What Voting Looked Like In Canada Before Its Poll Body Took Over

People in Canada are preparing to vote in the federal election on April 28. Central to this process is Elections Canada, the body tasked with ensuring fair elections.

What Is Elections Canada?

Elections Canada is the longest-standing independent electoral agency in the world. Established in 1920, it's responsible for overseeing federal elections, by-elections and referenda.

How Canada Held Elections Before Elections Canada

The Canadian electoral system was in place well before the creation of Elections Canada. After Confederation in 1867, federal elections were organised by government officials, with no independent body in charge. Provinces maintained their own voter lists, which federal officials used.

There were no national lists of voters. Instead, the federal government used voter lists made by each province, which followed different rules. Sometimes, officials had to create new lists from scratch before each election, and this caused many eligible voters to be left out.

Elections were also not held on a single day across the country. Each area voted on different days, which sometimes stretched over weeks. In the early years, voting wasn't even private - people had to say out loud who they were voting for. The secret ballot was only introduced in 1874.

The rules for who could vote were unfair, too. In many provinces, only men who owned property were allowed to vote. Some groups, like Indigenous people and people with ties to certain countries during World War I, were excluded.

During World War I, the Wartime Elections Act of 1917 introduced special voting rules. It allowed women connected to the war effort to vote for the first time but took away voting rights from men with ties to enemy countries. These changes, widely seen as politically motivated, led to growing public distrust in the electoral process.

To address these concerns, Parliament formed a bipartisan committee to reform election administration. The committee proposed creating an independent, non-partisan office to manage federal elections. The result was the Dominion Elections Act of 1920, which established the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer.

This office, now known as Elections Canada, was officially created on July 1, 1920.

The agency operates independently of the government, ensuring no political bias. The Chief Electoral Officer leads the agency and works independently from the Government of Canada, without reporting to the Prime Minister or any cabinet ministers. Instead, the agency reports directly to Parliament, which reinforces its non-partisan and independent status.

The Liberal Party, led by Mark Carney, faces Pierre Poilievre's Conservative Party on April 28.