Supreme Court lets former Alberta MLA pursue election misconduct claim but leaves lost-chance damages unresolved

The Supreme Court of Canada has allowed former Alberta MLA Joseph Anglin to pursue a civil claim alleging misconduct by chief electoral officer Glen Resler during the 2015 provincial election, without deciding whether the allegations are true or whether Anglin is entitled to compensation.

In Resler v. Anglin, 2026 SCC 23, released June 19, 2026, the court dismissed Resler’s appeal with costs. The decision preserves the Alberta Court of Appeal’s reinstatement of claims concerning election signs and comments to the media. Allegations of malicious prosecution remain struck out.

The judges agreed that the surviving claims should not be stopped altogether at this preliminary stage. Their six-to-three division concerned a narrower issue: whether Anglin should also be permitted to pursue his claim for damages for a lost chance of being re-elected. The majority left that question for determination on the merits rather than ruling that such damages are legally available.

A dispute over election signs

Anglin served in Alberta’s legislature from 2012 until losing his re-election bid in 2015. During that campaign, Resler investigated complaints about Anglin’s signs and caused at least 25 to be removed. The objections concerned the use of “MLA” after the election had been called and the size of required sponsorship information.

A $250 administrative penalty for breaching the sponsorship-information guidelines survived Anglin’s judicial-review challenge and subsequent appeals. Separate proceedings over a $500 penalty for failing to protect an electors list identified a procedural-fairness problem: Anglin had not received the investigator’s report. That penalty was ultimately rescinded. Those proceedings did not establish the misconduct alleged in the surviving civil claim.

Anglin began his civil action in April 2017. He alleged that Resler singled him out, improperly told the media his signs were illegal, and worked with people opposed to his re-election to remove or damage signs. He claimed misuse of public powers for an improper purpose, with knowledge that harm was likely. These remain allegations, not findings against Resler.

Resler sought to strike the action, arguing that it improperly challenged an election outside the statutory process for contesting results, repeated matters already decided, and was barred by privilege or immunity. He also sought summary judgment, an alternative request that the chambers judge did not decide after striking the claim.

The Court of Appeal restored most of the action in 2024 but left the malicious-prosecution allegations struck. Anglin did not cross-appeal that part of the decision. The Supreme Court therefore addressed the surviving allegations about the removal or destruction of signs and comments to the media, not a revival of the entire lawsuit.

Seeking compensation was different from overturning the election

Justice Mary Moreau’s majority reasons distinguished a personal damages claim from a petition to invalidate an election result.

Alberta’s Election Act provides a special process for contesting an election. As the court described it, a defeated candidate may petition within 30 days after publication of the notice of the election outcome to have the election declared void because of the improper return or election of another candidate.

Resler argued that Anglin’s claim would inevitably require a court to examine the election’s fairness and integrity. Allowing the action outside that process, he submitted, would undermine the finality of election results, the chief electoral officer’s independence and public confidence in democratic institutions.

The majority rejected that characterization. Anglin accepted the election result and did not seek to remove the winning candidate or invalidate that candidate’s return. A damages award would not change the result.

That distinction defeated the collateral-attack argument. The doctrine prevents a party from indirectly challenging the legal force of a binding decision in the wrong proceeding. It is not a general prohibition on examining events connected to an earlier decision. The majority drew on the court’s TeleZone decision, which distinguished compensation for alleged wrongdoing from an attempt to undo an administrative decision.

The broader doctrine of abuse of process did not bar the surviving action either. It protects the integrity of judicial proceedings, including against improper relitigation. But the earlier signage litigation concerned the electoral guidelines, while the remaining civil allegations concerned bad-faith conduct involving media comments and the removal or destruction of signs. Those surviving issues had not been conclusively decided in the earlier proceedings.

Immunity protected good faith rather than every electoral act

Resler also relied on parliamentary privilege and statutory immunity.

The majority recognized the legislature’s authority over its membership, including who is qualified to sit and vote. But Anglin’s claim did not challenge the legislature’s composition. Resler had not demonstrated how the broad privilege he asserted extended to the particular conduct alleged about signs and media comments.

Section 5.1(1) of the Election Act protects the chief electoral officer and others for acts or omissions undertaken in good faith in performing their statutory functions. The legislature could have enacted an absolute immunity, Moreau wrote, but did not. The express good-faith qualification left room for civil claims alleging bad faith.

The court also considered whether the election-contest scheme implicitly displaced civil claims. Its analysis examined the statutory dispute process, the nature of the dispute and the scheme’s ability to provide an effective remedy.

Anglin’s action did not fit that scheme. An election petition is directed against the candidate whose election is challenged and seeks to invalidate the election. It is not designed to compensate an individual for harm allegedly caused by an electoral official. The majority concluded that the statutory scheme did not exclude this personal claim.

That conclusion did not make every disputed electoral decision actionable. The court emphasized the demanding requirements of misfeasance in public office, the civil wrong of deliberately misusing public power with the required knowledge of unlawfulness and likely harm.

The pleading test did not establish wrongdoing

At this stage, the question was whether the claim was legally sufficient, not whether Anglin could prove it.

On the no-reasonable-claim branch of a motion to strike, the court reads the pleading generously, assumes properly pleaded facts to be true and does not receive evidence to assess their merits. A claim can be struck only when it is plain and obvious that it discloses no reasonable claim. Abstract speculation or facts incapable of proof need not be accepted, but novelty alone is not enough to end an arguable case.

For misfeasance in public office, an unlawful decision or a breach of statutory duty is not sufficient by itself. A claimant must establish the required bad faith and resulting material damage. The tort addresses deliberate abuse of public power, not good-faith errors.

Moreau found sufficient allegations of improper purpose, knowing or reckless misuse of authority, and resulting harm. Anglin also pleaded losses involving removed or destroyed signs and reputational harm, apart from the disputed election-related losses.

The allegation that signs were removed or damaged even after being brought into compliance also supported keeping the trespass-to-chattels claim, which concerns interference with personal property. As against Resler, the court endorsed the approach that this conduct could be part of the misfeasance claim rather than necessarily a separate basis of liability.

The lost chance of re-election remained an open question

Anglin sought $400,000 for the alleged loss of a chance of being re-elected. The majority did not determine whether Canadian tort law permits that recovery in this setting.

Moreau noted that loss-of-chance damages remain unsettled in Canadian tort law and raise unresolved questions about causation. The submissions and decisions below had chiefly addressed whether this part of the claim amounted to a collateral attack or abuse of process. The alternative summary-judgment application and possible amendments to the pleadings were additional reasons not to resolve the damages issue on this appeal.

A separate question remained even if loss-of-chance damages were available: whether the lost opportunity to earn an MLA’s income would be an appropriate measure. Resler argued that legislative office is public service rather than a private source of profit. The majority left the appropriate measure, and the factual and legal sustainability of the claimed loss, for consideration if Anglin established his case.

Three judges would have barred lost-chance damages

Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, joined by Chief Justice Richard Wagner and Justice Sheilah Martin, agreed that the misfeasance and property-interference claims could continue. They would, however, have struck the claim for loss-of-chance damages immediately.

Karakatsanis considered the damages question properly before the court because Resler had specifically challenged that part of the claim. In her view, resolving whether a claimed remedy was legally available did not require a trial record, and leaving a doomed claim unresolved imposed unnecessary costs on the parties and the justice system.

Her reasons identified both proof problems and public-policy concerns. The loss-of-chance framework she discussed required a claimant to show that the defendant’s conduct deprived them of a real, significant opportunity with practical value, dependent on someone or something other than the claimant. Compensation would reflect the probability of obtaining the benefit rather than automatically its full value.

In an election, she reasoned, changing polls, shifting voter preferences and the many influences on individual votes made it impossible to isolate a sufficiently reliable connection between alleged misconduct and a lost electoral opportunity. She considered such a chance too speculative to support this category of damages.

Even if those proof difficulties could be overcome, she concluded that assessing which candidate might have won without misconduct could undermine confidence in the successful candidate and the legislature, years after the election and outside the prompt statutory contest process. She also rejected the proposition that limited immunity itself established an entitlement to any particular type of damages. Other forms of compensation could remain available if their legal requirements were proved.

The concurrence cautioned against deciding an unargued broader rule

Justice Malcolm Rowe, joined by Justice Suzanne Côté, adopted Moreau’s reasons in full and separately answered the dissent.

Rowe distinguished an argument that a damages claim improperly contests an election from an argument that causation and proof of an electoral chance are always too speculative. In his view, the latter questions had not been adequately argued or decided below. Courts should generally decide the case the parties present, rather than resolve consequential new issues without a fair opportunity for submissions.

He also rejected a categorical conclusion that every electoral setting would prevent reliable proof. Elections differ in size, candidates and local circumstances, and expert evidence might be relevant. This case contained no findings about Anglin’s polling or whether the alleged conduct affected his electoral prospects. Rowe did not say Anglin could prove those matters; he said the record did not justify foreclosing all such claims.

On public policy, Rowe warned against a free-standing discretion to reject claims after established doctrines had failed to justify that result. In his view, the dissent’s concerns repeated matters already examined under collateral attack, abuse of process and statutory exclusion, but without those doctrines’ limits. He also considered the proposed bar inconsistent with the legislature’s choice to preserve liability for bad-faith conduct.

The result was permission to continue rather than an award

The Supreme Court dismissed Resler’s appeal with costs, leaving the Court of Appeal’s order intact. It refused Anglin’s request for solicitor-client costs because Resler’s conduct as a litigant had not been shown to justify that exceptional award.

The ruling did not invalidate the election, find Resler liable, award Anglin damages or restore the struck malicious-prosecution allegations. It allowed the remaining civil claim to survive the preliminary challenge while leaving the availability, proof and measurement of lost-chance damages unresolved.