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The upcoming by-election in Montreal is set to be the longest ballot in Canadian federal election history, breaking the record set in Toronto earlier this summer.
According to Elections Canada, at least 91 candidates will be on the ballot in the La Salle—Emar—Verdun by-election on September 16.
Of those, 79 are associated with the Committee for the Longest Vote, a group protesting Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system. The group wants a citizens’ assembly to oversee electoral reform because they believe political parties are unwilling to make the government more representative of voters’ diverse views.
Elections Canada’s final list is due on Wednesday.
The protest’s organizer, Sebastian “Rhino” Corriveau, leader of the satirical political party Rhino, hopes the event will raise awareness about electoral reform and proportional representation.
“This is ridiculous,” he said. “But we’ve tried other approaches before and they’ve failed.”
Corriveau said that when committee members went door to door collecting signatures to get candidates on the ballot, one in every two people signed the document.
“While the voting system is not currently an issue of daily concern to Canadians, people do agree that it must change,” he said.
June 24, Toronto-Saint Paul by-election results were delayed for several hours due to 84 candidates registered to run77 of whom were associated with the longest voting committee.
Elections Canada, which printed ballots that are nearly a metre long and have two columns of names, said the giant ballots will take longer to unfold and count than in a normal election, and will require more ballot boxes to accommodate them.
The final vote count was not announced until after 4 a.m. the next day, showing that Conservative candidate Don Stewart had defeated the Liberal Party, which had governed the riding for more than three decades.
Corriveau said he does not expect to have any impact on the outcome of the election, but he said the group’s actions were worth the inconvenience for voters.
“The system is rigged and the winners make the rules,” he said.
“It’s a form of engagement”
Many of the candidates who ran in Toronto are on the Montreal ballot again, including Albertan Donovan Eckstrom, who described himself on Facebook as “the candidate for an independent Alberta with La Salle-Emael-Verdun.”
In a video posted on Facebook, Ekstrom promised that if elected he would “replace all of Quebec’s dairy cows with high-quality Alberta beef.”
Another familiar name is Felix-Antoine Hamel, who made headlines in June when he became the first candidate in Canadian electoral history to receive zero votes.
Dennis Piron, chair of York University’s politics department, said the reluctance of Canada’s major political parties to change the country’s voting system is frustrating electoral reform advocates.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised during his 2015 campaign that this would be the last federal election under a first-past-the-post system, but he broke that vow in 2017.
“What we’re seeing is that when rational discussion doesn’t work, advocates for change become objects of ridicule,” Piron said.
“Individual voters may feel a little uncomfortable having to scan a large ballot to find their choices. But on the other hand, we often say that citizens need to step up and this is a form of engagement.”
Corriveau said he did not know whether the commission would campaign in future elections.
Are there any prizes for cycling?
The Montreal by-election follows the resignation of former Liberal MP and cabinet minister David Lametti, who had held the position since 2015. The riding of LaSalle—Emard was previously held by the incumbent, former prime minister Paul Martin, who held the riding from 1988 to 2011.
But the Liberals’ declining political fortunes could make this riding election more competitive, with some polls suggesting a three-way race between the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois.
The Liberal candidate is Montreal city councillor Laura Palestini, whose selection has angered other aspiring candidates who were unhappy that the party chose not to hold a public nomination process.
The New Democratic Party nominated another Montreal city councillor, Craig Sauvé, while the Bloc candidate was longtime political consultant Louis-Philippe Sauvé. Business owner Louis Ialenti is running for the Conservatives.
This by-election will be the next major test for the Liberal Party following its unexpected defeat to the Conservatives in the Toronto-Saint-Paul riding.
More than 70 candidates called for action on electoral reform, successfully slowing down the counting and gaining 1,068 votes in Toronto’s dramatic by-election. Glen MacDonald, a volunteer with the Longest Voting Committee, joined Power & Politics as an independent candidate to discuss whether last night’s election was a victory for his group and its movement.
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