Daniel Cote

Nelson Sergerie, LJI Journalist

GASPÉ – A coalition of elected officials from the Laurentians, Centre-du-Québec, and Estrie regions is seeking permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal the trial Superior Court’s decision that rejected the motion to challenge the adoption of Bill 59, the legislation that ended the electoral map revision process.

This May 29 ruling allowed the two ridings of Bonaventure and Gaspé to be retained for the October 2026 election.

At that time, Judge Alexander Pless rejected the request by elected officials from the Laurentides, Centre-du-Québec, the Brome-Missisquoi MRC, and the City of Sherbrooke against the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec and the Attorney General of Quebec to revoke the Act to interrupt the electoral district delimitation process, which was adopted by the National Assembly of Quebec in a unanimous vote on May 2, 2024.

The commission responsible for redrawing the electoral map for the 2026 and 2030 elections had proposed removing one riding in Gaspésie to create Gaspé-Bonaventure and eliminating another on the island of Montreal to establish new ridings in the Laurentians and Centre-du-Québec.

During hearings held from May 8 to 14, the Gaspésie MRCs argued that the proposed electoral map would seriously undermine the principle of effective representation and significantly harm the region’s voice in Quebec’s democratic institutions.

In the notice of appeal filed on June 27, the appellant argued that the Superior Court recognized that Bill 59 infringed on the right to vote, as protected by section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but ruled that this infringement was justified under section 1 of the Charter.

In his decision, the judge noted that “in principle, everyone’s vote must carry equal weight. However, section 3 of the Charter guarantees the right to effective representation. This requires taking into account other factors that conflict with the strict arithmetic equivalence of votes.”

However, he also concluded that the Attorney General of Quebec had successfully demonstrated that the Act was justified under section 1 of the Charter.

The appellants also note that the trial judge dismissed the option of adding ridings on the grounds that it did not have strong majority support in the National Assembly and intend to demonstrate that the judge ignored the possibility of adding four ridings without imposing on the Electoral Representation Commission where to add them, an option that was nevertheless raised by two opposition parties and for which the Attorney General of Quebec never explained why it was rejected.

The group of elected officials also explains that the trial court failed to analyze the fact that, in order to protect a single riding in Gaspésie, the legislature significantly infringed on the right to effective representation of half a million voters in constituencies in a positive exception situation and committed a mixed error of law and fact in concluding that the measure is proportional despite the detrimental effects, which it describes as significant.

The mayor of Gaspé, Daniel Côté, who is a party to the litigation, said he had received the proceedings and that his lawyers are currently reviewing the case.

“We may contest the appeal. Our lawyers are looking into the merits of the case to help us decide how to proceed. I still believe that the trial court’s decision was very well-founded and essentially echoed the Supreme Court’s Carter decision,” said Mr. Côté.

The decision upheld Bonaventure and Gaspé for the 2026 election, but the judge warned that for the subsequent election, the National Assembly would have to review the electoral law to protect what little democratic weight remains in the regions.

“I continue to believe in the principle of effective representation, which goes far beyond the number of voters in a given territory,” the mayor continued.

If the Court of Appeal hears the case, it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but Daniel Côté does not believe that the country’s highest court will revisit the case.

“It’s possible, but the Supreme Court has already ruled on similar appeals. Unless the basis of the Carter Decision [of 1991] is called into question, that society is so different today that the Supreme Court would revisit it. But we’re not there yet,” he says.

“But the ruling is solid and was not written on the back of a napkin. It is a ruling that reflects the essence of the Supreme Court and other case law. The ruling goes into great depth. Any ruling can be challenged before the Court of Appeals, but I find the trial court’s ruling to be solid,” said the mayor of Gaspé, who is waiting for the prosecutors to take a position before going any further.
It should be noted that the commission suggested merging the ridings of Gaspé and Bonaventure, bringing together the MRCs of Côte-de-Gaspé, Rocher-Percé, Bonaventure, and Avignon to create Gaspé-Bonaventure, while Haute-Gaspésie would be transferred to the riding of Matane-Matapédia, a riding in the Lower St. Lawrence region.

As of April 30, 2023, Bonaventure had 35,898 voters and Gaspé had 30,131, far below the minimum threshold. The gap was -29.2% and -40.6%, respectively.

Gaspé ranked third among the least populous ridings, behind the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, which has exceptional status, and Ungava.

According to vote projections based on data from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, the gap between Gaspé and the average is expected to soon exceed that of Ungava.

In 2017, the commission maintained Gaspé’s negative exception status and granted the same status to Bonaventure.

However, as the representation disparities have increased, the commission declined to renew this status.