Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act still prohibits transmitting the results of the vote in any electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the polling stations close in that other electoral district.
That means on May 2, it will be illegal for Postmedia News - or the CBC or Radio-Canada or the Globe and Mail or the National Post or any other national media outlet - to maintain a live website with up-to-date results. At least until after the polls close in B.C.
It will also be illegal for a regional newspaper or broadcaster in Atlantic Canada to put up live web results for their local audience - because then we backwoods westerners might have the temerity to sneak a peak.
It will also be illegal for any citizen, journalist or not, to tweet or blog or post something on a Facebook wall about the election results, until all the polls are shut.
Ordinary citizens aren't immune. In 2000, Elections Canada brought charges against a Vancouver blogger and software designer named Paul Bryan after he dared to publish election results from Atlantic Canada on his small-audience blog. Bryan was fined $1,000. He fought the case all the way to the Supreme Court on constitutional grounds, with major media outlets from across the country joining his battle. It did no good. In 2007, by a vote of 5-4, the court upheld Bryan's conviction, and Section 329.
The four minority judges were passionate in their dissent.
Justice Rosalie Abella, writing for her dissenting colleagues, put it this way: "There is only speculative and unpersuasive evidence to support the government's claim that the information imbalance is of sufficient harm to voter behaviour or perceptions of electoral unfairness that it outweighs any damage done to a fundamental and constitutionally protected right."
The law is even more absurd today, when our country is in the middle of an interactive social media revolution, and when more and more readers get their news not from hard copy "newspapers" but from 24-hour live news sites.
Time to make this an issue I think
HT Jay's Gilmore and Rosen