Judge rejects request by Bloc Québécois for new vote in Terrebonne

Emmanuelle Bossé says her vote in Terrebonne, where the Liberals won by a single vote, was rejected because of an Elections Canada error. (Étienne Fortin-Gauthier/Noovo Info)

A Superior Court judge has rejected a Bloc Québécois candidate’s request for a new election in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne, won by the federal Liberals in April with a margin of a single vote.

Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, who came in second, had challenged the result after a Bloc voter revealed that her special ballot was returned to her because of an error in the address on the envelope provided by Elections Canada. Sinclair-Desgagné had argued that the error was an irregularity that influenced the outcome of the close result.

But in a ruling delivered Monday, Justice Éric Dufour says the postal code error does not constitute an irregularity as defined under federal electoral law. “It is a simple human error, which sometimes occurs in general elections, committed inadvertently and without any dishonest or malicious intent,” the judge wrote.

“In this sense, and despite the disappointing result for the elector and Sinclair-Desgagné, this error in no way affects the integrity of the Canadian electoral system in which citizens can still have confidence.”

The April 28 general election returned the Liberals to power with a minority government under Prime Minister Mark Carney. In the Terrebonne riding, Liberal Tatiana Auguste was initially declared the winner, before the result flipped to Sinclair-Desgagné after the votes went through a validation process.

A judicial recount completed on May 10, however, concluded the Liberals received 23,352 votes, one more than Sinclair-Desgagné.

After the close result, a local woman revealed that she had voted Bloc but her vote had not been counted. Emmanuelle Bossé had said her special ballot was returned to her after the election because of an error on the address on the envelope.

Sworn statements filed in the case show that an election employee discovered he had mistakenly printed his own postal code on several special ballots about three weeks before election day. He estimated that a minimum of 40 envelopes had gone out with the wrong postal code.

The employee said he didn’t deem it necessary to inform his superior of the mistake because the number of ballots returned to the elections office wasn’t higher than during past elections.

Sinclair-Desgagné’s lawyer, Stéphane Chatigny, argued that Bossé’s Charter rights were violated because her ballot wasn’t counted.

But Marc-Étienne Vien, lawyer for Auguste, said during the court hearing that cancelling the election would be unreasonable and effectively disenfranchise the tens of thousands of people who cast ballots in the Terrebonne riding.

Also during the hearing, a lawyer for Elections Canada acknowledged an error had taken place, but noted a 2012 Supreme Court of Canada decision that set a high bar for annulling elections based on administrative errors.

Dufour found that even if the error was an irregularity as defined by law, it would still be unreasonable to annul the election because the error did not prevent Bossé from exercising her right to vote. And the judge agreed with the Liberal MP’s lawyer that annulling the election would definitively strip the democratic rights of those who had cast a ballot.

Expanding the definition of election irregularity to include administrative errors would open the door to numerous contestations, Dufour added.

To cancel the results in a riding, Dufour said, “should only be pronounced when the most serious cases occur, and, with respect, the present contestation does not convince (the court) that it is part of those cases.”

A spokeswoman for the Bloc said the party was studying the 27-page decision and did not have an immediate comment.

The Liberals hold 169 seats in the House of Commons, just shy of the 172 needed to form a majority. The Bloc Québécois holds 22 seats.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 27, 2025.

Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press