The advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms signaled a new and vastly
expanded role for the judiciary. By entrenching our civil liberties into the Canadian
Constitution, the courts were given the express authority to override inconsistent statutes.
Due to the inherent overlap between law and politics, election law is an area that is
particularly sensitive to this recent enlargement of judicial power. Despite this, the courts
have scrutinized many areas of election law and many federal and provincial statutes
have been fundamentally altered. The purpose of this thesis is to determine whether the
courts have developed a uniform theory of judicial review where election law is
concerned via four case studies: electoral boundary redistribution, prisoner voting rights,
the publication of opinion polls during campaigns and third party spending limits.
Through an extensive review of the relevant case law and literature, I conclude that the
courts have failed to develop a coherent and consistent theory judicial review regarding
the application of the Charter to election law. My analysis reveals that the inconsistencies
stem largely from three main sources: first is the failure of the courts to adopt a single
vision of what constitutes a fair electoral system; second is that the case studies are
dealing with two different sections of the Charter (ss. 2(b) and 3); and third is the Oakes
test which has expanded judicial discretion along with the potential for disparity. If
consistency is ever going to be achieved, the courts need to adopt a single vision of
democracy in Canada. Until then, we are left to guess when our political rights may be
justifiably restricted under the Charter.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11826 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Letkeman, Emily Susan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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