With just a few months to go before the 2015 Federal Election, the final battle of the last election finally ended with an appeals court affirming that the Guelph results of 2011 will not be overturned. Frank Valeriote will be allowed to serve out his term as Guelph MP for giving it up to his successor in October.
As reported by the Canadian Press, the Federal Court of Appeal has tossed out the last appeal of Kornelis Klevering, who ran for the Marijuana Party in 2011, and was looking to overturn the results based on the fact that "thousands of eligible electors may have been misdirected by fraudulent, automated phone calls purporting to come from Elections Canada."
Despite the judgment of several courts, including the local trial of Michael Sona that said that there was something fishy afoot in that election, the ruling came down to plain old habeas corpus; Klevering was just too late filing his initial appeal of the 2011 results, which has to be filed up to six months after Election Day. According to Klevering, he hadn't heard about the robocall scandal until after he returned from a winter trip to Thailand in May 2012. The nation-wide robocall story broke in February of that year, a full nine months after E-Day.
Justice Wyman Webb, writing the unanimous ruling of the three-judge panel, ruled again on the basis that Klevering was just too late with his appeal as the primary basis for refusing to overturn the results. Considering the present date, he added, "it is unlikely that any such hearing could be concluded before there is another general federal election, which would render his request to annul the 2011 election in Guelph moot."
With Brother Kase out of appeals, and the Elections Canada investigation closed, this more or less brings an end to the Robocall scandal. Now the only question is if anything as substantially untoward will happen in this coming election.
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