fact that it is “part of the Charter and the political settlement that made possible the constitutional entrenchment itself”, as if that can legitimate political actors resorting to it. But that is only so on a nakedly positivist view, where the legality of something is sufficient warrant for its legitimacy.

As co-blogger Mark Mancini and I have previously suggested here and here, SSM’s embrace of common good constitutionalism is superfluous at best, and actively pernicious at worst. If is superfluous if it only serves to provide a baroque vocabulary for warmed-up arguments for in favour of political power and against judicially-enforceable individual rights. It is pernicious if they really mean to embrace the most reactionary views associated with, and sometimes openly embraced by, their ideological fellow travellers.

On the whole, their Ius et Iustitium post is evidence for the former possibility. Little if anything in it could not have been said, and has not been said, without the “common good” sauce. But even stripped of this rhetoric, the argument remains distasteful enough. Citizens ought to defer to the choices executive branch officials, so long as they have been laundered through supine legislatures, because these legislatures in theory could have ― and it doesn’t matter that they actually haven’t ― engaged in reasoned deliberations about rights. Calling something an exercise of reason directed at the common good does not make it so. Tripe is tripe, and a power grab is a power grab.

Upcoming Canadian Talks

Save the dates!

In a couple of weeks, I will be hopping on to a 13-hour transpacific flight and heading to Canada to give a series of talks. Here are the dates and topics. I don’t have all the details about the exact time and location yet, so if you are based at or near one of the host institutions, keep an eye out ― or get in touch with me or my hosts closer to the day.

  • September 26, University of Victoria, Faculty of Law (Runnymede Society): “The Road to Serfdom, 75 Years On”. I take it that this will be inaugural Runnymede event at UVic, and I am very honoured to be part of it.
  • September 30, Université de Sherbrooke, Faculty of Law: « Route de la Servitude: fermée pour travaux (de démolition)… depuis 75 ans ». This will be the French version of the UVic talk; I’m afraid I’m a bit puzzled by the title, but I didn’t to choose it.
  • October 2, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (Runnymede Society): “An Election Is No Time to Discuss Serious Issues. Really?” This will be discussion of the regulation of civil society participation in election campaigns, which has been much in the news in recent weeks.
  • October 4, University of Waterloo (Freedom of Expression in Canada Workshop): “A Conscience- and Integrity-Based Approach to Compelled Speech”. The workshop is being organized by Emmett Macfarlane, who has just told it is full… but there is apparently a waitlist. My paper builds, of course, on what I have had to say about things like the citizenship oath, the Law Society of Ontario’s “statement of principles”, and Ontario’s anti-carbon-tax stickers.
  • October 9, Université du Québec à Montréal, Département des sciences juridiques: « Les élections sont-elles une occasion de se taire? ». This will be the French version of the Toronto talk, with a discussion of the Québec legislation thrown in.
  • October 11-12, Ottawa (Workshop on the Royal Prerogative): “The Royal Prerogative in New Zealand”. This is the first meeting of a group put together by Philippe Lagassé to carry out a SSHRC-funded research project on the prerogative in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Professor Lagassé also tells me the workshop is “pretty much full”. Are you seeing a theme here? Yep, I’ve managed to get myself invited to really cool workshops.
  • October 16, McGill University, Faculty of Law (Runnymede Society): a discussion with Paul Daly on administrative law. If the Supreme Court co-operates, we will, of course, discuss the Vavilov and Bell/NFL cases, in which the Court may, or may not, completely change the Canadian law of judicial review. If the decisions are not released, it will be a more general conversation. Either way, I am looking forward to
  • October 18, Université de Montréal (Symposium of the Journal of Commonwealth Law): “Unholy Trinity: The Failure of Administrative Constitutionalism in Canada”. I will be presenting a paper arguing that the Supreme Court’s disgraceful decision in Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32, [2018] 2 SCR 293 and the companion Ontario case illustrate the problems that plague “administrative constitutionalism” ― the view that administrative decision-makers’ decisions bearing on constitutional rights are entitled to judicial deference.

I am grateful to the people who have invited me and/or organized these events. (A special shout-out to my co-blogger and president of the Runnymede Society, Mark Mancini!) If you are able to make it to one (or more) of the talks, please say hello. It is always a pleasure to meet some of my readers in person. See you soon!

The System Is Working

Environmentalist groups have a point when they say they are being muzzled by Elections Canada; trouble is, that’s exactly how the law is meant to work

As the media reported earlier this week, environmentalist groups are angry at Elections Canada, which has warned them that spending money to raise awareness of climate change in the run-up to the coming federal election would subject them to the rules on “third party” participation in election campaigns. Many are feeling that they will be required to keep quiet during the campaign, which rather defeats the purpose of being advocacy groups. Even the BBC has a story on this.

For its part, Elections Canada has issued a response claiming that the Canada Elections Act doesn’t prevent advocacy groups from advocating, so long as they register if they spend $500 or more and comply with the spending cap. Elections Canada adds that the registration requirement “leads to increased transparency” and has been in place “for nearly 20 years”. Helpfully, I suppose, the statement concludes with an acknowledgement that the rules “can be complex”, and Elections Canada is happy to answer questions about them.

The rules are indeed somewhat complicated, as I explain below. But the bottom line is simple enough. Despite the officials’ protestations, NGOs ― be they environmentalist or other ― have a point when they say that they are being muzzled. To some extent, that’s what the Canada Elections Act is designed to do; to an even greater extent this might be an unintended consequence of the Act’s pursuit of transparency, but an entirely predictable one. The issues are well known; I, for one, raised them in my statement to the House of Commons Select Committee that considered the latest round of amendments to the Canada Elections Act. The only surprising thing is the degree to which people still end up being surprised when problems of sort arise.

The Canada Elections Act‘s regulation of political spending is predicated on the idea that attention during election campaigns should be focused on politicians ― individual candidates and political parties, especially parties. Parties, if they run candidates in all ridings, are able to spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising ― which they are entitled to buy at favourable rates, in addition to an allowance of free airtime. Non-politicians ― that is, individuals, labour and student unions, corporations, and NGOs ― are known as “third parties” in the election law jargon and, as I explained here, their participation in electoral debates is viewed as anomalous, indeed suspicious, and is strictly limited.

One set of limits concerns the amounts of money third parties are allowed to spend, which are only a small fraction of the spending allowed political parties. The Supreme Court has upheld the limitation of third party spending during election campaigns, notably in Harper v Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 SCR 827, although there is good reason to be critical of that decision, which I have even rated as one of the worst in the last fifty years. (As I noted here, the High Court of Australia was also quite skeptical of Harper in a recent decision.) Last year, Parliament enacted further limits that apply even before the formal campaign begins, and their constitutionality has not yet been tested; Harper, in my view, does not dispose of the question.

In addition to spending limits, “third parties” are also subject to onerous registration and reporting requirements. Some of these are the cause of the latest dust-up. Specifically, Division 1 of Part 17 of the Canada Elections Act imposes such requirements on “third parties” that incur more than $500 of expenses on, notably “partisan activities” and “partisan advertising” during the “pre-election period”, which begins on June 30 of the year for which a fixed-date election is scheduled and ends with the start of the election campaign. During the election campaign itself, governed by Division 2 of Part 17, “election advertising”, as well as “partisan activities” count for the spending thresholds that can trigger registration and reporting requirements.

The definitions of “partisan” and “election advertising”, found in section 2(1) of the Canada Elections Act, are very broad. The former term “means the transmission to the public by any means during a pre-election period of an advertising message that promotes or opposes” a party or a candidate, further defined in section 2(7) as “naming”, “identifying” (“including by … logo” or picture, as the case may be, and “providing a link to an Internet page that” names or identifies the party or candidate. “Election advertising” includes the same things as “partisan advertising”, but also “taking a position on an issue with which a … party or candidate is associated”, even without naming that party or candidate. Since issues with which no candidate or party “is associated”, come election time, are about as common as colour pictures of a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup parade, the definition of “election advertising” encompasses pretty much any advertising that has anything to say on matters of government or policy.

Now, some means of communicating with the public are exempted from these definitions. In particular, the exemptions cover anything that the media will print or broadcast without charge to the speaker ― things like quotes in news items, interviews, and op-eds. Also exempt are organizations’ communications with their members, shareholders, or employees, as well as “the transmission by an individual, on a non-commercial basis on the Internet, of his or her personal political views”. Note, though, that on its face the latter exemption doesn’t cover ― indeed, it rather pointedly excludes ― a group’s or an organization’s online communications, even if not paid for (for example, tweeting under the organization’s handle). And of course, any communication that the media are not interested in carrying free of charge will count as an advertising. In effect, for groups and organizations, the media are the gatekeepers of their ability to communicate with the public without having to register as “third parties”.

So what’s the big deal about registration? Well, although you won’t know it from the Elections Canada statement linked to above, registration doesn’t just mean filling out a form. There are a number of other requirements. To begin with, unions and corporations cannot register before their board has adopted a resolution authorizing them to incur expenses on “partisan” or “election advertising” (sections 349.6(5) and 353(5) of the Canada Elections Act). All “third parties” are also required to have a “financial agent” who will be responsible for collecting money to be spend on “partisan” or “election advertising” and for spending it (sections 349.7 and 354). These transactions must be done through a separate bank account (section 358.1) After the election is over, a detailed report on the money collected, advertising taken out, and costs incurred must be filed (section 359). And this is not all. Those “third parties” that spend more than 10,000$ are also required to file interim reports during the course of the election campaign and, most significantly, to appoint auditors (section 355) and file the auditor’s report on their spending (section 360).

Needless to say, this is all quite costly, at least in time, but also ― especially for those third parties that spend more 10,000$ ― in money. Big trade unions, whose budgets are extracted from workers who don’t get a say on whether to contribute or on how the money is spend, may not be especially troubled by these costs. But for NGOs, whose income comes from voluntary (albeit taxpayer-subsidized) donations, and which need to be much more careful about how they spend it, compliance with the Canada Elections Act may be too expensive. From their perspective, the sensible if unfortunate thing to do may well be to keep quiet for the duration of the election campaign, or even starting with the beginning of the pre-campaign period.

This means that for a period of almost four months preceding the election ― the period when the most people pay attention, even if it’s still sporadic and fragmentary attention, to political and policy issues ― civil society organizations may indeed be prevented from expressing their opinion about politicians, except to the extent that the media will let them. Again, the bigger and better-known you are, the less of a problem this may be for you. Smaller groups, whose views are (naturally and fairly) of less interest to the media, will find it more difficult to get across to the voters. The more unusual voices, in other words, are the ones who are the most at risk of being silenced ― in effect if not, perhaps, in intent ― by the Canada Elections Act.

And of course even for larger groups, having to pass through the media means sound-bite-sized interventions have a much better chance of getting across to the voters than anything more serious. Say that a politician or party is anti-environment, or pro-worker, or something equally inane, and the media may well pick it up. But they’re not going to run a detailed report card assessing the competing parties’ platforms on some issue ― but publishing it on an NGO’s website, let alone running it as an advertisement would mean having to comply with burdensome registration and reporting requirements under the Canada Elections Act.

No wonder, then, that environmentalists are feeling muzzled and frustrated. And of course groups pursuing other agendas may be feeling that way too ― or may come to feel that way when the occasion arises. They have more than a little justification. And they shouldn’t be the only ones feeling wronged. The voters should be too. You may not miss the presence of a particular set of activists in the election campaign, but the rules that silence them silence the activists on your side too. You may not be all that interested activists generally have to say, but you should be interested in politicians’ feet being held to the fire.

The ostensible rationale for registration and reporting requirements is that they serve to promote transparency, in addition to assisting in the enforcement of spending limits applicable to “third parties”. It is on that basis that the Supreme Court upheld those requirements that apply in the course of the election campaign ― although not those applicable in the pre-campaign period, which weren’t yet in the Canada Elections Act ― in Harper. Yet one needs to weigh the value of transparency against the costs that its pursuit imposes on those subject to the Canada Elections Act ― and, as I have just explained, on the voters who are being deprived of important contributions to the electoral debate.

The Harper majority’s analysis on this point was quite perfunctory. There is no real discussion of compliance costs and their deterrent effects. Instead, the majority is content to baldly assert that “[t]he appointment of a financial agent or auditor is not overly onerous. Rather, it arguably facilitates the reporting requirements.” [145] Even worse, the majority did not at all consider what I think is the crucial issue: the thresholds at which the registration and reporting requirements kick in. All it said was that the requirements “vary depending on the amount spent on election advertising”. [145] Yet one can accept the principle of imposing such requirements on heavy spenders while also acknowledging that the existing rules go much too far.

In New Zealand, “third parties” are not required to register until they spend NZ$13,200 (ca. C$11,000); more detailed reporting requirements only apply once a “third party” spends NZ$100,000. (Even then, third parties aren’t peremptorily required to provide an auditor’s report, although they may be asked to do so.) These strike me as rather more reasonable figures than those in the Canada Elections Act, though even they should probably be multiplied several-fold to account for the fact that New Zealand’s population is only a small fraction of Canada’s.

It is difficult to believe that a “third party” spending a few thousand, or even tens of thousand of dollars is going to have any substantial impact on an election by itself. At most, it may be successful enough in getting other people ― voters, media, or politicians ― to discuss the issues it is raising. It is this discussion, rather than anything published on an NGO’s website or even a Facebook ad, that might, conceivably albeit theoretically, matter. In the abstract, this discussion might be enriched by more disclosure. In practice, the very real costs of the disclosure requirements end up preventing the conversations from happening at all. I fail to see how the voters benefit from this.

As Elections Canada points out in its response to the environmentalist groups, the “advertising during the election period has been subject to the Canada Elections Act for nearly 20 years”. This is true. (As noted above, rules on advertising in the pre-election period are new.) For about half of this time, it has been known, at least to those who study these things, that the rules tend to hobble not business interests, but labour unions and civil society groups. Colin Feasby wrote about this in 2010; I did (in the context of Québec elections, which are subject to similar but even more draconian rules) in 2012; also in 2012 Tom Flanagan came out in support of rules like those in the Canada Elections Act, whose enactment he had opposed, with the declared intention to muzzle unions; I updated Dr. Feasby’s findings in an article published in 2015. And in my statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when it was studying amendments to the Canada Elections Act last year (which, among other things, introduced restrictions on “third parties” in the pre-campaign period) I specifically mentioned both the registration and reporting requirements’ tendency to muzzle civil society, and the needless low threshold at which these requirements apply. Needless to say, that had no effect on the resulting legislation.

Yet at every election the impact of restrictions on “third parties” seems to surprise. It happened in Québec in 2014, when the Chief Electoral Officer tried censoring a short documentary a group of citizens had produced to oppose the election of the Parti québécois and the enactment of its “values charter”. Eventually, the Chief Electoral Officer changed his mind; but he was wrong to do so. It happened again in Québec in 2018, now with environmentalist groups being targeted. And now it’s happening at the federal level. The system, one might say, is working. It was designed to shut down political debate not dominated by politicians or the media. That’s what it’s doing.

It will be obvious that I don’t think it’s a good system. Like the National Post’s Chris Selley, I think the rules need to be changed. Whether any restrictions on political spending are justified is debatable but, as noted above, one can accept the premises of Canada Elections Act and still support relaxing its requirements a great deal. Ideally, the next Parliament will take up the issue. But there is also room for litigation. Certainly rules on pre-campaign spending, whose constitutionality has not yet been tested all the way to the Supreme Court can be challenged. But perhaps even the registration and reporting rules upheld in Harper could be attacked, provided that the courts are forced to consider solid evidence of their pernicious effects.

Australia 1:0 Canada

Canadians have much to learn from the Australian High Court’s take on election spending limits for “third parties”

The High Court of Australia has just delivered Unions NSW v New South Wales [2019] HCA 1, a decision that should be of interest to readers who are concerned with freedom of expression in the electoral context ― a topical issue in Canada, given the recent imposition of further restrictions in this area by the recently enacted Bill C-76. The decision resulted from a challenge by a number of labour unions to New South Wales legislation that reduced the maximum amount a “third party” ― that is anyone not a candidate at an election or a political party ― is allowed to spend on campaigning in a nearly-six-month period preceding an election, from 1,050,000AUD (jut under a million Canadian) to 500,000AUD. The High Court unanimously held that the legislation was contrary to the implied freedom of political communication, which it had previously read into the Australian constitution‘s provisions requiring “representative” government.

The plurality judgment, by Chief Justice Kiefel and Justices Bell and Keane, finds that the third party spending limits are unconstitutional. That they restrict the ability to communicate is not in dispute. And while the plurality is prepared to assume that these limits are imposed for the legitimate purposes of levelling the campaigning playing field and preventing the wealthy from “drowning out” the voices of the less fortunate, they are not justified. Experts consulted prior to the enactment of the legislation provided no particular justification for recommending that the then-existing spending limits be reduced. A Parliamentary committee, however, recommend that the legislature look into the actual spending needs of third parties, and this was not done either. As a result, there is no reason for saying that the reduced limits are “reasonably necessary”.

Justice Gageler agrees with the plurality’s disposition of the case. He is persuaded of the legitimacy of the state’s pursuit “of substantive fairness in a manner compatible with maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government”. [91] This might, in principle, justify much lower spending limits for third parties, which campaign on single issues, than for parties that must address a broad range of issues in their quest to form a government. However, “[i]t is not self-evident, and it has not been shown, that the cap set in the amount of $500,000 leaves a third-party campaigner with a reasonable opportunity to present its case”. [101] Absent such a showing, the restriction on the freedom of communication is not justified.

Justice Nettle’s conclusion is similar. He accepts the legitimacy of the objective of creating a level electoral playing field ― one on which political parties will be primary players ― and agrees that a legislatures may from time to time review the measures it takes to ensure fairness, including by lowering spending caps previously enacted. However, there must be a justification for whatever measures it takes from time to time. Such a justification is missing in this case. Although it was recommended that more evidence on the needs of third parties be collected, “for reasons which do not appear, that recommendation went unheeded. It is as if Parliament simply went ahead … without pausing to consider whether a cut of as much as 50 per cent was required”. [117]

Justice Gordon, like the plurality, assumes that restrictions on third party spending pursue a legitimate purpose, which she characterizes as the privileging of political parties and candidates. However, in the absence of evidence about the actual need for restrictions set at their current level, “the Court … cannot be satisfied that the level of the expenditure cap is reasonably appropriate and adapted to achieve the asserted constitutionally permissible end”. [150] It was for the State to show that the restriction it seeks to impose was justified, and it has not done so.

For his part, Justice Edelman considers that the reduction in the spending limits imposed on third parties, even as the limits imposed on political parties rose, cannot be explained by the purposes of maintaining a fair and corruption-free electoral system. Rather, it must have had an “additional purpose”, which “was to ensure that the voice of third-party campaigners was quieter than that of political parties and candidates”. [159] In other words, the reduction’s aim was “to burden the freedom of political communication of third-party campaigners”. [160] Justice Edelman considers that, although laws that rely on the relative silencing of some views in order to ensure that all can be heard are legitimate, to aim only at silencing some voices “is incompatible with the maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government”, and legislation so motivated is “invalid”. [160]

Needless to say, I am not qualified to comment on whether the High Court is correct as a matter of Australian law. What I can do is compare its decision with that of the Supreme Court of Canada in Harper v Canada (Attorney-General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 SCR 827, which addressed much the same issues. (Readers will recall that I am not a fan of Harper, to put it mildly, and included it in my list of the Supreme Court’s five worst decisions of the last half-century in this blog’s recent Twelve Days of Christmas symposium.)

This is most obviously so on the issue of deference to the legislature on the issue of the appropriateness of a limitation of the freedom of (political) expression, and the evidence required for the government to make this case. The Harper majority insisted that courts should approach legislative choices with deference. In its view, “[t]he legislature is not required to provide scientific proof based on concrete evidence of the problem it seeks to address in every case”, and that “a reasoned apprehension of … harm” [Harper, 77] is sufficient to restrict fundamental freedoms protected by the Canadian constitution.

This approach is explicitly rejected in Unions NSW. While the Australian judges avoid directly criticizing the Harper majority, both the plurality opinion and Justice Nettle explicitly side with the “strong dissent” of Chief Justice McLachlin and Justice Major (joined by Justice Binnie). The plurality takes a dim view of the submission “that Parliament does not need to provide evidence for the legislation it enacts [and] is entitled to make the choice as to what level of restriction is necessary to meet future problems”. [44] When legislative choice are made in a way that burden the freedom of political communication, they must be justified. Similarly, Justice Gageler speaks of the need for a “compelling justification”, and insists that “[i]f a court cannot be satisfied of a fact the existence of which is necessary in law to provide a constitutional basis for impugned legislation, … the court has no option but to pronounce the legislation invalid.” [95] Justice Gordon insists that “the Court must … be astute not to accept at face value the assertion that freedom of communication will, unless curtailed by a reduction in the cap to $500,000, bring about corruption and distortion of the political process”. [148]

Another point of contrast between Harper and Unions NSW is the treatment of the so-called “egalitarian model of elections” designed in part to favour the interests of political parties and candidates over those of the civil society groups, disparagingly consigned to the status of “third parties”. According to Harper, election campaigns must focus attention on parties and candidates, including by ensuring that any other participants in the public debate, except the media, will behave unobtrusively. By contrast, the plurality opinion in Unions NSW explicitly rejects the submission that candidates and parties deserve preferential treatment, advanced in part on the basis that elections are “not a choice between ideas, policies, views or beliefs except insofar as such choice may be reflected in the electoral choice between candidates”. [39] Rather, the plurality says, “ss 7 and 24 of the Constitution guarantee the political sovereignty of the people of the Commonwealth by ensuring that their choice of elected representatives is a real choice, that is, a choice that is free and well-informed” [40] ― including by third parties. Justice Gageler, of course, takes the contrary view on this point. Justice Edelman’s position is more complex. He explicitly endorses “a Rawlsian, egalitarian model” [178] in which spending limits prevent some speakers from “drowning out” others. However, he also considers that it is not legitimate to target particular speakers for silencing apart from such an anti-drowning out purpose.

A last difference between Harper and Unions NSW worth highlighting is recognition by Justice Gageler of “the propensity of an elected majority to undervalue, and, at worst, to seek to protect itself against adverse electoral consequences resulting from, political communication by a dissenting minority”. [66] Justice Gageler refers to prior cases where the risk of a government legislating to limit political competition the better to maintain itself in office was explicitly adverted to. Such legislation, he notes, is incompatible with presuppositions of the Australian constitutional order. Although he finds that, in this case, “[t]here is no suggestion of abuse of incumbency” [85] by one party against others, this clear-eyed position is in contrast to that of the Harper majorityr, which ignored the possibility that incumbent governments favour legislation that excludes “third parties” from electoral campaigns in order to avoid unpleasant criticism and so reduce the odds of losing power.

There are more interesting things in the Unions NSW decision than I have room to discuss in this post. For example, Justice Gageler’s comments about the role courts in finding facts that are relevant to deciding whether a statute is constitutional are in contrast to the position of the Supreme Court of Canada in cases such as Canada (Attorney General) v Bedford, 2013 SCC 72, [2013] 3 SCR 1101, and should be very nutritious food for thought for those who are skeptical of the Bedford requirement of deference to trial judges. Justice Eledman’s comments on identifying statutory purpose (and in particular the role of general statements of purpose in the legislation) are also very interesting.

Overall, based on this one decision, I think that Canadians have a great deal to learn from Australians. Admittedly, the length of the High Court’s decisions is a deterrent ― Unions NSW is about 85 pages long, and I take it that it’s pretty short by Australian standards. That’s the cost of so many judges delivering full individual reasons. But the upside is that interesting ideas don’t get swept under the carpet in the process of getting to a set of reasons many judges can sign onto. I’m not saying the Supreme Court of Canada should go back to having each judge deliver his or her own reasons (though I wonder sometimes) but, at any rate, reading the Australian decisions may well be worth our while. In particular, the willingness of the Australian judges to keep a legislature accountable for imposing limits on the freedom of political expression without justification is a welcome reminder that their Canadian counterparts can do much more to protect individual rights in the electoral realm, and elsewhere.

Doing Right on Rights

Why the Supreme Court was right to find the disenfranchisement of Canadians abroad unconstitutional

In my last post, I summarized the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions delivered in Frank v Canada (Attorney General), 2019 SCC 1, which held that the denial of the franchise to Canadians who have resided outside the country for more than five years is unconstitutional. As noted there, I believe that the majority, whose opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Wagner was correct so to hold. In this post, I explain why, and also make some observations about the strongly-worded dissent by Justices Côté and Brown. To make my biases clear once again, I remind readers that I am a Canadian abroad myself, and have been for six of the past eight years. While I vote rarely and reluctantly, I am emotionally invested in the issue of whether my right to do so can be taken away. Feel free to discount the following accordingly.

While I am the subject of emotions, let me say this. Justices Côté and Brown assert that the denial of the right to vote to Canadians abroad “is not a distinction based on moral worth”. [168] By my lights, that’s precisely what it is. On their own view, it is the product of “normative conceptions of what the Canadian political community is, and how it can best be protected and made to flourish”. [139] The conception embraced by Parliament in enacting the provisions invalidated in Frank sees the Canadian political community as excluding Canadians abroad, who are consequently less worthy of the franchise. Indeed, they are, according to the dissent, a threat from which the community must be protected, since it is “unfair to Canadian residents for their lawmakers to be elected by long-term non-residents who have no connection of any currency to their electoral district”. [153]

This is utterly wrong. As the Chief Justice rightly observes, many Canadians who live abroad maintain strong ties with Canada (and, I would add, often with the local community where they used to live and, in many cases, intend to return). As the Chief Justice also says, “[c]onversely, there may be citizens who have never left Canada but whose subjective commitment to the country is much weaker and who are less well versed in local issues”. [68] Indeed, though it would be impolitic for a judge to say so, “may be” in this sentence should read “obviously are”. As, for example, Ilya Somin and Bryan Caplan respectively have shown, voters are both ignorant and irrational ― rationally so, but ignorant and irrational all the same. Yet we would not generally accept disenfranchising voters on that basis; we do not inquire into the degree of connection a voter has with his or her local community, or the country, before issuing him or her a ballot paper. It is only, it seems, in the case of expatriates that these things actually matter. To me, this is strong evidence that what is at work here is not really a concern with the fairness or integrity of Canada’s electoral system, but a judgment, or rather prejudice, about the moral worth of those Canadians who are taken to have left the community, and must “rejoin[]” [153] before being allowed to take part in the community’s affairs.

Now, it is true that most Canadians abroad do not, in fact, go to the hassle and the expense of requesting a special ballot and returning it to Elections Canada. This means, of course, that the idea of non-resident voters swamping elections and deciding them at the expense of residents is far-fetched if not entirely implausible. But more importantly, as the Chief Justice points out, this means that those who do take the trouble value their involvement in Canada’s political life ― probably more so than a great many of their resident fellow-citizens. In the Chief Justice’s words, they “demonstrate[] a profound attachment to Canada”, [75] and it seems absurd to pretend otherwise on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

This brings me to another issue: that of the correct approach to deciding whether legislation is unconstitutional because it unjustifiably contravenes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Justices Côté and Brown issue what they regard as a profound challenge to the way we not only discuss but also think about the relationship between Charter rights and policies that interfere with them. They note that it is commonplace to speak of such policies as “infringing” or even “violating” rights, only for these “infringements” or “violations” to be upheld, or “saved” by applying section 1 of the Charter. Yet, as they further point out, section 1 provides that the Charter “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” ― limits, not infringements or violations. So we should stop talking about justified infringements, and talk about limits instead. The majority is not interested, observing that the words “limits” and “infringements” have long been used interchangeably. (The Chief Justice is probably too polite to note this, but I am not: Justices Côté and Brown themselves spoke in terms of “infringement” as recently as seven months ago, in their excellent dissent in Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32.)

I take the dissent’s textual point. The word section 1 uses is “limits”, and it arguably makes more sense to say that the state can justifiably limit rights, not that it can violate them. But I fail to see what great change to the way we actually think about rights and scrutinize the state’s possible interference with them follows from this. Contrary to some, indeed quite a few, of the participants in this blog’s recent 12 Days of Christmas symposium, Justices Côté and Brown show no interest in reconsidering the test for verifying the permissibility of limitations on rights that was first set out in R v Oakes, [1986] 1 SCR 103. They apply the same proportionality analysis, warts, subjectivity, and all, under the label of assessing the “limit” on the right to vote as the majority does when considering “infringement” of this right. They have much to say about the fact that the right to vote is a “positive” one, requiring legislation to “breathe[] life into” it, [142] but that it is true of many of the rights the Charter protects (notably, but by no means only, the various rights of criminal suspects and accused) and, more importantly, it simply does not follow that the legislation that “breathes life into the right” may not fail to do so to a constitutionally required standard. (Similarly, Justices Côté and Brown point out that the legislation imposing a five-year expiry period on expatriates’ franchise replaced that which gave no expatriates the vote. So what? The test of constitutionality is not whether Parliament comes closer to respecting the Charter than it once did, but whether it respects the Charter now.)

The real methodological disagreement between the dissent and the majority (as well as Justice Rowe’s concurrence) has to do with the level of deference each accords Parliament. The majority insists, at the outset, that “[a]ny limit on the right to vote must be carefully scrutinized and cannot be tolerated without a compelling justification”. [1] Although, as noted in yesterday’s post, it later wavers a little on this point, its approach is, indeed, one that refuses to take the government’s claims about the need for or usefulness of the legislation it examines on faith. By contrast, the dissent waxes deferential, “eschews rigid and technical application” [124] ― it’s not quite clear of what, but presumably of the justification requirements ―, and plays up “Parliament’s policy-making expertise”. [126]

Yet here the dissenters’ professed textualism fails them. To repeat, section 1 of the Charter says that “only such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” (emphasis mine) can be countenanced. The constitutional text, therefore, requires a demonstration ― not judicial acquiescence on the basis that Parliament knows best. And this requirement, in turn, suggests that contrary to what Justices Côté and Brown say Charter rights can only be limited in order to deal with an identifiable problem, to address some specified mischief, and not merely because a legislature thinks that in an ideal political community these rights would be limited in this way. The enactment of the Charter, as a law superior to ordinary legislation, has taken that moral judgment out of the Canadian legislatures’ hands. (To be clear, this is a separate question from that of the permissibility of what used to be called “morals legislation”, which proscribes what the legislature sees as immoral behaviour, such as taking drugs. There is no argument that expatriates act immorally by voting.)

In short, by all means, let’s be careful with our language, and speak of reasonable limits on rights instead justified violations. But let’s also insist that limitations on rights, to qualify as reasonable, must be ones whose justification is capable of being demonstrated, rather than merely asserted, and is in fact demonstrated, rather than taken for granted. Indeed, I think that this substantive concern is rather more important than the semantic one. In Frank, it is the majority, not the dissent, that follows an approach that is closer to that required by the constitution.

In my view, the majority decided Frank more or less as it should have. It correctly insisted that any exclusion from the franchise except the one based on citizenship must be justified. Contrary to the dissent’s strident warnings, it does not follow that no exclusions could ever treated as reasonable limits ― only that the justification process for upholding these limits cannot be elided by saying that some limits on the right to vote must obviously be admissible. This goes even for the denial of the right to vote minors (which, as Ilya Somin, for example, has argued, is not as self-evidently reasonable as the dissenters would like us to think). I think that it would be quite easy to sustain the disenfranchisement of three-year-olds, the dissent’s scaremongering example, should anyone challenge it; but as for the denial of the vote to teenagers, I for one wouldn’t mind seeing the governments put through their justificatory paces.

The majority is also right to be skeptical of the government’s arguments based on an ill-defined “social contract” of which expatriates are allegedly no part. I’m not too impressed with the Chief Justice’s definition of Parliament’s objective in terms of “fairness” ― fairness is too capacious a word for my liking, and the dissent’s suggestion that Parliament was pursuing a currency of relationship between the voter and his or her community seems closer to the mark. But one should also acknowledge that objectives that are largely symbolic (or, as Justices Côté and Brown see it, moral) do not lend themselves to easy definition, and so inevitably compromise the quality of the Charter analysis. The majority’s skepticism about the existence of a rational connection between the objective of fairness and disenfranchisement of Canadians abroad is also warranted. Indeed, I would have liked the Chief Justice to have been bold enough to say that, given both the possibility that expatriates maintain current links with Canada and their Canadian communities, and the lack of any assessment of whether any other voters do so, disenfranchising expatriates alone based on their deemed lack of connection to Canada is actually irrational. But the Chief Justice is not the first judge not to want to go there.

I’ll live with that, because the Chief Justice ends up making the right arguments at the “minimal impairment” stage of the analysis. Like I had in criticizing the decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario in this case, he points out that Canadians abroad can and do maintain close links with Canada; that they are affected by Canadian laws and government policies; that, moreover, “Parliament can change laws on its own initiative and thus alter the extent to which Canadian legislation applies to non-resident citizens”, [72] so that one cannot invoke the limited scope of current extra-territorial legislation to deny expatriates the vote ― I had called this “let[ting] the statutory tail wag the constitutional dog”; and that in any event “attempting to tailor Charter rights to the extent to which citizens are burdened, or not burdened, by Canadian laws would be an impossible exercise”. [71] If all this is not enough to qualify the disenfranchisement of expatriates as irrational, than it certainly suffices, as the Chief Justice says, to show that it is grossly overbroad, and not “minimally impairing” of the right to vote.

The Chief Justice’s reasons are not perfect. He does, as the dissent points out, get somewhat carried away in patriotic praise for the Canadian democracy, and there are shades of what I’ve been calling “constitutionalism from the cave” in his claim that “a broad interpretation of” the Charter‘s guarantee of the right to vote “enhances the quality of our democracy and strengthens the values on which our free and democratic state is premised”. [27] Constitutional interpretation must aim at ascertaining the text’s meaning, not at strengthening values or anything of the sort. Still, what the Chief Justice’s opinion for the majority does is substantially in line with the constitutional text, despite its rhetorical imperfections. (And still on the subject of rhetoric, or style: can someone please ask the Chief Justice and his colleagues to stop using the initialism “AGC”? It is a recent innovation ― the Court hadn’t done it at all before 2010 ― and not a good one. It is ugly and has a jargon-y feel that is quite at odds with the Chief Justice’s stated desire to make the Court’s work more accessible, including to laypersons.) But as majority opinions of Supreme Court have gone in the last few years, the one in Frank is up there with the best.

The Supreme Court has held that Canadians who live abroad cannot be disenfranchised based on, in effect, stereotypes about their lack of relationship with their home country. This is a relief. In doing so, it has insisted on carefully and critically examining the government’s claimed reasons for limiting Charter rights, and this is a good thing too, one that doesn’t happen often enough. There is something to learn from the dissenting opinion, too, about our constitutional vocabulary, and I hope that this lesson is not lost just because the substance of that opinion is bitterly disappointing. But the constitution was upheld in Frank, and so right was done. May 2019 bring more of that.

“A Profound Attachment”

The Supreme Court holds that disenfranchising Canadians abroad is unconstitutional

Yesterday, the Supreme Court at last delivered its judgment on the constitutionality of disenfranchising Canadians abroad, Frank v Canada (Attorney General), 2019 SCC 1. By five votes to two, the Court holds that disenfranchisement is indeed unconstitutional. This is, as I have long argued (especially in criticizing the decision to the contrary by the Court of Appeal for Ontario), the right result. Full disclosure, in case this is necessary: I am myself a Canadian abroad, and while I would not have been disenfranchised at the coming election under the rules the Supreme Court has found unconstitutional, and am only an occasional and reluctant voter anyway, I am emotionally invested in this issue.

Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.” The Canada Elections Act sets out the details of how this right can be exercised ― and denies it to some groups of citizens. One of these disenfranchised groups consists of Canadians who have not resided in Canada for more than five years, although those who are representatives of a Canadian government or members of the Canadian forces, as well as members of such persons’ families, are not subject to disenfranchisement.

The government conceded that denying their right to vote breached section 3 of the Charter, but contended that the breach was justified as a reasonable limit authorized by the Charter‘s section 1. The majority ― Chief Justice Wagner (who wrote the majority opinion) and Justices Moldaver, Karakatsanis, and Gascon ―, as well as Justice Rowe, who concurs, reject this view. In dissent, Justices Côté and Brown say that the denial of the franchise to Canadians abroad is justified.

Relying on the Court’s decision in Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68, [2002] 3 SCR 519, which invalidated the disenfranchisement of long-term prisoners, the Chief Justice writes that the right to vote must be given a “broad and purposive interpretation”, and “any intrusions on [it] are to be reviewed on the basis of a stringent justification standard”. [25] The Chief Justice rejects deference to Parliament, insisting that “reviewing courts must examine the government’s proffered justification carefully and rigorously”. [43] Unlike in cases that involve “complex” or “nuanced” choices among competing priorities, deference “is not the appropriate posture for a court reviewing an absolute prohibition of a core democratic right”. [44] Later, however, when considering whether the prohibition is “minimally impairing” of the right, the Chief Justice grants that “some deference must be accorded to the legislature by giving it a certain latitude”. [66]

As for residency requirements for voting, they are “an organizing mechanism”, “an important device” [28] that helps structure our electoral system, but have no constitutional value in themselves: “In clear language, the Charter tethers voting rights to citizenship, and citizenship alone.” [29] In any case, there already are Canadian citizens who are allowed to vote from abroad, suggesting that residence within cannot be an implicit pre-condition for having the right to vote.

Applying the test for the justification of Charter infringements set out in R v Oakes, [1986] 1 SCR 103, the Chief Justice begins by rejecting the idea, accepted by the Ontario Court of Appeal, that “preserving the social contract” whereby citizens’ obedience to laws is exchanged for a say in making them as a pressing and substantial objective capable of justifying the infringement of rights. While Sauvé had invoked the language of social contract theory, correctly understood, it stands for the proposition “that deeming that a citizen has ‘withdrawn’ from the social contract is not a legitimate basis for denying him or her the right to vote”. [52] However, the Chief Justice accepts that “maintaining the fairness of the electoral system to resident Canadians”, [55] which he seems to interpret by focusing on the existence of a connection between voters and the Canadian polity, is an important governmental objective.

At the second stage of the Oakes test, Justice Wagner finds that the government “has not definitively shown that a limit of any duration” on the ability of Canadians to vote from abroad “would be rationally connected to the electoral fairness objective advanced in this case”, [60; emphasis in the original] but declines to reach a firm conclusion. He argues, however, that neither the existence of residence requirements for voting in provincial elections nor the prevalence of such requirements abroad make their imposition by Parliament rational, and observers that “there is no evidence of the harm that these voting restrictions are meant to address”, [63] or even any complaints about those non-resident citizens who already are able to vote.

As often, it is the next stage, originally described as that of “minimal impairment” although the word “minimal” has not been taken literally, that is crucial. The Chief Justice finds that disenfranchising Canadians after five years abroad, “[f]ar from being a measure that is carefully tailored so as to impair voting rights no more than is reasonably necessary, … seems to have been simply a ‘middle-of-the-road’ compromise”. [67] There is no “correlation between, on the one hand, how long a Canadian citizen has lived abroad and when he or she intends to return and, on the other hand, the extent of his or her subjective commitment to Canada”. [68] Indeed, whether the issue is knowledge of and commitment to Canada, the impact of Canadian laws on a given voter, many Canadians abroad will be better qualified as voters than those residing in the country. Chief Justice Wagner concludes by noting that “[a] non-resident citizen who takes the trouble to vote by way of special ballot … has demonstrated a profound attachment to Canada. We have nothing to gain from disenfranchising such citizens.” [75] In the same vein, he notes that any positive effects of this disenfranchisement are speculative, while the negative impact on those disenfranchised is real and present.

Justice Rowe agrees that disenfranchising Canadians who live abroad is unjustified, but writes separately to emphasize the “significance and centrality of residence to our system of representative democracy”. [84] He details the history of residency requirements in Canadian election legislation (including the slow expansion of voting rights for Canadians abroad), and pointedly rebukes the majority by claiming that “residence has been historically and remains today more than just an ‘organizing mechanism’. It is foundational to our system”. [90] As a result, Justice Rowe says, while “[s]ection 3 [of the Charter] protects the right to vote … it does not follow as a corollary that there is a right to vote in the constituency or province of one’s choosing”. [91] Provincial and territorial residency requirements, in particular, would be subject to different considerations than federal ones (including because provincial laws are more local in nature and applicability than federal ones).

Whatever might be justifiable in other cases, however, Justice Rowe concludes that the disenfranchisement of long-term expatriates is not. He accepts that it pursues the objective of electoral fairness, although he notes that fairness for resident citizens is being pursued at the expense of non-residents. Justice Rowe also accepts that fairness can reasonably be pursued by preventing “those who are largely unaffected (non-residents) [from] participating in decisions that would affect others (residents)”. [103] Passing over the question of whether the disenfranchisement of Canadians abroad is minimally impairing of their right to vote, he moves on to the balancing of its salutary and deleterious effects. The former, he finds, are “negligible”, [106] since very few expatriates actually vote. The latter are not. Expatriates who are disenfranchised “may not feel the local consequences of particular federal policies in the constituencies in which their votes would be counted, [but] they stand nonetheless to be affected by certain federal laws and policies, perhaps in life altering ways”. [107] As a result, the disenfranchisement of Canadians abroad is not justified.

Justices Côté and Brown dissent. They not only disagree with the outcome reached by the majority and Justice Rowe, but want to approach the issue quite differently. They stress that the right to vote “is a positive right which, unlike most Charter rights, requires legislative specification in order for the right to be operative”, [113; emphasis in the original] so that the denial of the franchise to expatriates is not the product of legislative action, but of a “failure to extend the right to vote” to them. [128] This right is also not absolute: “Nobody suggests that s[ection] 3 entitles three-year-old Canadian citizens to vote.” [114] Indeed, they deny that the legislative provisions at issue “disenfranchise” long-term expatriates, since they had not been allowed prior to these provisions’ enactment, or ever. They also accuse the majority (and, implicitly, any number of past judgments) of “distort[ing] the limitations analysis” [120] by speaking of a “breach” or “infringement” of the right to vote rather than of a “limitation” on this right, as the terms of section 1 of the Charter would suggest. (A breach, they insist, is caused by a limitation that is not justified.)

Thus the real question, Justice Côté and Brown argue, is whether the long-term expatriates’ right to vote has been reasonably limited. The way to answer this question is to apply the Oakes test. However, while they make a point of agreeing with the majority that the burden of justification under this test rests on the government, Justices Côté and Brown insist, citing the dissenting opinion in Sauvé (without acknowledging that they are relying on the dissent) on “a ‘flexible contextual approach’ … one that eschews rigid and technical application”. [124, citing Sauvé at [84]] They also argue that it is wrong to look for “a concrete problem or mischief” that rights-limiting legislation is meant to address, because it is “undeniable … that Parliament can constitutionally legislate in pursuit of, or in response to, considerations of political morality or philosophy”. [126] There is “moral nuance inherent in defining and defending the boundaries of rights — that is, in justifying rights limitations” — and, like “Parliament’s policy-making expertise”, it must be “afford[ed] due respect”. [126]

Justices Côté and Brown define Parliament’s objective as “privileg[ing] a relationship of some currency between electors and the communities in which they are eligible to vote”. [132] (In doing so, they spend four extensive paragraphs cautioning against reliance on statements by individual legislators during the course of parliamentary debate… and conclude by pointing to statements that support their understanding of the objective.) This objective “is clearly inspired by a particular moral philosophical understanding of the relationship between citizen and state in a democracy”. [140] Indeed, electoral “legislation is never designed to solve a problem or address a particular mischief. Rather, it breathes life into the right [to vote] so that it may be recognized and exercised.” [142] While limitations on the right to vote require justification, Justices Côté and Brown attack the majority for considering that, other than citizenship, “all other specifications [of this right] are necessarily unconstitutional”. [142] Justices Côté and Brown note that other groups are excluded from the franchise ― they mention citizens who have never resided in Canada and minors ― and argue that these exclusions too must be regarded as examples of Parliament’s permissible pursuit of philosophical objectives. Indeed, they say, majorities in Sauvé and here have acted in furtherance of philosophical views of their own.

Ultimately, ensuring a current relationship between voters and their communities is a pressing and substantial objective because it “ensures reciprocity between exercising the right to vote and bearing the burden of Canadian laws” [152] and “protects the integrity of the Canadian electoral system, which is founded on geographical representation”. [153] This integrity would be undermined by allowing people to vote in constituencies with which they lack a community of interest.

Justices Côté and Brown also consider that the limitation of the right to vote from abroad to those citizens who have not been outside Canada for more than five years is reasonable and therefore proportionate to Parliament’s objective. They insist that, under the majority’s reasoning, no time limit on voting rights could be upheld, including for provincial elections. They add that the majority is wrong to ignore the treatment of expatriates’ voting rights by New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom: “the majority’s patriotism risks descending into exceptionalism”, and blinding it to “some lessons” that “Canada would well have taken … from other countries” [166] (or at any rate from New Zealand, which enfranchised its aboriginal people and women well before Canada did). Indeed, the majority’s position is “highly political, rhetorical”, and “in tension with the majority’s own invocation of internationalism and of a ‘globalized’ world of connectivity and communication”. [167] As for the effects of the legislation, the deleterious ones are minimized since the denial of expatriates’ voting rights “is not … based on moral worth”, [168] while the salutary ones ― which consist in the attainment of Parliament’s objectives ― are considerable.

As I noted at the outset, I believe that the majority is correct (though Justice Rowe makes some valuable points about provinces and territories). The dissent, I confess, perplexes me. But this post is much too long as it is. I shall publish my comment separately ― and quickly, I hope.

The $100 Question, in Court

A challenge to Québec’s harsh limits on political contributions has a decent chance of succeeding

As reported last week by Le Soleil, a citizen of Québec, Yvon Maheux, is challenging the constitutionality of both the province’s $100 yearly cap on donations to political parties and some of the collateral consequences of a conviction for infringing this cap. In my view, much of the claim has considerable merit, and at least a reasonable chance of success. As I wrote when Québec was first considering lowering the amount its citizens were allowed to contribute to political parties from $1000 to $100, such a low limit is quite clearly unconstitutional, given the Supreme Court’s recognition that spending money to advance one’s political views is a form of expression that is entitled to the protection of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

As Mr. Maheux’s notice of constitutional question (kindly provided to me by his lawyer, Antoine Sarrazin-Bourgouin, whom I thank) explains, in 2016 he paid a provincial party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, $100 for taking part in a breakfast it organized, and then another $100 as a fee to take part in the party congress. For his trouble, he was prosecuted for breaching the $100 yearly cap on donations to political parties, provided for by section 91 of Québec’s Election Act. Section 564.2 of that Act provides that, if convicted, Mr. Maheux will face a minimum fine of $5000. Moreover, the infringement of the contribution cap is deemed a corrupt electoral practice (section 567), meaning that a conviction carries a number of additional consequences ― notably the disqualification from voting or running for office, as well as the loss of “the right to engage in partisan work”, both for five years (section 568).

This is a draconian regime. For one thing, the contribution limit is remarkably low. For another, the consequences for breaching it are astonishingly severe. Neither the Canada Elections Act nor Ontario’s Election Finance Act, for example, impose a mandatory minimum punishment for financial offences; nor do they deem making an excessive contribution a corrupt practice; nor do either Parliament or Ontario strip persons convicted of corrupt practices of their “right to engage in partisan work”. New Zealand ― which of course does not limit contributions to political parties at all, and is the least corrupt country in the world nonetheless ― does nothing of the sort either.

But does draconian, in this instance, also mean unconstitutional? The cases raises a number of distinct constitutional issues. The first is whether the infringement of the freedom of expression effected by the limitation of contributions one can make to a political party is justified under section 1 of the Charter. (That the limitation is a prima facie infringement of the freedom of expression must follow from the Supreme Court’s decisions in Libman v Quebec (Attorney General), [1997] 3 SCR 569 and Harper v Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 SCR 827, although these cases concerned spending independent of parties.) The other issues have to do with the constitutionality of the various consequences of a conviction for breaching the contribution limit.

Regarding the constitutionality of the limit itself, there is no precedent directly on point, I think, but it seems to me that the Québec government will be hard-pressed to show that it is minimally impairing of the freedom of expression. A legislature is entitled to some, perhaps considerable, deference in a line-drawing exercise of this sort ― Libman and Harper indicate that the courts will accept that there ought to be some limit on contributions, and any given figure is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. Still, deference can only extend so far; there is a range of acceptable alternatives, but this range is not infinite. And even if a higher limit would (of course) be somewhat less likely to attain the legislation’s anti-corruption objectives, the issue, as Chief Justice McLachlin’s majority opinion … put it, is only “whether there is an alternative, less drastic means of achieving the objective in a real and substantial manner“. That no other jurisdiction in Canada (and perhaps elsewhere) has seen it fit to set a contribution limit anywhere near this low is a strong indication that Québec’s purposes can be substantially achieved through less drastic means.

The $100 limit also fails, I think, at the final stage of the section 1 analysis, which concerns proportionality between the rights limitation’s benefits and its effects on the rights claimants. These effects, in this case, are significant; indeed, the limit renders Quebeckers’ right to contribute financially to a political party of their choice virtually nugatory. Mr. Maheux’s personal story is an eloquent illustration of this fact. So is the simple arithmetic that shows that a donation of $2 a week would be illegal. This all is particularly galling because the Supreme Court’s law of democracy jurisprudence ― especially Harper but also, before it, Figueroa v Canada (Attorney General), 2003 SCC 37, [2003] 1 SCR 912 ― suggested that participating in the activities of political parties was  political participation par excellence, to be valued and protected above others, as I explained here. Québec’s restrictive approach to political financing means that individuals such as Mr. Maheux can be prevented from developing their engagement with political parties, even as they are also prevented from participating in political debates as “third parties”, by spending money on advertising during electoral campaigns. Politics in Québec risks becoming even more of an insider activity ― ostensibly in the name of a fight against corruption. This makes no sense to me.

As for the consequences of conviction, there are three distinct issues. The first one is whether the disenfranchisement of those convicted, which is an obvious infringement of the right to vote protected by section 3 of the Charter, can be justified under section 1. In Harvey v New Brunswick (Attorney General), [1996] 2 SCR 876, the Supreme Court upheld the disenfranchisement, for five years, of a member of a provincial legislature who had been convicted of trying to induce a person who was not entitled to vote to do so. Harvey was, of course, decided before Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68, [2002] 3 SCR 519, which struck down the general disenfranchisement of prisoners serving sentences of two years or more, but I don’t think that Sauvé calls it into question. The Harvey court accepted that the temporary disenfranchisement of those convicted of corrupt electoral practices was a proportionate way of pursuing the specific purpose of protecting the integrity of elections, with which the general disenfranchisement provisions at issue in Sauvé had nothing to do.

That said, accepting that legislatures can disenfranchise people who compromise the integrity of the democratic process, the question is how far this principle extends. We wouldn’t accept, I think, the disenfranchisement of people who negligently infringe some technical rule about the reporting of a candidate’s expenses. But, again, how do we ― and, more to the point, how does a court ― draw lines? Again, I am not aware of judicial guidance on this point, but looking at what other jurisdictions do is instructive. The lists offences that are labelled as corrupt (or illegal) practices and can lead to disenfranchisement are not identical, but both federally (in section 502 of the Canada Elections Act) and in Ontario (in section 97.1 of the Election Act) the focus is on interference with the composition of electorate (involving voting under various false pretenses or, conversely, preventing electors from voting), or the process of casting ballots. An individual exceeding contribution limits is not deemed guilty of a corrupt practice. Although it is far from certain that the Charter prohibits this, there is, I think, at least a viable argument to be made for this proposition.

The next, related, issue is whether it is permissible not only to disenfranchise a person found guilty of having engaged in some form of corrupt practice, but also to deny him or her the “right to engage in partisan work”. As mentioned above, I do not think that any Canadian jurisdiction except Québec does it; I don’t know if any other democratic country does. The prohibition is an obvious infringement of the Charter freedoms of expression and of association. Can it be justified? Once more, I am not aware of judicial decisions directly on point, but it is possible to venture a few observations. One is that Québec is deliberately targeting political expression and association, which are at the heart of the Charter‘s protections. Another is that it’s not obvious how a ban on “partisan work” is connected to the integrity of the electoral process as such, or even of the political financing regime; at the very least it is seriously overbroad, because much of what might be fairly described as “partisan work” ― a term that Québec’s Election Act does not define, but uses in a number of provisions that suggest that it should be given a broad meaning ― has nothing to do with with either voting or fundraising. Third, once again the experience of other jurisdictions suggests that Québec’s ban is not minimally impairing, and indeed that it is likely quite unnecessary. And fourth, given its breadth, the ban’s deleterious effects on those subject to it surely outweigh whatever social benefits it might be said to have.

Finally, in his notice of constitutional question, Mr. Maheux indicates that he will argue that the cumulative effect of these various sanctions ― not any of them individually, mind you ― amounts to a violation of the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments in section 12 of the Charter. The test here is whether the punishment is grossly disproportionate, compared to the one that would have been appropriate in the circumstances. This is of course a highly subjective assessment, and I am pretty skeptical of this claim as a standalone ground for constitutional challenge. If a court grants Mr. Maheux’s claims under sections 2 and 3 of the Charter, it is superfluous to consider the section 12 argument. If it thinks that the infringements of sections 2 and 3 are individually justified, I can’t imagine it holding that collectively they are grossly disproportionate; this would strike me as an odd result.

Be that as it may, Mr. Maheux’s challenge is mostly serious and, while we lack specific, on-point guidance from the courts because the provisions of Québec’s Election Act at which it is aimed are so unique, I think it has at least a reasonable chance of success ― perhaps even a very good one. At the level of political morality, the legislation that Mr. Maheux is attacking is indefensible. It is vastly more repressive than it needs to be, and appears to have been enacted in complete disregard of the rights of those affected by it (as well as of the desirability of a competitive political system). I hope that the law recalls Québec’s legislature both to its constitutional duties and to its senses.

Accounts of Accountability

It’s important to keep politicians accountable. But what follows for regulation of money in politics?

Freedom of expression is necessary, among other things, to foster political accountability in a democracy. On that much we can surely all agree. But what follows from the link between the freedom of political discussion and our interest in holding our elected representatives to account? Specifically, when it comes to regulating money in politics, should a healthy concern with maintaining accountability cause us to favour more restrictions, or fewer? The answer to that question is, to say the least, not obvious, as a comparison between two judicial opinions linking democratic accountability and freedom of expression but coming to opposite conclusion shows.

In McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, 134 S Ct 1434 (2014), the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court struck down limits on the total amount of money an individual is allowed to donate to candidates at an election. (The limit on the amount that can be given to an individual candidate was not at issue.) In dissent, Justice Breyer drew on the value of accountability to justify the limitation of the role of money in politics. He noted that “political communication seeks to secure government action. A politically oriented ‘marketplace of ideas’ seeks to form a public opinion that can and will influence elected representatives.” (1467) The protection of the freedom of expression, he continued, “advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.” (1467; emphasis in the original) According to Justice Breyer, the undue influence of substantial pecuniary contributions to politicians, which he characterized as

[c]orruption breaks the constitutionally necessary “chain of communication” between the people and their representatives. It derails the essential speech-to-government-action tie. Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Insofar as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point. (1467)

In other words, to keep politicians accountable to the voters, it is necessary to limit the influence of money on them, and in this particular case to uphold the constitutionality of limits on donations.

Compare this with the opinion of Australian High Court’s Chief Justice Mason in the case of Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd v Commonwealth, (1992) 177 CLR 106. At issue were provisions eliminating the ability of both political parties and candidates and of “third parties” to pay for electoral advertisements in broadcast media. (Parties represented in Parliament were given some free time for their advertisements.) Chief Justice Mason also extolled the virtues of democratic accountability and emphasized the link between the actions of the governors and the opinions of the governed:

the representatives who are members of Parliament and Ministers of State are not only chosen by the people but exercise their legislative and executive powers as representatives of the people. And in the exercise of those powers the representatives of necessity are accountable to the people for what they do and have a responsibility to take account of the views of the people on whose behalf they act. Freedom of communication as an indispensable element in representative government. [37]

Democratic accountability thus required that the freedom of expression be protected (even in the absence of an explicit guarantee in the constitutional text):

Indispensable to that accountability and that responsibility is freedom of communication, at least in relation to public affairs and political discussion. … Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen criticize government decisions and actions, seek to bring about change, call for action where none has been taken and in this way influence the elected representatives. … Absent such a freedom of communication, representative government would fail to achieve its purpose, namely, government by the people through their elected representatives; government would cease to be responsive to the needs and wishes of the people and, in that sense, would cease to be truly representative. [38]

So far, so similar to Justice Breyer. But from this, Chief Justice Mason went on to reason that the restrictions on electoral advertising at issue could not stand, because they were incompatible with the freedom of political communication, and thus undermined democratic accountability. More money in politics, not less, was the way to keep politicians accountable to the people.

Now, contrasting these two opinions in this way is oversimplifying things. The issues in McCutcheon and in Australian Capital Television were somewhat different. The former concerned the giving of money to politicians; the letter, spending both by politicians and by civil society actors. Although both come within the general category of “money in politics” concerns, it is possible to think that one but not the other can be strictly regulated. Besides, to some extent at least, both McCutcheon and Australian Capital Television were about means, not just ends. It is possible that, confronted with different regulations, both Justice Breyer and Chief Justice Mason would have reached different conclusions by reasoning from the same values.

That said, we know that the same faction of the U.S. Supreme Court that dissented in McCutcheon was also favourable to restrictions on electoral speech by (at least some) members of the civil society in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, 558 US 310 (2010). And while there might be a point at which Justice Breyer would have balked at the limitation of permissible financial contributions to politicians, it is not clear where that point lies. Conversely, although Chief Justice Mason suggested that a less restrictive set of regulations might have been compatible with the freedom of political communication, existing regulatory schemes, such as Canada’s or New Zealand’s, would likely not have made the cut, and I struggle to imagine one that would. The disagreement is not only, and I suspect not mainly, about means. It is driven to a substantial extent by conflicting interpretations of the value of accountability.

I’ll leave to another post (maybe, sometime) a discussion of who, if anyone, of Justice Breyer and Chief Justice Mason is right. My point here is rather that appeals to values, and even to generally accepted truths (such as the importance of free political expression to democratic accountability) are unlikely to settle the difficult disputes that arise in the law of democracy. The values may be shared at a sufficiently high level of abstraction, yet understood so differently as to lead those who hold them to starkly different conclusions.

Permanent Censorship, Again

Ontario’s proposal for regulating pre-campaign political spending is wrong

Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail reported that the Ontario government is proposing to introduce legislation that would limit the flow of private money into the political process (and introduce public subsidies to political parties). There is no bill yet, as the government is consulting with (some of) the opposition, but there is a very handy table that sets out the details of the government’s proposal and compares them to the rules in other Canadian jurisdictions. In this post, I want to discuss one aspect of the proposed changes: the limitation of “third-party” spending during the six months prior to a scheduled general election to 600,000$ (see the table at p. 4). This proposal is, in my view, unconstitutional, and it is quite possible, although not certain, that the courts, which are likely to be asked to rule on the issue, will agree.

As is clear from the table, a number of Canadian jurisdictions limit the expenses that citizens, unions, corporations, and social movements who want to make their views on political issues known, collectively known to election law under the derisive name of “third parties,” can incur during an election campaign. The Supreme Court upheld the principle of such limitations in Libman v. Quebec (Attorney General), [1997] 3 S.C.R. 569, and it upheld the federal limits in Harper v. Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 827. No Canadian jurisdiction, however, currently limits third party expenses incurred prior to the official election campaign period.

What the table doesn’t say though is that British Columbia has tried to do so, only for its attempts to be twice found unconstitutional by the province’s Court of Appeal. In British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2011 BCCA 408, the Court struck down limits imposed during a sixty-day pre-campaign period. Then, in Reference Re Election Act (BC), 2012 BCCA 394, the Court took the view that limiting third-party expenses during a period that could, depending on the dates of legislative sittings, vary from 0 to 40 days would also be unconstitutional. The province did not appeal on either occasion, so that the Supreme Court has not had an occasion to pass on the issue.

In commenting on the latter decision, I wrote that I wasn’t sure that Court was correct to conclude that Harper did not apply to the pre-campaign limitations of third party spending. Its rationale ― that the civil society needs to be silenced in order to make election campaigning a “level playing field” on which political parties can frolic unimpeded ― could be applied to the period preceding the official campaign, especially if the spending of political parties is also limited during that period, as it would be under the Ontario government’s proposal (see the table at 3). But, as I noted when discussing musings in Québec and within the federal government about limiting third party spending prior to or between election campaigns, Harper can indeed plausibly be read as precluding the extension of spending limits beyond the bounds of the election campaign.

In response to the dissent’s (cogent, in my view) observation that the spending limits imposed on third parties prevented them from communicating effectively, the Harper majority observed

that third party advertising is not restricted prior to the commencement of the election period. Outside this time, the limits on third party intervention in political life do not exist. Any group or individual may freely spend money or advertise to make its views known or to persuade others. [112]

This was an important part of the majority’s reasoning on the way to its conclusion that the spending limits were “minimally impairing” of the freedom of expression, and thus justified under section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Beyond predicting of what the Supreme Court would or would not do if confronted with pre-campaign spending limits, it is, however, important not to lose sight of the principles at stake. As I wrote in my post on the possible introduction of limits on third party spending between federal election campaigns,

It is important to appreciate just how far-reaching an attempt to control “third party” spending between elections would be. It would extend to all advertising related to political parties or their candidates, including by taking position on issues “associated” with the party or the candidate. Moreover, in addition to dollar limits, the spending control regime includes onerous registration and disclosure requirements. Any individual, group, or organization that wanted to engage in political discourse would have to register with Elections Canada and keep it informed about its income and expenses. In effect, an extension of the rules on “third party” spending between elections would be a step towards the imposition of a regime of wholesale political censorship in Canada.

There are a couple of additional issues with the Ontario government’s proposal worth highlighting too. One concerns federalism. While provincial and federal electoral processes are separate, the issues and, to some extent anyway, the parties involved in them are not quite distinct. A limit on the ability of a civil society group to speak out about an issue relevant to a provincial election can also be a limit on that group’s ability to speak out on an issue ― that same issue ― relevant to federal politics. If these limits are imposed for a short time, it might be argued ― though perhaps not very convincingly ― that the interference with the other government’s sphere is incidental. But the longer the limits, the more tenuous that case is. There is good reason why Justice Rand wrote, in Switzman v. Elbling, [1957] SCR 285, that “[u]nder [Parliamentary] government, the freedom of discussion in Canada, as a subject-matter of legislation, has a unity of interest and significance extending equally to every part of the Dominion,” (306) and is therefore a federal, not a local concern. We have not given much thought to the relevance of this point to provincial electoral regulations, but we ought to before expanding them as much as Ontario seeks to do.

The other point concerns the proposed definition of “political advertising” (at p.5 in the table). It is modelled on the one in section 319 of the Canada Elections Act, and while not nearly as objectionable as the one used by Québec in section 404 of its Election Act (whose defects I discussed here), it is still problematic in that it is not fully technologically neutral. As I explained here (and in my article on the regulation of third parties and their role in contemporary Canadian politics),

the Canada Elections Act, for a reason that I do not understand, treats online communications differently from more traditional ones, in that it only only exempts online communications by individuals, and not those of organizations (whether corporations, trade unions, etc.) from its definition of electoral expenses. By contrast, for other forms of communications, notably those published in the traditional media, whether exempt from or included in the definition of (restricted) electoral expenses, the messaging of individuals and that of entities are treated in the exact same way. The singling out of online communications for a more stringent rule should be repealed.

Regardless of the views its government and, eventually, the courts take on the other issues I have raised here, it would be unfortunate if, legislating in 2016, Ontario were to repeat a mistake made by Parliament in 2000.

As I also explained in my article, “third parties” play an increasingly important role in contemporary politics, injecting ideas into the political debate which political parties prefer to focus largely on the personalities of their leaders and a select few wedge issues. I am therefore skeptical about the wisdom of regulating them at all. However, even if a case for limited regulation during the relatively short duration of an election campaign can be made out, there is no justification for extending regulation to long periods of time outside the campaign period. Ontario’s plans in this regard would quite possibly be found unconstitutional by courts, and in any event would be a most unfortunate move in the direction of political censorship. They should be scrapped.