Nova Scotia court rejects broader records bid in election-nomination challenge

The Supreme Court of Nova Scotia has rejected an effort to expand the court record in a challenge to rejected election nominations, finding that the applicants had not shown Elections Nova Scotia’s record was incomplete.

In Independent NS Initiative v. Elections Nova Scotia, 2026 NSSC 315, Justice John Bodurtha dismissed the motion with costs to Elections Nova Scotia and the provincial Attorney General. His October 12, 2026 decision preserved a narrow qualification for additional documents from two applicants concerning whether their expenses were below $5,000.

The ruling settles the evidence record for the judicial review. It does not decide whether the nomination refusals were reasonable or resolve the applicants’ constitutional challenges.

Rejected nominations prompted the challenge

The dispute concerns the November 2024 provincial election. The individual applicants’ nominations were refused because they had not provided the name and business address of a licensed auditor required by the Elections Act. They challenged those refusals through judicial review.

Elections Nova Scotia’s position was that candidate registration and nomination serve different purposes. Registration under the electoral-finance provisions did not, in its submission, eliminate the separate requirements for nomination and a place on the ballot.

The agency filed a 296-page record, divided into 63 tabs, on August 13, 2025. It included registration and nomination documents, the forms recording the reasons for refusal, emails with the applicants and communications between headquarters and returning officers.

The applicants moved in November 2025 to add to that record and obtain further production and testimony. Their requests extended to government server logs, records about the early election call, documents from the Premier’s Office, Auditor General and Executive Council, and testimony from election officials. They disputed the suggestion that their requests amounted to a fishing expedition.

Judicial review has a narrower evidence process

Justice Bodurtha explained that a judicial-review record generally consists of the material before the administrative decision-maker when it made the challenged decision. Judicial review does not give a party the same broad document-discovery process available in an ordinary civil lawsuit.

The applicants had the burden of showing that the agency’s record was insufficient. A record supplied by the decision-maker benefits from a presumption of regularity: without compelling contrary evidence, the court ordinarily relies on it as accurate.

New evidence can sometimes be admitted outside the original record. The judge identified limited exceptions, including helpful background information, evidence of procedural defects not apparent from the record, and affidavit evidence showing a complete absence of evidence before the decision-maker for a particular finding. Those exceptions are not an exhaustive list, but he found none established by the motion materials.

The court also identified procedural problems with several affidavits, including arguments, opinions and inadmissible hearsay. Although those defects could themselves justify dismissal, the judge addressed the substance of the requests to clarify the position for the applicants.

Separate constitutional issues did not expand this record

The applicants were pursuing more than one proceeding, including a separate judicial review involving the Attorney General and constitutional challenges concerning the election call and auditor provisions.

Justice Bodurtha found that the requested records about dissolving the House of Assembly and calling the election had no connection to the nomination decisions made by Elections Nova Scotia. Their possible relationship to other challenges did not make them part of the agency’s record in this motion. The applicants had not established a right to the broader disclosure they sought.

The court accepted the existing record subject to any additional documents submitted by Chris Scott and Morgan Guptill concerning whether their expenses were below $5,000, as raised in argument on the motion. The reasons do not explain the ultimate legal effect of those documents.

Costs were awarded to Elections Nova Scotia and the Attorney General, but no amount was fixed. If the parties could not agree, the respondents could make submissions within 30 days of the decision and the applicants could reply within 45 days.

The decision leaves the merits of the nomination challenge for judicial review. Its immediate effect is to settle the record for that review, subject to the stated qualification, without permitting the broader disclosure the applicants sought.