Glenn K. L. Chu

The applicant, who lost a municipal school trustee election by a single vote, sought a recount under s. 58 of the Municipal Elections Act.

The court distinguished between undervotes and overvotes/adjudicated ballots.

While dismissing the request for a recount of the 258 undervotes due to their common nature and lack of specific evidence of error, the court found objective grounds to doubt the result based on a single overvote and an unknown number of adjudicated mail-in ballots.

Consequently, a narrow recount was ordered for the overvote and adjudicated ballots to ensure fairness and avoid disenfranchising voters, given the extremely close margin.

The appellant municipality challenged provincial legislation that reduced Toronto City Council's ward structure from 47 to 25 wards mid-election campaign, arguing it violated the Charter's freedom of expression guarantee and the unwritten constitutional principle of democracy.

The majority held that the appellant's claim was a positive rights claim governed by the Baier framework, requiring demonstration of radical frustration of expression effectively precluding meaningful expression, a threshold not met where candidates had 69 days to re-orient their campaigns under the new structure.

The majority further held that unwritten constitutional principles cannot serve as independent bases for invalidating legislation, and that the democratic principle cannot be used to narrow provincial authority over municipalities under s. 92(8) of the Constitution Act, 1867.

The dissent would have allowed the appeal, finding the timing of the legislation violated s. 2(b) and that Ontario offered no pressing and substantial justification for making the changes during an ongoing election.

The applicant sought a declaration that its perfected security interest in amounts payable by the City of Toronto to Selectore Ltd. had priority over a garnishment notice served by the respondent Globealive Wireless Management Corp. Globealive argued that the applicant's loan was not in default when the receivable became due, thus precluding the applicant's right to the funds.

The court, relying on section 20(1)(a)(ii) of the Personal Property Security Act, held that a perfected security interest takes priority over a later notice of garnishment, irrespective of whether the secured loan was in default at the time the receivable became due.

The applicant's motion was granted, affirming its priority, and Globealive was ordered to pay costs to both the applicant and the City of Toronto.