All Canadians citizens 18 and over on polling day are eligible to vote, except for the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada and the Assistant Chief Electoral Officer of Canada.
The majority of eligible voters are registered in the National Register of Electors. This register is used to produce a preliminary list of voters for federal elections. The Register is a database containing the basic information of each eligible voter such as name, sex, date of birth and address.
Those serving sentences in a correctional institution are also eligible to vote in federal elections.
When you vote, you must provide proof of your identity and your address. This can be provided by:
Those who voted in the last general election may be registered to vote at the address where they lived at that time. Elections Canada updates the Register in each riding before the election, and may have updated a change of address since the last election.
Voters who have moved to a different address within their riding can call their local Elections Canada hotline to change their address information. Voters who have moved to a new riding are able to vote there, and do not have to have been living within the riding for any specific amount of time. Students who live temporarily in one riding can choose to vote there, or in another riding where they also reside, depending on which they consider their “place of ordinary residence.”
New citizens are asked to complete an application to vote through Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Those who checked off the consent box on their application are added to the Register, and are registered to vote.
Canadians outside the country are also able to vote if they intend to return to Canada at some point, as long as they have been on Canadian soil in the past five years.
Exceptions are: members of the armed services serving overseas, those who work overseas for the federal or provincial government, or those who work overseas for international organizations of which Canada is member or to which Canada contributes. Also, Canadians living with a person in one of these categories can vote.
Elections Canada will determine ridings for those with no residence in Canada by their last address in the country. The voter can also provide Elections Canada with the address of a spouse, common-law partner, someone related to a spouse, or someone with whom they intend to reside when returning to the country.
Each electoral district has individual hours for voting. Voting cannot take place later than midnight local time, and the total voting time cannot be more than 12 hours.
There are advance polls and mail-in ballots for voters who are unable to cast their ballot on the day of the election. Advance polls are set up three days before the election day, October 3, 4 and 6 for the upcoming election.
Employees who are eligible to vote are entitled to three consecutive hours to cast their ballot. If the employee’s scheduled work day allows for three consecutive hours to vote, the employer is not obligated to let them leave early or arrive late. If it does not allow for three consecutive hours, the employer must adjust their schedule accordingly, without a pay penalty.
Exceptions: Those who work for an employer that transports goods or passengers by land, air or water, the employee is employed outside of their polling division, the employee is employed in the operation of a means of transportation and the time oft would interfere with the transportation service.
Canada is divided into 308 separate federal ridings or electoral districts. Each district elects one member of Parliament as a representative.
The districts are divided into polling divisions, or “polls.” Stationary polling sites usually contain several polls.
Each district has a number of polling stations. For the June 2004 election there were more than 18,000 polling locations in Canada, and 59,000 individual polls. Elections Canada ensures that nobody is forced to travel more than 30 kilometres to vote.
Mobile polling stations collect the votes of elderly or disabled persons living in health-care institutions. These stations are set up in districts having two or more health care institutions and travel between them to collect ballots.
Each district also has a returning officer who is responsible for opening an office when an election is called and organizing and administering the election.
Voters cast their ballots in their own neighbourhoods to ensure that election workers are able to locate names the master voters’ list, and to allow for a quicker count of the ballots. It also allows researchers to more accurately investigate geographical voting patterns.
In the event that there is a tie or a vote difference of 1/1,000 of the total number of votes in a particular riding, a judicial recount is called. If the result is still tied after the recount, a by-election must be held in that riding.
Elections Canada has established the National Register of Electors, which holds basic information of eligible voters such as name, sex, date of birth, address. Canadians can choose whether or not they would like to be included in the Register.
This list is now updated between federal elections through agreements with several sources including provincial and territorial motor vehicle registrars, Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Canada Post Corporation and provincial agencies with permanent lists of voters such as British Columbia and Quebec.
Elections Canada also allows voters to register and update their information between federal electoral events.
A majority government is formed when one party has more than 50 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. Since there are 308 seats in the House of Commons, one party must win 155 seats or more to form a majority government.
If no one party wins 155 seats, the leader of the ruling party (Conservative Party of Canada in this case) must convince the Governor General that he or she can form a government, even if another party has won more ridings.
The prime minister remains in the post unless the government is defeated in a general election by another party who wins a majority, the PM resigns, or the government loses a vote of confidence on a major motion in the House of Commons.
The governing party can also come to an agreement with one or more other parties who agree to support it during parliamentary votes. This usually results in the ruling party agreeing to introduce legislation supported by the other party.
This agreement can come to an end if the parties disagree over policy or have a desire to seek a more stable mandate from the population through a general election.
Majority governments tend to last longer because they only lose confidence motions in the rare instance that some members of their party vote against party lines. A majority government has up to five years to call another election.
Elections must be held on a Monday unless the Monday of the chosen week is a statutory holiday. The voting is then moved to Tuesday.
There must be at least 36 days between the day the election is called and voting day. In recent years, this minimum has become a standard.
Federal election campaigns were 47 days long before 1997, when the 36-day rule was put into place. Before 1997, Elections Canada needed 47 days to prepare voters lists. At the time, there was no permanent database of registered voters, and election enumerators were sent to every residence in the country to update information.
Elections can be postponed once they have been called. In the event of a major emergency, the Chief Electoral Officer can ask the Governor in Council to postpone voting for no more than three months.
A postponement can be avoided in minor emergency situations by extending voting hours at polling stations. A full general election has never been postponed in Canada.
Conservative Party
Liberal Party
Bloc Québécois
New Democratic Party
Green Party