The Bloc Québécois says it will challenge the federal election results in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, which the Liberals won by one vote following a judicial recount.
“We intend to undertake legal proceedings to ask the courts to order the rerun of the election in the riding of Terrebonne, and to do that as quickly as possible,” Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet told reporters in Parliament on May 15.
The Bloc’s challenge comes after Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bossé told several media outlets she mailed in her vote supporting the Bloc weeks before the April 28 election, but it was returned to her on May 2 because Elections Canada had placed the wrong return address on the envelope.
“Since Elections Canada cannot by themselves ask for the election to be repeated, we have to bring this situation in front of a judge, in a court, in order to do the election all over again,” Blanchet said.
While Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste had initially been declared the winner in Terrebonne on April 28 by 35 votes, the vote tabulation later determined on May 1 that Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné had won re-election, beating Auguste by 144 votes.
Elections Canada announced on May 7 that a judicial recount would be held for Terrebonne, as judicial recounts must happen in cases where the difference in votes for two candidates is less than 1/1,000 of the votes cast. Following the recount, it was announced on May 10 that Auguste had won the riding by a single vote.
Sinclair-Desgagné, who had served as a Bloc MP for the riding since 2021, told reporters in Ottawa on May 15 that the situation had been a “rollercoaster” and she was pleased to be supported by her party. When asked if she felt she had been “robbed” of her victory, Sinclair-Desgagné said the issue went “beyond party politics” and was about trust in Canada’s democratic institutions.
Elections Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, Stéphane Perrault, said in a May 14 statement that the ballot issue in Bossé’s case had to do with the last three characters of the postal code address, but said this was the only case they had come across where a marked ballot was returned to a voter for this reason.
Perrault said he is broadening Elections Canada’s review of the special ballot voting system, which will allow it to “evaluate the training provided to employees and the controls that are in place for processing special ballots with the intent to make improvements before the next general election.”
Other Ballot Issues
Meanwhile, there were other reported issues affecting mail-in ballots in the riding. In an email to the Epoch Times, Elections Canada confirmed the local riding office received 115 special ballots, but that five of the ballots were received late “even though the return envelope contained an error in the postal code.”Elections Canada said they did not have information as to whether the delay was because of the incorrect postal code, and noted that these voters “signed the declaration late in the election period.”
Additionally, 16 ballots were not returned to the local office, which included Bossé’s vote that was returned to her address because of the postal code error. In nine other cases, the voters who initially requested a special mail-in ballot ended up voting in person instead.
Elections Canada said this internal review was limited to the available unsealed ballots, and a “more exhaustive review will not be undertaken at this time to preserve the current state of the documents.”
