Judge to decide by Sept. 11 on Tory bill
The Star and the Globe summarize some of the arguments made in the Bill 5 challenge
The Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro reports on Friday’s challenges to Bill 5 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
Among the lawyers making submissions on the Charter issues in the case were Howard Goldblatt, Christine Davies and Steven Barrett. (you can read our factum here)
Lawyer Steven Barrett said the province had not provided any evidence regarding its claim that council today is dysfunctional — a major reason Ford presented inside and outside the Legislature for introducing the bill.
Even if council could be proven to be dysfunctional, Barrett said, the province also had not made the case that Bill 5 would solve that problem.
Read the entire Star article here.
The Globe and Mail also covered the hearing, including some of Howard’s arguments
Lawyer Howard Goldblatt, acting for a group of candidates for council including school trustee Chris Moise, said the province had rewritten the rules “not in the middle of the game but when the third quarter of the game had begun.”
Mr. Goldblatt argued that redrawing Toronto’s local electoral map essentially tosses out all of the campaigning done to that point, violating the Charter’s free-speech provision. He also said most candidates cannot hope to raise any more money, having already raised the maximum limit from their donors, meaning those funds have essentially been wasted.
Read the entire Globe article here.
The judge has said that he will release a decision by September 11th.
The Star’s Jennifer Pagliaro live tweeted the challenges to Bill 5. Her tweets are embedded in the attached Star article, or you can read the twitter thread here. We particularly liked this tweet:
A group of law students at Goldblatt Partners apparently transcribed the entire council meeting, or at least most of it, where a Bill 5 challenge was discussed. I would like to objectively commend them for completing that daunting task
— Jennifer Pagliaro (@jpags) August 31, 2018
Lawyers
Steven Barrett, Christine Davies, Howard Goldblatt, Geetha Philipupillai