The federal government has introduced a new bill that it believes will help cut back on so-called long ballot protests and better protect against foreign influence in elections.
Over the past five years, Elections Canada says a group of electoral reform advocates known as the Longest Ballot Committee have stacked ballots with candidates in a total of eight electoral districts. In the past, the Longest Ballot Committee has said it was pushing for reform of the first-past-the-post system.
Last year, the group was actively involved in the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection that had a total of 214 candidates on the ballot. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre won the riding after losing his Ontario seat in the general election.
The same group is also running dozens of candidates in the Montreal-area byelection for Terrebonne.
Terrebonne byelection: Longest ballot protest group returns
Bill C-25, known as the Strong and Free Elections Act, aims to cut down on long ballot protests by only allowing electors to sign one nomination form per candidate. Right now, a candidate needs 100 signatures from voters in the riding to run in an election or byelection. Under the bill, an elector who signs multiple nomination forms could face monetary penalties.
The proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act will also prevent official agents from serving more than one candidate per riding, something Elections Canada has highlighted as a method used by protest groups to stack ballots.
Government House leader Steven MacKinnon called the efforts “disruptive” and said they make voting less accessible and the work of Elections Canada “prohibitively difficult.”
“I understand that they have a message that they wish to put forward, but the results of these efforts make, as I said earlier, accessibility difficult,” he told reporters Thursday. “Citizens do not like this. Elections Canada does not like this.”
On Tuesday, a parliamentary committee studying long ballot protests released eight recommendations for the government to consider. Government officials speaking on background said all of the legislative recommendations were included in Bill C-25.
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One of them is to make it illegal for anyone to submit false or misleading information on a candidate nomination paper.
Government officials speaking on background say the bill closes so-called loopholes electoral reform advocates have been using to get candidates on the ballot. Bill C-25, the officials say, makes these kinds of actions illegal and introduces financial penalties that they hope will serve as a significant deterrent.
