The defeated Liberal Party candidate in Berthier-Maskinongé riding says she will file an official complaint with Elections Canada over the validity of election winner Ruth Ellen Brosseau's nomination papers.
Francine Gaudet issued a statement Friday stating she is questioning at least 90 of the signatures on the NDP candidate's nomination papers.
In an interview, Gaudet's communications agent Denis Simard said the number of questionable signatures is in fact closer to 110.
Simard said 11 of Brosseau's 13 pages of signatures were collected without her name at the top of the page, a number that is far higher than the six pages cited by Liberal MP Denis Coderre earlier in the day in Ottawa.
"We question it because these people essentially signed a blank cheque," Simard said. "In our eyes, that makes those signatures invalid."
A candidate in a federal election is required to submit 100 signatures supporting his or her candidacy from voters in the riding. Brosseau's signatures were collected by NDP volunteers, and not by Brosseau herself.
The riding's returning officer for Elections Canada, Jean Provencher, told the Le Devoir newspaper in Friday's edition that it was in fact him that filled in the information on Brosseau on the nomination papers long after many of the signatures had been collected.
Simard said he spoke to Provencher to confirm what he told Le Devoir.
The Liberals also said Friday that they intended on filing a complaint with Elections Canada over the irregularities with the nomination papers, to which Elections Canada once again repeated that it is essentially powerless in overturning an election result.
"The results of the election are valid unless a court decides otherwise,'' Elections Canada said in a statement.
"Other avenues" available besides legal action
Liberal Party officials made no mention Friday of legal action in the case. Simard said that Gaudet's lawyers say there are "several other avenues" available to them other than making a request to the Quebec Superior Court to investigate, a process Simard says would cost $25,000.
Gaudet's statement Friday mentioned that she learned of the irregularities on Brosseau's nomination papers a long time ago.
"Midway through the campaign, my team noted irregularities in Ms. Ruth Ellen Brosseau's nomination papers in terms of addresses that simply did not exist and people who did not live in the riding," Gaudet says in the statement. "People also spontaneously told us they didn't know how their names found their way on to the list…People even said to us (Thursday) their signatures had been forged."
While the riding's Conservative candidate Marie-Claude Godue had called on Elections Canada to set a date for a byelection based on these irregularities, the Conservatives have since said they will not mount a legal challenge.
Simard says that is not Gaudet's goal either.
"We just want the law, and by extension democracy, to be respected," he said. "We have nothing against Ms. Brosseau nor the 22,000 people who voted for her."
A complaint to Elections Canada could lead to an investigation to determine if electoral laws were broken. That process could lead to fines or even prison sentences, but only court challenges can overturn results.
Liberals say they have affidavits from two citizens who testified they never signed Brosseau's nomination papers, even though their names appear on the list.
Liberals never verified signatures
During the campaign, each party has the chance to verify the signatures on each other's nomination papers. The Liberals acknowledge they never bothered to do so for Brosseau because they felt she didn't stand a realistic chance of winning.
The NDP stunned observers on Monday night by sweeping Quebec's electoral map, winning 59 seats; a feat never even achieved by the Bloc.
Brosseau, who beat the Bloc incumbent by more than 10 percentage points, has been hounded by controversy since it was revealed she took a family vacation during the campaign.
The single mother lives in Ottawa and speaks little French, though her riding is overwhelmingly francophone.
There are also questions about whether she even visited the riding during the campaign, and she gained a good amount of notoriety for taking a vacation in Las Vegas during the campaign.
Brosseau hasn't made any public appearances since Monday, despite a litany of media requests. The NDP says she is undergoing intensive French lessons but has had little else to say.
Her absence has become all the more problematic for the party given large parts of Brosseau's riding have been affected by severe flooding.
She was cited in an NDP statement Friday night _ her first public comments since being elected _ calling on the federal government to help those stranded by the flooding.
"The people of Berthier-Maskinongé placed their trust in me, and that's why the NDP will work non-stop so that the area receives the help that it needs," Brosseau says in the statement.
Coderre said that, in the case of emergencies like this one, the riding deserves better help from its federal representative.
"When you need a federal MP to play a role, fully, in co-operation with the Quebec government, can we agree that instead of playing Where's Waldo we should get straight answers?" Coderre said.
With files from The Canadian Press
