The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) struck down Quebec’s legislation that suspended review of an electoral map by an independent commission until after the next general election, according to reasons published Friday. The court held by a 7-2 majority that the legislation violated the right to vote under Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The impugned legislation would suspend the work of the Commission de la représentation électorale. It is an independent commission that reviews the boundaries of each electoral district before every other general election, as required by the provincial Elections Act. Reviewing the electoral map regularly ensures that each district represents a community based on its population, natural local boundaries, and other sociological considerations.

The provincial government intended that the suspension would buy it time to develop a long-term plan to address the inevitable disappearance of remote regions with declining populations, while preserving those regions. However, Justice Nicholas Kasirer, for the majority, upheld the lower court’s conclusion that there is no rational connection between protecting these remote regions and suspending the independent review work of the commission. The essential objective of the legislation, as the majority found, was to preserve the electoral districts in Gaspésie, a remote and sparsely populated region.

The majority also held that suspending the commission’s work was not minimally impairing the right to vote. The ruling found that the legislature could have temporarily preserved the electoral districts in Gaspésie and allowed the commission to review the remaining districts in the province.

Justice Suzanne Côté and Malcolm Rowe disagreed. They would have held that the law is constitutional because it is within a range of reasonable solutions and that the court should have deferred to the legislature. They would also have accepted that the objective of the law was as the government indicated.

The Charter right to vote entails the right to effective representation, which requires that citizens’ voting power be relatively equal. Regarding the constituencies of the provincial legislature, the court has previously held that when drawing electoral maps, the provincial governments must maintain voter equity, taking into account geography and community interest.

Notably, the 1991 SCC ruling found that a 25 percent deviation from the provincial electoral quotient–the average population per electoral district in a province–is acceptable. This threshold is also codified in section 16 of Quebec’s Elections Act. According to a 201o study by the University of Toronto, Canada is the worst violator of the principle of representation by population among federal states. Voter disparity in Quebec resulted in the current ruling party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, getting 72 percent of the seats in the provincial legislature by getting only 41 percent of the popular vote, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Without advocating for a revision of the threshold, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association invited the court to require a stronger justification for a greater departure from the 25 percent threshold.