By-election in LaSalle – Émard – Verdun | Independents of the committee for the longest ballot paper are back

(Ottawa) One week before the deadline for submitting candidacies for the by-election in LaSalle — Émard — Verdun, the ballot already contains 62 names, including more than 50 independents who are campaigning for reform of the voting system.

There is Donovan Eckstrom, who describes himself on his Facebook page as “the candidate for an independent Alberta with LaSalle-Émard-Verdun.”

There is Mário Stocco, who places the Château Frontenac in the Montreal constituency on his website.

There is also Félix-Antoine Hamel, who received a grand total of zero votes in the Toronto-St. Paul’s by-election, where a record number of 84 candidates were competing.

All three have the same official agent, and they are among the fifty or so independent candidates whose names will appear on the ballot for the by-election on September 16.

So there’s a good chance that the vote counting will be a laborious process, just as it was last June in Toronto — St. Paul’s, where it took about eight hours to get results.

All the more so since we should see a three-way, or even four-way, race in the Montreal riding that became vacant due to the departure of former Justice Minister David Lametti.

The Liberals have chosen city councillor Laura Palestini as their candidate. She will face another city councillor, Craig Sauvé, who is running for the New Democratic Party.

In the Bloc Québécois, it is a long-time activist and former political strategist, Louis-Philippe Sauvé, who hopes to wrest the riding from Liberal hands.

The Conservatives, for their part, have set their sights on Louis Ialenti, an entrepreneur who tried his luck in the riding of Saint-Léonard — Saint-Michel in 2021, but in vain.

In addition to the dozens of independent candidates and those from major parties, there are aspirants from the Green Party of Canada, the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, and the Marijuana Party.

Sometimes affiliated with the Rhinoceros Party, the Longest Ballot Committee advocates for voting reform — a promise Justin Trudeau broke.

They have been bogging down ballots in by-elections since 2021. In Toronto — St. Paul’s, the ballot containing the names of the 84 candidates was about a metre long.

Former Elections Canada chief executive Jean-Pierre Kingsley blasted the scheme.

“What they are doing right now is legal. But it is not legitimate,” he said in an interview with The Press last June.