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Page: 38 financial assistance to bear the whole or part of the cost of the action or in saving a litigant expenses that might otherwise be incurred. Champerty is an aggravated form of maintenance in that may be gained as a result of the proceedings, or some other profit: Woroniuk v Woroniuk, [1977] OJ No 2424 (QL) (SCO) at para 9, citing Fleming, Law of Torts, 3rd ed., pp. 592-3. [96] The concept of maintenance and champerty has been preserved in some provincial legislation (An Act respecting Champerty, RSO 1897, c 327) and remains an active common law doctrine in some provinces and in Federal Court practice: see for example, Fredrickson v Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, [1986] BCJ No 366 (QL); Ernst & Young Inc v Chartis Insurance Co of Canada, 2012 ONSC 5020 at para 146; Tacan v Canada, 2003 FC 915 at paras 6-11. [97] Where the concept remains alive, two requirements are necessary. The first is that the party must have an "improper motive" in maintaining the action. The second is that the plaintiff must be otherwise not disposed to enforce its legal rights against the defendant, but for the “officious intermeddling” of the maintainer: McIntyre Estate et al v Ontario (Attorney General) (2002), 61 OR (3d) 257 (CA) [McIntyre Estate]; Buday et al v Locator of Missing Heirs Inc (1993), 16 OR (3d) 257 (CA); Stetson Oil & Gas Ltd v Thomas Weisel Partners Canada Inc, [2009] OJ No 1264 (QL) (SCJ). [98] The respondent MPs’ motion alleged that the applicants in this case were enlisted to serve as surrogates for the Council, an organization said to have a long-standing animus against the 2013 FC 525 (CanLII) unlawfully maintaining an action in consideration of an agreement to receive part of anything

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McEwing v. Attorney General

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether the phone calls had any impact on the final election results and if those results were sufficient to annul the election results.

Alleged Acts: Public attention came to the phone calls made during the 2011 election when Elections Canada investigator started to address the phone calls in the Edmonton court. The plaintiffs from six electoral districts brought the case to annul the 2011 Election results on account of voter suppression methods including telephoning voters to inform that their polling locations changed the day before the election. Election Canada received over 700 complaints detailing these calls. Evidence presented alleged that persons who had access to voter information arranged the calls, not the political candidates themselves. The applicants seek to set aside the election because the voting intended to prevent citizens from voting.

Summary: The court determined that it must assess whether or not there was fraud and then whether or not that fraud impacted the elections. First, the court found that there was sufficient evidence of fraud because the voters were contacted by individuals other than Election Canada on and before election day stating that their polling station closed. The impact of the voting had a higher evidentiary burden because the plaintiffs themselves were able to vote. Thus, the impacted voters cannot be effectively counted unless they came forward.

Conclusion: The court determined that although there was fraud, there was not sufficient reliable evidence that the fraud impacted the election results. Thus, the court may not annul the election results.

Legal Issue(s)

Disputing Results
Electoral Integrity

Region: Americas

Country: Canada

Language of Decision

English

Court: Supreme Court

Election Type: General

Date of decision: May 23, 2013

Geolocation

Latitude: 45.42663839

Longitude: -75.81085498

: Geolocation

Primary Documents

McEwing v. Attorney General.pdf
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Election Judgments - IFES

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McEwing v. Attorney General

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