Liberals ＂win＂ riding by 1 vote - Judge blocks new election with insane ruling!
Episode Stats
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Summary
A judge rules that the Terrebonne election should not have to be re-run because of a "postal code error" and the Bloc quebecois will be able to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Transcript
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Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here. This is an absolutely absurd decision from a judge
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in the case of the Terrebonne riding in the federal election. If you don't remember,
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the Terrebonne riding was a Quebec federal riding that the Liberal Party won by one vote.
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And I am not saying in this video that a close election requires a by-election to decide who
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really won. People can sometimes win by one vote. There are famous cases where we have razor-thin
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elections where one candidate beat the other by a handful of votes or even sometimes just
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one vote. But this riding absolutely needed a redo because the only reason the Liberal candidate won
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by a single vote may have been, and when I say may have been, it's an extremely strong likelihood,
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because Elections Canada put the wrong returning address on the mail and ballot envelopes,
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and so a bunch of people who wanted to vote for the Bloc Québécois even came out after the election
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saying, I sent in a ballot and it was bounced back to me because Elections Canada messed up
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and it gave me the wrong returning address. But according to a judge, that really doesn't matter.
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Right here, it's an article from the CBC. It is translated from French, so if there's any
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awkward wordings, that's probably the reason why. This article, the headline reads,
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the federal election in Terrebonne will not be repeated. Voters in the federal riding of Terrebonne
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will not have to return to the polls the Superior Court has ruled. The Bloc Québécois, which contested
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the result due to a postal code error, will be able to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
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Lawyers for the Liberal Party of Canada and Bloc Québécois clashed last week at the St.
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Jerome Courthouse to debate whether or not to re-run the vote in the Terrebonne
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riding following a postal code error. Outgoing MP Nathalie Sinclair-Descage
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I don't know how to read French. Descage is my best guess, sorry guys,
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contested the election result and demanded a rematch. After a judicial recount, her Liberal opponent,
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Tatiana Agusti won with a majority of just one vote. After three days of hearings, the court concluded
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that the error in question does not constitute grounds for contesting the election. What can
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you contest an election over then? What if somebody literally runs into the polling station with a bunch
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of fake ballots and just dumps them into the ballot box right there? Like what kind of insane errors would
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be allowed if that's not, if elections can be giving the wrong information to people for voting, causing
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them to not have their votes counted, doesn't count as something worth re-running an election in? Because
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I can't tell you if the mail-in votes that bounce back were more Liberal or more Bloc Québécois,
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and within one vote, that's a pretty big assumption to be making that it doesn't really matter. It's
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just a minor little error and it could have gone either way, so let's just let whoever won, won.
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It's like, well, we don't know if they won. That's the problem. Again, outside of obvious fraud,
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outside of one side being caught red-handed like stuffing ballot boxes, what would the court actually
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decide to re-run a race for? This is a great quote. Quote, this was a human error, as sometimes happens
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in general elections, committed inadvertently and without any dishonest or malicious intent.
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This error in no way affects the integrity of the Canadian electoral system in which citizens can
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still have confidence. You know what? I have no problem with the Canadian electoral system. I have a
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problem with the court system right now because, yes, errors can happen inadvertently. And by the way,
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when some errors inadvertently happen in an election this close, you re-run it. When it affected more
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ballots than the person who won by, won by, or won, won by, let it go again. Just why? What if there's
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obviously issues that affect that or within the margin of victory, we should probably be looking
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at that. And this is just such a hand wave away issue. And it's almost like they're kind of saying
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like, well, if you don't accept this decision, it's almost like you believe in the 2020 style
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election denial from the U.S. What? Just accept the decision. And I'm happy that the Bloc Québécois looks
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like it is going to be appealing this to the Supreme Court because why wouldn't you? This is
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just basically the theft of a seat. The Liberals did not earn the seat properly and so it should be
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re-ran. And it's the theft of a seat not by the Liberals, not like they did any shenanigans to get
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this to happen. It's Elections Canada being incompetent and the judge saying, who cares if
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there's incompetence? It happens sometimes. Okay, it happens sometimes and in those times we re-run the
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election if it affects the outcome. It says, the court was seized following a complaint from a
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voter in the riding who claims to have voted for the Bloc Québécois but who had her mail-in ballot
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returned four days after the election because of an address error on the envelope provided
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by Elections Canada. Counting this vote would make the result a tie. The Superior Court of Quebec
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ruled that it would be unreasonable to annul the election in Terrebonne even if it were to assume that
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the error constituted an irregularity. That had an impact on the result of the vote since the voter
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was not permanently prevented from voting. What the heck? Yeah, they were. They were permanently
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prevented from voting because they thought that they had voted and Elections Canada just kind of
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bumbled it and they didn't get notified that, oh yeah, your vote's not actually going to count.
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You had to go do it again until four days after the election. This is stupid. It goes on to say this,
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no harm to the integrity electoral system. Like, what kind of quote is that? Yes, there's harm.
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When you mess up something this badly, there is harm. Sorry, oh my goodness, I hate when I lose my
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plays like this. Quote, she had means at her disposal to ensure that her vote reached its destination,
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which means she, which she did not use, the court said in his 33-page decision. The voter could have
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gone to the polling station and voted in person on election day. The court continued before adding that
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election day, April 28th, 2025, of the right to vote. Like, what? This is where the French probably
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mixes with the thing a bit where I'm translating from French to English, so the words might not be
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accurate. Well, she could have technically just voted in person. Okay, that doesn't change the fact
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that she was effectively, accidentally defrauded by Elections Canada by saying, hey, do you want to mail
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in a ballot? It's a perfectly legitimate way of voting, just like walking in person. She does it,
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she fills out properly, and she sends it back, and the only mistake that was made was Elections Canada
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giving her the wrong return address. So a voter's just supposed to assume that the return addresses
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could be completely wrong, and the court's going to let them off the hook, the Elections Canada off
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the hook, and they don't have to rerun the election because, ah, you should assume people could
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have messed it up and you should just vote in person. Then don't have mail-in. Then don't have all
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these other ways of voting through provisional ballot and whatnot. It's so stupid, as I am saying.
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And this writing matters a lot because the Liberals do not have, like, are very, very close to having
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a majority. Them losing an extra seat actually does give parties like the NDP more power. It makes it
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harder for the Liberals to get to a majority to pass legislation. Yes, the NDP tends to vote as a block,
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the block tends to vote as a block, and the Liberals only need one of those parties or the other to
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support them on stuff. But there are going to be votes where they can't get the block on board, and
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Elizabeth May doesn't really add much to the equation if she votes with the Liberals, and oftentimes
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she actually does oppose them. And if the NDP are divided on an issue, it could be that the Liberals don't
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just need three votes to pass something. They need four if Terrebonne goes to the Bloc Québécois, which could
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make very contentious pieces of legislation much more difficult to pass. It's obvious that this
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shouldn't be just redone. It's within one vote. There are dozens and dozens of votes that this
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theoretically had affected, probably more like hundreds of votes that this had affected.
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So why not rerun it? Oh, well, it could have gone either way. Well, that's why we rerun it. I don't
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know that the block would have won if all the mail and ballots were counted correctly, but because we
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don't know, that's why we rerun it. It's so foolish. Anyways, so that should be it for this video, guys.
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I didn't want to make a big deal about this one. I will be back on another day to talk about stuff
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in British Columbia, including the polling that's going on right now, the approval ratings of David
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Eby and John Rustad, or really more so everyone's disapproval ratings, because every single leader
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in the province has a negative approval rating right now, including my own leader, Dallas Brody. But hey,
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she's new. So it's hard to get people really like you. And the only thing people have heard in the
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media mostly is that you're a bad person. And even then she's still actually just middle of the pack
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in terms of all four, five or six leaders that were talked about. I'll be back to talk about the
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macro numbers, regionals, all that stuff. So, you know, stay tuned for that. And if you guys are already
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Anyways, but with all that being said, thank you guys for watching, like share and subscribe,