Recommendations
On March 24, the House of Commons Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) tabled a 58-page report promoting election law amendments aimed at banning the Longest Ballot Committee's participation in elections. Entitled Becoming a Candidate in an Election: A Review of the Criteria, the report presents seven recommendations for amendments to the Canada Elections Act and calls on the government to introduce legislation embodying all of them, which it says reflect its "concerns about the integrity and accessibility of Canada's elections caused by the activities of the Longest Ballot Committee."
PROC considered several proposals
made by the ten witnesses opposed
to the work of the Longest Ballot Committee who were invited to
three
meetings it held on "The Activities of 'the Longest Ballot
Committee'
in Canadian Elections." Proposals included increasing the number
of
signatures required
to nominate a candidate and re-introducing the requirement for
candidates to provide a deposit to register. The essence of
PROC's
seven recommendations is to criminalize support for electoral
reform
through mass candidacies in a riding. It proposes to make
nominating
more than one candidate a crime
"subject to penalties." PROC also proposes to ban more than one
candidate in a riding appointing the same individual as their
official
agent.
As it stands now, the law entitles any eligible elector in a riding to nominate candidates; there is no restriction on how many candidates an elector can nominate. The act of nominating must be witnessed and there is no restriction on who the witness is, just as there is no restriction on who can participate in gathering signatures. The witness must only ensure that the elector is an eligible elector in the riding. One hundred signatures are required in most ridings, while only 50 are required in specified sparsely populated ridings.
PROC is presenting the following amendments to the Canada Elections Act:
1. "prohibit signing more than one candidate's nomination paper [...] subject to penalties;"
2. "add disclaimers to candidate nomination papers which state that it is an offence under the Canada Elections Act to sign more than one candidate's nomination paper."
3. "make it an offence to induce anyone to sign more than one candidate's nomination paper [...] subject to penalties."
4. "make it an offence for a candidate to submit false or misleading information on a candidate nomination paper [...] subject to penalties."
5. "prohibit individuals from serving as the official agent for more than one candidate per electoral district [...] subject to penalties."
6. "provide for penalties when signatures are obtained on a nomination paper before a candidate has been identified."
7. "that prohibitions under the Canada Elections Act be expanded to penalize anyone who counsels, engages in a conspiracy, or acts as an accessory after the fact to a violation or an offence in the act."
The PROC report included supplementary reports from the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois. The purpose of the Conservatives' supplementary report is to express support for the recommendations and to note the Liberal government's failure "to curtail the disruptive actions of the Longest Ballot Committee" sooner than it did.
In its supplementary report, the Bloc Québécois says it does not support the prohibition of people nominating more than one candidate. It says it supports recommendations 3 to 7 listed above, which include the prohibition against "inducing " electors to nominate more than one candidate.
To read the full report from the PROC, click here.
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 3 - March-April, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/M56036.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca