Electoral Systems in Canada 2017

The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems
Erik S. Herron (ed.) et al.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190258658.001.0001
Published: 2017 Online ISBN: 9780190258689 Print ISBN: 9780190258658
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CHAPTER
35 Electoral Systems in Context: Canada 

Louis Massicotte
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190258658.013.39 Pages 741–762

Published: 06 September 2017
Abstract
Starting in 1758, elections have been held in various Canadian jurisdictions using rst past the post.
The same system is now used everywhere in Canada, even though the country ceased a long time ago to
be a British colony. Whether constituencies should elect one member or more remained an issue for a
long time, but single-member constituencies now prevail for federal, provincial, and territorial
elections. For limited periods of time, a few provinces have experienced with alternative voting, the
single transferable vote, or the limited vote, but all later reverted to plurality. The debate on the
appropriate electoral system remains lively. Many Canadians support proportional representation, and
in recent years, mixed-member proportional has emerged as the option most preferred by reformers.
However, all attempts in that direction have failed so far, including the process launched by Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau in 2015.
Keywords: Canada, electoral system, constituencies, plurality, single-member districts, proportional

representation
Subject: Comparative Politics, Politics
Series: Oxford Handbooks
THIS chapter o ers a summary of the evolution of the electoral system in Canada, where the predominance
of rst past the post did not prevent lively debates on alternative voting, the number of seats in each
constituency, proportional representation, or the very process by which such reforms might be introduced.
Canada’s political system has been strongly in uenced by Britain and the United States, and when it comes
to electing legislators, it shares with these two countries a predilection for the plurality rule. In recent
decades, uneasiness has been expressed about the appropriateness of this rule, and attempts have been
made to reform the electoral system to make it more proportional. All have been unsuccessful so far,
1
including the latest one, launched in 2015–2016.
Historical Background
Canadian electoral history began well before the existing federation was created. Early New France had no
representative institutions, though syndics and marguilliers were elected à la pluralité des su rages. Nova
Scotia was the rst British colony on Canadian soil to elect a representative assembly, in 1758. Two other
jurisdictions carved from Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, later followed suit, in 1773

and 1785, respectively. In 1791, the Constitutional Act created the provinces of Lower Canada (now Québec)
and Upper Canada (Ontario), which held their rst elections the next year. In 1840, both jurisdictions were
forcibly merged into a single entity known as the Province of Canada. Starting in 1832, Newfoundlanders
held elections to their House of Assembly.
The country today is a federation of ten provinces and three self-governing territories, and began in 1867,
p. 742 under the British North America Act (now the Constitution Act), with the creation of a bicameral federal
Parliament including a directly elected House of Commons. Ontario and Québec, hitherto merged into a
single jurisdiction, were re-established as distinct provinces with their own legislatures and were federated
with the Atlantic colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In 1871, British Columbia was admitted into
the federation as a province, followed by Prince Edward Island two years later. New provinces were carved
from the Northwest Territories by the federal Parliament in 1870 (Manitoba) and 1905 (Alberta and
2
Saskatchewan) and immediately acquired representative institutions, while Newfoundland was admitted
only in 1949 following a referendum. Table 35.1 provides basic relevant data on each jurisdiction.
Most legislatures in Canada included an appointed upper chamber upon their creation, but such bodies were
reduced to near impotence following the advent of responsible government in 1848, and were later
abolished one by one, leaving the appointed federal Senate as the only unelected legislative chamber in the
country today. However, a few years before Confederation, two attempts were made to rejuvenate, through
direct election, some of the existing legislative councils. In the Province of Canada, the Legislative Council
became elective in 1856 but gave way to an appointed Senate when Confederation occurred eleven years
later. In Prince Edward Island, the Legislative Council was also transformed into a directly elected body in
1862, until it was merged with the lower house in 1893. Prime Minister Harper’s plans to transform the
federal Senate into a directly elected body came to nothing in 2014 when they were declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada. Like the two previous upper chambers cited, Harper’s
Senate would have been elected by plurality.
Summing up, rst past the post (FPTP) now the standard way Canadians elect their federal and provincial
legislators. That the plurality rule was initially adopted should not come as a surprise, for the original
assemblies were established in a colonial context where the institutions of the mother country were seen as
the model to be emulated. That it still prevails indicates that successive generations of politicians, subject to
a few exceptions, found it to their liking. Referendums that were held in three provinces throughout the
2000s on the issue suggest that most Canadians felt the same way. However, whether constituencies should
elect a single member or more remained an issue for a long time, as, indeed, in the United States (Klain
3
1955).
Single-Seat or Multiseat Constituencies?
Constituencies are o cially known in Canada as “electoral districts” (in French: circonscriptions
4
électorales), though they are informally referred to as ridings in English and comtés in French. Whether they
should elect one legislator or more remained an issue in some provinces until late in the twentieth century.
The pre-1885 British standard arrangement for returning “two knights from every shire and two burgesses

p. 743 from every
p. 744
borough” (i.e., two-seat or “dual-member” constituencies) was not always emulated on this side of the
Atlantic, and the presumed virtues of single-seat districts seem to have been largely ignored by the
politicians who delimited older constituencies. As a result, every Canadian jurisdiction but the Nunavut
territory had experience at some time with multiseat districts.
Table 35.1 Electoral Systems in Force in Canada (May 2017)
Jurisdiction Legislative Number of Year MMDs Latest. Electoral Population

Body seats abolished Election System Census 2016
Canada House of 338 1968 2015 FPTP 35,151,728

Commons

Newfoundland & House of 48 1975 2015 FPTP 519.716
Labrador Assembly
Prince Edward Legislative 27 1996 2015 FPTP 142.907

Island Assembly
Nova Scotia House of 51 1981 2013 FPTP 923.598

Assembly
New Brunswick Legislative 49 1974 2014 FPTP 747.101

Assembly
Québec Assemblée 125 1861 2014 FPTP 8,164,361

Nationale
Ontario Legislative 107 1926 2014 FPTP 13,448,494

Assembly
Manitoba Legislative 57 1958 2016 FPTP 1,278,365

Assembly
Saskatchewan Legislative 61 1967 2016 FPTP 1,098,352

Assembly
Alberta Legislative 87 1959 2015 FPTP 4,067,175

Assembly
British Columbia Legislative 87 1991 2017 FPTP 4,648,055

Assembly
Northwest Legislative 19 1894 2015 FPTP 41.786

Territories Assembly
Yukon Legislative 19 1920 2016 FPTP 35.874

Assembly
*
Nunavut Legislative 22 Never had 2017 FPTP 35.944
Assembly
Sources: Websites of assemblies, Canadian Census 2016.

* Scheduled for October 2017.
From 1792 to the late 1830s, Lower Canada (now Québec) had mostly two-seat districts, while in Upper
Canada (now Ontario) single-seat districts prevailed until 1820, when two-seat districts came to
predominate. The decision to switch to single-seat districts for both units, under the Union Act of 1840—
forty- ve years before the United Kingdom made the same move—came from above. The British

Parliament decided that the number of incumbent legislators in the two provinces to be merged, at 152, was
too high, and that 84 was a more appropriate gure. As a result, most of the existing two-seat
constituencies lost a seat. The Legislative Assembly of the United Canadas (1840–1867) had only a handful
of two- or three-seat districts, which disappeared in 1861, thus establishing a pattern that survives to this
day.
The vast majority of members of the Canadian House of Commons have always been returned from single-
seat districts, but for a long time there were two-seat districts as well. The rst House included a single one,
but there were seven following the 1872 redistribution, ten in 1874, seven in 1896, three in 1904, ve in 1917,
and four in 1925. From 1935, there were only two such districts, which disappeared in 1968.
From their ancient origins up to the twentieth century, constituencies for the Atlantic provincial legislative
assemblies tended to coincide with existing administrative boundaries, either counties or townships, with
each being granted a variable number of seats, depending on their respective population. As a result, the
number of legislators returned by each constituency generally ranged between two and as many as ve.
Multiseat districts remained the rule in New Brunswick until 1974, and in Prince Edward Island until 1996.
Nova Scotia’s transition was less clear-cut, as multiseat districts predominated until 1933, and disappeared
only in 1981. We nd the same pattern in Newfoundland (not a part of Canada before 1949), where single-
seat districts became prevalent in 1928, though the last two-seat district was abolished in 1975. In all four
provinces, each voter in former multiseat districts cast as many votes as there were members to be returned,
and all members now sit for single-seat districts.
Prince Edward Island o ered for a long time the following original arrangement. Each two-seat
constituency returned one assemblyman and one councillor. However, while the right to vote for the former
was universal, voting for the latter was subject to a CDN $325 property franchise, which in addition could be
exercised in every constituency where this requirement was ful lled. This was a remnant of the pre-1893
era when the franchise for the Assembly was wider than for the Legislative Council. In 1963, the property
franchise was eliminated, and all electors were allowed to vote for both seats at stake. In deference to
tradition, legislators continued to be respectively styled councillors and assemblymen until two-seat
districts were eliminated in 1996.
In the sparsely populated prairie provinces, single-member districts always predominated. However, a few
p. 745 multiseat districts were established, with boundaries coinciding with those of major cities like Winnipeg,
Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, and Edmonton. They were broken into single-seat districts in Manitoba (1958),
Alberta (1959), and Saskatchewan (1967).
British Columbia stands out among western provinces for its long-time attachment to multiseat districts.
Starting in 1894, multiseat districts became the exception instead of the rule, but the last ones survived until
1991. As late as in 1986, close to one half of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) were returned
from two-seat districts.
In theory, the existence of multiseat districts might have facilitated the introduction of proportional
representation, or of majoritarian systems providing for minority representation, like the limited vote or
cumulative voting. The multiseat constituencies that existed in Winnipeg (Manitoba) from 1920 to 1958 and
in Calgary and Edmonton (Alberta) between 1926 and 1959 elected their provincial legislators using the
single transferable vote (STV) system of proportional representation. Ontario had a brief experience with
the limited vote when Toronto was a three-seat constituency for the 1886 and 1890 elections.
However, in all other multiseat constituencies that ever existed in Canada, electors cast a number of votes
equal to the number of members to be elected (multiple nontransferable vote [MNTV], also called the block
vote). The most common practice was for each elector to be o ered a single ballot paper where all

candidates were listed and to mark the spots corresponding to their preferred candidates, up to the number
of votes they had, a practice that allowed for ballot splitting. Ballots marked for more candidates than there
were members to be elected were rejected. A second arrangement was to letter each of the seats at stake
(seat “A,” seat “B”) and to provide electors with one ballot paper (often identi ed by di erent colors) for
each, thus creating two distinct competitions. The distinction, within every Prince Edward Island two-seat
constituency, between the councillor seat and the assemblyman seat had the same e ect. Finally, a unique
arrangement existed in New Brunswick until 1967, whereby there was no o cial ballot paper. Electors voted
instead by inserting in the ballot box an envelope including either a ballot paper supplied by their preferred
party and bearing only the names of the candidates sponsored by this party, an arrangement that
encouraged straight party voting, or a blank ballot paper on which they had written the names of their
preferred candidates (Campbell 2007, 289). Whichever formula was in force, most of the time the leading
party within the constituency carried all seats, and the minority party was obliterated, provided that enough
supporters of the former cast a straight party vote (Ward 1967).
Multiseat districts were advocated for various reasons. By following municipal boundaries in urban areas,
they were said to avoid charges of gerrymander. They increased the likelihood for a district to end up with a
cabinet minister. Di erent electoral formulas, like STV or the limited vote, necessitated multiseat districts
5
to operate.
MNTV is usually detrimental to political minorities, on the assumption that the latter might otherwise
prevail within at least one of the smaller single-seat districts. However, it appears that in the Atlantic
provinces, both traditional parties sometimes agreed among themselves to sponsor a bidenominational
slate of candidates (one Roman Catholic and one Protestant), thereby ensuring minority representation on
p. 746 religious grounds, a practice that was at times extended to the language minority group in the
constituency (Dyck 1986, 94, 126, 165). Gender might be seen as an appropriate ground for splitting the
representation. Two-seat districts, with one seat for male candidates and one for females, were indeed
6
proposed for the territory of Nunavut in 1997, but were rejected at a referendum.
Delimiting Constituencies
For a long time, the delimitation of constituencies was a privilege of legislators, and redistribution bills
passed by legislatures were either prepared by the government or by a multiparty committee of the
legislature (Ward 1963). Allegations of outrageous gerrymanders have been less frequent than south of the
border (Engstrom 2016, 200–202), in part because delimitations tended to follow existing county
boundaries. However, legislative malapportionment, with the weight of rural areas being in ated, was
rampant until it came under critical scrutiny in the 1960s (Qualter 1970, 84–93; Pasis 1990; Massicotte and
Bernard 1985).
Manitoba was the rst province, in 1957, to entrust redistribution to an independent boundary commission.
The House of Commons followed in 1964, and all jurisdictions but Ontario now provide for boundary
commissions working on the basis of criteria ensuring what the Supreme Court of Canada called “e ective
representation,” that is, constituencies being roughly equal in population, though rural and especially
7
northern constituencies have lower population gures. Since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of
Human Rights and Freedoms in 1982, the judiciary has been invited to intervene in redistribution issues,
8
notably in British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan.
Representation in the federal Parliament o ers a supplementary challenge, as seats must rst be
apportioned among provinces before boundaries can be delimited within provinces. The existing
apportionment rules were revised for the last time in 2011. They guarantee that no province will have fewer

seats in the House than senators, a rule that allows New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to have more
seats than their population would warrant, while the faster-growing provinces of Ontario, Alberta, and
British Columbia now have representation closer to their population gures than before. The three
territories have one seat each, with smaller-than-average populations scattered in jurisdictions that may
cover areas twice as large as France.
Following each decennial census, under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, ten redistribution
commissions (one for each province) must be appointed. Each one is chaired by a judge designated by the
chief justice of the province and includes two other members appointed by the Speaker of the House of
Commons, who in Canada is expected to behave in a nonpartisan way. Each commission prepares a detailed
proposal, which is published in newspapers. The criteria for delimitation include population, communities
p. 747 of identity and interest, historical patterns of an electoral district, and geographic size of electoral
districts. Constituencies must have a population as close as practicable to the provincial average, and
deviations may not exceed plus or minus 25 percent of the provincial quota. However, since 1986,
commissions are authorized to exceed this limit “in circumstances viewed by the commission as being
extraordinary,” a provision that has been invoked very rarely. Public hearings on this proposal must be held
throughout the province, allowing the general public, members of the House, and party o cials to air their
respective views. This is followed by the reports of the boundary commissions, on which MPs have the
privilege of o ering their objections before the commissions issue their nal reports, which will be enacted
through a representation order that will not be debated in Parliament. The whole process is now spread over
twenty months. In the past, Parliament has repeatedly interrupted the process before its conclusion to alter
the rules for allocating seats to provinces, so that, for example, the redistribution that followed the census
of 1971 came into force only in 1979. However, the two most recent redistributions came into force on
9
schedule, in 2004 and 2015, respectively.
Experiences with Other Electoral Systems
For those who revel in electoral system change, Canada is quite boring a country indeed. Though other
former parts of the British Empire, like Australia and New Zealand, o er a more varied electoral system
history at the national level, Canada sticks to rst past the post at all levels of government. As in Britain,
experimentation has been con ned at the subnational level (Pilon 1999, 2007).
The short experience of Ontario with the limited vote at the end of the nineteenth century has been cited
earlier (Bélanger and Stephenson 2014, 118 n. 3). A more far-reaching move was made in 1920 when the city
of Winnipeg was made a ten-member district using STV for the election of its representatives in the
Manitoba legislature. In 1924, alternative voting (AV) was substituted for plurality (FPTP) in the other
forty- ve single-seat districts. In 1949, Winnipeg was divided into three 4-seat districts and neighboring
St. Boniface became a two-seat district, all using STV. The outcome was a mixed system based on the
coexistence of a majoritarian system in rural areas and of proportional representation in Winnipeg. Also in
1924, Alberta introduced on a single stroke the same kind of hybrid, with STV governing the election of the
10
members from Calgary and Edmonton, and AV the election of all other members.
This kind of arrangement made sense from a territorial point of view. The physical dispersion of the rural
population in these two western provinces could be plausibly seen as a strong obstacle to creating large
multiseat districts, while the same objection lost salience in urban areas. Still today, such a mix has some
p. 748 supporters. Yet, both hybrids were discarded in the mid-1950s and were replaced by plurality in single-seat
districts. Revealingly, neither province emulated other Canadian jurisdictions by seizing the opportunity,
in the early 2000s, to re-examine the issue.
British Columbia is the only Canadian province where FPTP was ever discarded province-wide and replaced

by another system. In 1951, an amendment to the Provincial Elections Act introduced alternative voting.
Most constituencies were single seat, but the same system was also used in the existing multiseat
constituencies, with each seat being a distinct competition. AV was used for the 1952 and 1953 elections, and
jettisoned immediately after, when FPTP was re-established.
It is also worth mentioning that STV was introduced in fourteen cities and towns located in the western
provinces between 1916 and 1928 and had been repealed everywhere by 1930, except in Calgary and
Winnipeg, where abolition came in the early 1970s (Johnston and Koene 2000). In 1921, the voters of
Montreal, then the largest city in Canada, rejected at a referendum the introduction of STV for municipal
elections.
A few general remarks can be o ered on these experiences, the only ones so far that were successful in
Canadian history. First, all were followed in due course by a return to the status quo ante, which suggests at
a minimum that none of the systems introduced gained enough general acceptance to become
unchallenged.
Second, actual experience with proportional representation in Canada has been con ned to only two
western provinces, and to urban areas within these provinces. In both, STV-elected legislators never
accounted for more than one quarter of the total. This means that they never were in a position to alter
substantially the general outcome. Wherever it was in force, STV generated more proportional outcomes
and allowed smaller parties to obtain representation.
Third, the variant of AV that was introduced in the three provinces, known in Australia as “optional
preferential voting,” was actually the one that is the closest to FPTP, because ballots simply marked “1”
with no indication of further preferences, or even with an “X,” were accepted as valid. This feature is not
unimportant, because it encourages voters accustomed to a straight choice to perpetuate their past voting
habits and reduces the impact of subsequent preferences. The other variant, known as “compulsory
preferential voting,” obliges the voters, on pain of ballot invalidation, to number each and every candidate
by order of preference, thereby increasing the impact of subsequent preferences, but it was never
implemented in Canada. There are strong indications that many voters did not embrace the spirit of AV and
instead chose to cast a ballot, known as “plumper,” marked for a single candidate (Jansen 2004).
Fourth, as a result of this, the actual impact of subsequent preferences on electoral outcomes under AV was
minimal. It was of course nonexistent whenever a candidate had a majority of rst preferences (for in such
cases, subsequent preferences were never counted) or when a candidate was acclaimed. When preferences
had to be counted and transferred, they mostly con rmed the victory of the candidate leading after the rst
p. 749 count, and therefore did not change anything, apart from delaying the proclamation of the nal outcome.
Fifth, some of these electoral system changes were controversial. British Columbia’s experiment with AV
still stands today as one of the worst examples of the electoral system being manipulated for blatantly
partisan purposes. The narrative is well known. In a province where the labor unions–supported
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) party had become a strong contender for power, fear of
socialism led the Liberal and Conservative parties in 1941 to join hands in a coalition government and
afterward to agree on a single candidate in all ridings to guarantee the defeat of the socialists, a tactic that
worked brilliantly in the 1945 and 1949 elections. By 1951, however, relations between both coalition
partners had soured, and the popularity of the coalition government had faded away—hence the
introduction of a system that would allow the supporters of each traditional party to direct their second
preferences to the other traditional party, thus ensuring the defeat of CCF candidates whenever the latter
were short of a majority. Actually, voters solved the dilemma by supporting a new free-enterprise party,
William Bennett’s Social Credit, who walked away with the prize, while the incumbent premier was defeated
in his own riding due to the preferences generated by the very system he had engineered (Harrison 2008;
Elkins 1976).

None of the hybrids introduced in Manitoba and Alberta seems to have been the outcome of such obvious
party considerations or to have generated as much controversy. In particular, adopting proportional
representation in Winnipeg, in the aftermath of a bitter general strike that had left many scars in the
community, may be viewed as a device allowing each of the contenders to get some representation, much as
the United Nations tends to recommend today for divided polities. Yet the retention of a majoritarian rule in
the rural areas, coupled with the introduction of proportional representation (PR) in urban areas, may be
viewed as somewhat Machiavellian when it is appreciated that the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), who
introduced this mix in the province, happened to be predominant in the former and in a minority position in
the latter.
While the return to plurality in Manitoba does not appear to have been inspired to the same extent by
considerations of party advantage, the same cannot be said of the same move in Alberta and in British
Columbia. In the former, there is documented archival evidence that the change resulted from hidden
partisan motives (Hesketh 1987). In both cases, it was alleged that the defeat, at the latest election, of ruling
party stars due to the impact of subsequent preferences led to the change.
The Impact of the System
Any analysis of the implications of FPTP is fraught with dangers, insofar as what can be hailed as a virtue by
some can easily be reviled by others as shameful. Hence, we will proceed by distinguishing between the
p. 750 virtues claimed by the supporters of plurality and the vices pointed out by its detractors.
Virtues Claimed by Supporters of First Past the Post

The chief political consequence of the plurality rule at all levels of government has been to foster and to
maintain a pattern of strong and stable governance based on single-party majority governments, despite
the continuing presence of what Canadians (revealingly) call “third parties.” Such governments typically
hold a majority of seats and can expect their policies to be endorsed by the legislature, because party
discipline, since the second half of the nineteenth century, has become an accepted norm of behavior within
11
the government party, as well as within opposition parties. As a result, Canadian governments tend to be
long-lasting. Within the ruling party, the position of the prime minister (or the premier, in provinces and
territories) is very strong. The overthrow of a ruling party leader, and therefore the unseating of the head of
12
a government, was historically very rare, though there have been quite a few in this millennium. Canadian
executives are strong. Short-lived governments tend to be led by a successor appointed following the
resignation, a few months before an election, of an unpopular prime minister, and who had tried in vain to
13
overcome the legacy of his or her predecessor.
Third parties emerged following World War I. Since then, as a consequence, securing a majority of the
14
popular vote in federal elections is a feat that few governments have achieved. Despite this, most
governments during the same period had a majority in the House of Commons because their plurality in the
popular vote was translated into a parliamentary majority. A single-party majority government emerged
from eighteen of the twenty-nine elections (62 percent) held from 1921 to 2015 inclusive. In the provinces,
the occurrence of a parliamentary majority for the same period was even higher (about 89 percent), though
there are regional variations. Legislatures with no majority, colloquially referred to as “hung parliaments”
in Westminster countries, have been extremely rare in the Atlantic provinces, but more common west of the
Ottawa river (except in Alberta). Québec, where minority governments were unknown before 2007, has since
moved in the latter direction.

At times in recent decades, the ruling party’s share of the popular vote has been quite low. Both Stephen
Harper (in 2011) and Justin Trudeau (in 2015) secured a comfortable majority of seats with about 39.5
percent of the vote, because they led their closest challenger by, respectively, 9 and 7.6 points. Jean Chrétien
won a majority in 1997 with 38.5 percent of the vote, largely because he was facing a split opposition and
was leading his main challenger by almost twenty points. Since 1993, none of Canada’s federal governments
has been supported by more than 41 percent of the voters. Indeed, in 2010, this author was invited to write
an article exploring the issue whether minority government had become, in Ottawa, the new normalcy, in
view of the increasing fragmentation of the electorate and the election of three minority parliaments in a
row. So far, the outcome of the two general elections that followed suggests that the negative answer I then
gave remains appropriate (Massicotte 2009). Electoral fragmentation is lower in provinces. In the ten most
recent provincial elections, support for the winning party ranged from 38.6 percent in Ontario (2014) to 62.6
p. 751 percent in Saskatchewan (2016). While the latter was one of the three where the 50 percent benchmark
was crossed, all these elections resulted into majority governments.
When facing minority parliaments, Canadian prime ministers and premiers, with rare exceptions, have
preferred to lead single-party minority governments, to such extent that both notions are now understood
as synonymous in public parlance. Creating a parliamentary majority through a multiparty coalition
remains theoretically possible but has rarely occurred in Canadian history. Coalitions were tried a long time
ago in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario, and the resulting administrations typically
lasted for the full duration of one or more legislative terms, but nowadays coalitions tend to be denounced
as inappropriate or even downright immoral. The most recent attempt at building one at the federal level, in
December 2008, generated outrage because the proposed coalition would have depended on the support of
the separatist Bloc Québécois, and it failed (Topp 2010).
The life of minority governments may be described as nasty, if not brutish, and short (Gervais 2012). They
typically try to govern on an ad hoc basis rather than building a stable parliamentary alliance with one of the
third parties, to swallow defeats on secondary issues, and to rely on the threat of dissolution to win
endorsement on touchy issues. The average life of a minority parliament hovers around eighteen months,
during which the government muddles through while waiting for the best moment to call a snap election
and hopefully win a majority, unless the opposition parties join hands to defeat the government should they
expect, all of them, to do better at the election that will follow. In Ontario (1985) and British Columbia
(2017), minority governments emerged from negotiations between two parties, based on a speci c policy
agenda, and designed to last respectively for two years, or for the duration of the legislature.
The plurality system, while admittedly failing to deliver majority governments each and every time,
arguably encourages political leaders to deal with hung parliaments through single-party minority
governments rather than multiparty coalitions. The latter might prove longer-lasting, but would require
political power to be shared among two parties, something that goes against the instincts of most
politicians, who prefer to hold on to their monopoly of executive power for a while, and to rely on the
workings of the plurality system to provide them with a majority at the ensuing election. This is a plausible
assumption, though it tends to be more successful for newly appointed government parties (like John
Diefenbaker’s in 1958) than for incumbent administrations that try to cling to o ce despite losing their
majority. Lester Pearson in the 1960s and Stephen Harper in the 2000s had to lead two minority
15
administrations in a row before their party at long last won a majority. Under a proportional system,
securing a majority through a snap election would become far less likely, and parties would be arguably
forced to share power on a routine basis through government coalitions.
In addition to fostering a strong and stable government, FPTP is alleged to create a closer connection
between legislators and their constituents. Within the ideal territorial framework of a smaller constituency,
members of Parliament reign supreme, meeting constituents on a regular basis conducting what the British

call “constituency surgeries,” attending local social events, and keeping themselves busy with constituency
p. 752 matters rather than focusing exclusively on their legislative work, where their individual impact, while
sometimes real, remains much smaller than normative theories of legislatures tend to assume. In Ottawa,
the schedule of House sittings now allows MPs to spend a full week in their constituencies during each
month the House is sitting. Constituency activities tend to be overlooked both by academic works and by
national media (though not by local media), but conversations with MPs routinely con rm how important
such activities are in their eyes, even if the consensus is that they ultimately do not make much of a
di erence at the polls (Irvine 1982). Electoral landslides (as in 1993 and 2015) tend to sweep even the most
hardworking MPs who happen to be sitting for swing ridings.
Criticism Raised by Opponents of First Past the Post

To a greater extent than PR in the European countries where it exists, the plurality rule has been, and still is,
criticized on many grounds, some of them existing in all countries with a plurality system, but some others
that are uniquely Canadian. Plurality is a disproportional system insofar as it does not guarantee in any way
that the number of seats won by each party will be proportional to the number of votes obtained, or that
16
each member will be supported by more than half of the votes cast. A federal general election in Canada is
actually a collection of 338 individual contests, fortunately held on the same day, and the number of votes
won by each party is sometimes dismissed as an interesting statistic, though federal party subsidies were
allotted on that basis when they existed.
The Gallagher index is a standard instrument for measuring the extent to which the apportionment of
legislative seats fails to match the distribution of the popular vote (Gallagher 1991). Among 36 Western
democratic countries, Canada, at 11.72, ranked 29th for the years 1945 to 1996 (Lijphart 1999, 162). This
gure compared with 4.90 for the US House of Representatives, 9.26 for the Australian House of
Representatives (elected by AV), 10.33 for the United Kingdom, and 11.11 for pre–mixed-member
proportional (MMP) New Zealand. Small FPTP-elected legislatures in Caribbean countries exhibited higher
gures.
Distortions in Canadian provincial legislative assemblies were even higher over the same period of time,
ranging from 12.32 in Manitoba, to 16.58 in New Brunswick, to 16.61 in Newfoundland, to 16.66 in British
Columbia, to 17.46 in Ontario, to 18.74 in Québec, to 18.92 in Nova Scotia, to 19.92 in Saskatchewan, to 20.47
17
in Prince Edward Island, up to a whopping 24.47 in Alberta. That provinces are smaller and more
homogeneous jurisdictions, with smaller assemblies, helps to understand why distortions are much higher
there than in Canada as a whole. This is in keeping with the nding that majority governments are much
more frequent in provinces than for the House of Commons.
The leading party in terms of popular vote is typically overrepresented in the legislature, to the detriment of
the other parties, especially the smaller ones. Some outcomes have been particularly puzzling. That federal
Liberals won 60 percent of the vote with 41 percent of the seats in 1993 was not surprising, but the two
p. 753 right-wing parties, with about the same level of support, fared very unevenly. With less than 19 percent
of the vote, the Reform Party won fty-two seats, while the Progressive Conservatives were reduced to two
seats despite winning 16 percent. Most intriguingly, the Bloc Québécois, with fty-four seats, won o cial
opposition status while ranking fourth, with 13.5 percent of the popular vote. A closer look at the map helps
to understand such distortions. The Bloc had sponsored only 75 candidates, all in Québec, a normal attitude
for a party committed to the independence of the province, and its support there amounted to a whopping
49 percent of the total, enough to win many seats against divided opponents. The Progressive Conservatives
had elded candidates nationwide, but their vote was not territorially concentrated and therefore they lost
almost everywhere, while the Reform Party had only 220 candidates (none in Québec) and the votes they
won were concentrated in the western provinces.

Despite all these oddities, it can be pointed out that at least, in this case, a legislative majority went to the
party leading in the popular vote. However, there have been plenty of instances of “wrong winner elections,”
where the party that came second in the popular vote actually emerged with a plurality or even a majority of
seats. This occurred in the federal elections of 1957 and 1979, while in the provinces the latest instances on
record are New Brunswick (2006), Saskatchewan (1999), Québec (1998), British Columbia (1996), and
Newfoundland (1989). This kind of outcome usually arises only when the gap between the two leading
parties is narrow. It may result from legislative malapportionment, whenever the leading party does much
better in larger constituencies than in smaller ones. But even if constituencies are of equal size, the leading
party may nevertheless lose the election if its electoral support is overly concentrated in some districts (the
“overkill factor”), winning huge pluralities that amount to wasted votes. When both factors are combined,
as in Québec in 1966, as much as a seven-point plurality in the popular vote may be reversed.
Skeletal, or even skinny, representation for the o cial opposition was never a problem in the federal
Parliament, where the government party never won more than three quarters of the seats, but lopsided
government majorities are not rare in smaller provincial assemblies. In British Columbia, the Liberals won
all but two of the 79 seats at stake in 2001. Quebec Liberals won 102 of the 110 seats in 1973, leaving only 6 to
the o cial opposition. Some extreme cases are almost embarrassing to quote: in both New Brunswick
(1987) and Prince Edward Island (1935), the government party won all seats in the legislature (there were
only 30 seats in the latter, but 58 in the former). In Alberta, the numerous opposition parties have
traditionally been reduced to shambles on a routine basis since the 1920s, a feature that may help to
18
understand why only four parties ruled the province in succession during its rst 110 years of existence.
The reformers’ slogan, “Make every vote count,” strikes a chord among supporters of smaller parties,
especially if their support is not territorially concentrated. They may be denied any representation or secure
much fewer seats than their popular support would warrant. Emerging political parties typically loath the
plurality formula, which they tend to see as an existential threat, for fear that in the future their supporters
p. 754 will vote strategically so as to have some impact on the outcome.
The record does not support the view that FPTP prevents the emergence of new parties but con rms that it
treats them harshly as long as they remain small. In federal elections, the New Democratic Party (known
until 1961 as the CCF) has been represented uninterruptedly in the House of Commons since its rst try.
Except in 2011, it has been unable to break the two-party mold, though in six provinces so far, the party was
successful in becoming a major contender and actually won elections. The Parti Québécois in Québec
provincial elections is another ne example. In 1970, they fared poorly under the plurality system, coming
second with 23 percent of the popular vote, but ending fourth in the Assembly with only 7 seats out of 108.
Their supporters mounted an unsuccessful campaign to move toward a more proportional system. Yet, six
and a half years later, this party formed a majority government, and the premier was unable to convince his
caucus to support a reform of the electoral system. Social Credit started from scratch and always languished
on the opposition benches in the federal Parliament before disappearing, but in both Alberta and British
Columbia, it won o ce and remained in power for decades. The plurality system may curb the ascent of new
political forces, but it cannot block the emergence of those that re ect deep-seated and widespread popular
frustrations. The same system also tends to work in a merciless way against established parties that fall to
third or fourth place, and who get the same treatment as the smaller parties they formerly towered over.
Another criticism against the plurality rule is that it tends to depress electoral turnout, because the outcome
depends on a few swing (battleground) ridings where parties tend to focus their resources, while respective
party strongholds are taken for granted. In Québec provincial elections, no Parti Québécois candidate was
ever successful in ridings dominated by the English-speaking community, which are routinely won by huge
margins by their Liberal opponents. Incentives for turning out in these ridings are lower than elsewhere,
both for Parti Québécois and Liberal supporters. In 2008, the lowest turnout in the province (36.8 percent)

occurred in the heavily non-French-speaking district of Westmount-Saint-Louis.
Electoral turnout in Canada has always been below the average among established democratic countries,
though the country fares better compared with all countries that hold elections. A study of electoral turnout
covering 169 countries between 1945 and 2001 found Canada’s average turnout to be 26th or 83rd highest,
whether turnout was computed as a percentage of the voting age population or of registered voters (López
Pintor, Gratschew, and Sullivan 2012). While the electoral system is only one among the many determinants
of turnout, foreign experience suggests that turnout might be higher by a few points under a more
proportional formula. There are no reasons to assume that the latter would prevent turnouts from declining
further, as they have in most mature democracies over the last two decades, whichever electoral system is
used.
The argument that single-member constituencies hinder women’s representation in legislatures has also
been raised in Canada. Though women were enfranchised following World War I, the presence of women in
Canadian legislatures was rather skeletal until the 1980s, and the country remains well below the
percentage of women found in PR-elected legislatures. Following the 2015 election, the House of Commons
p. 755 included eighty-eight women, which accounted for 26 percent of the total. The latter gure put Canada
62nd among the 193 countries covered by the study. The percentage of women legislators in Canadian
19
provinces and territories currently ranges from 9 percent in Nunavut to 37.6 percent in British Columbia.
Here again, single-seat districts hinder, but do not block, the increase in female representation. Some
jurisdictions have dealt with the issue by putting many women in cabinet positions. Justin Trudeau’s cabinet
in November 2015 included fteen women out of thirty-one members, a move the new prime minister
defended by saying “because it’s 2015.” In June 2015, women cabinet ministers were 36.4 percent in British
Columbia, 35.5 percent in Ontario, and 34.8 percent in Alberta. Tremblay (2012) con rms that the presence
of women was stronger in cabinets than in legislatures.
Criticisms based on disproportional outcomes, low turnout, and lower female representation are routinely
raised in all countries that elect their legislators by plurality or majority. In Canada, they are supplemented
by another issue that is typically Canadian. In a huge federal country where regionalism is a salient feature
of its politics, support for federal parties has varied at times widely among regions. The e orts of prime
ministers to make their cabinets regionally representative have been hindered by the dearth of MPs from
some regions within the government caucus. The chief argument is that the plurality system, while
admittedly not creating regional electoral cleavages, exacerbates them by providing scant representation for
major national parties in some regions. In 1979, for example, the Progressive Conservative caucus included
only two MPs from Québec (out of a possible seventy- ve), and the paucity of cabinet material from a
province that was scheduled to hold a referendum on sovereignty within the year to come proved to be a
daunting challenge for Prime Minister Joe Clark. In due course, the Liberals were confronted with the same
problem in reverse after having won the 1980 election, with a whopping seventy-four MPs from Québec but
only two (out of a possible seventy-seven) in the western provinces. A change of party leaders occurred
prior to the 1984 election with the Progressive Conservatives selecting a leader from Québec and the Liberals
an English-speaking leader with roots in the West and in Ontario. Brian Mulroney, for the rst time in
Canadian electoral history, then won both a plurality of votes and a majority of seats within each and every
province and territory. This had the e ect of defusing the issue, but it re-emerged during the 1990s when
the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois became dominant within two major regions. Stephen Harper’s
Conservatives lacked strong support from Québec throughout their successive terms in o ce. Justin
Trudeau, however, has been blessed so far, leading in every province but Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Instead of moving toward electoral system change, successive Canadian prime ministers have dealt with
this problem by opting for a panoply of less far-reaching measures. Senators from the underrepresented
regions were at times appointed to the cabinet; opposition MPs from these regions switched sides and were

rewarded with cabinet appointments; smaller cabinets (Justin Trudeau’s has thirty-one) reduced the
necessity of nding people for lling the formerly standard forty-minister contingent; and more attention
has been paid to avoiding measures that were deemed provocative in speci c regions, like the National
p. 756 Energy Policy of 1980.
Attempts at Reform in Recent Years
The academic debate on electoral system reform was ignited during the 1960s by Alan Cairns’s seminal
20
contribution, which led to rebuttals from supporters of plurality. In view of the then-ongoing regional
electoral polarization, electoral system reform was the talk of the town in Ottawa in 1979–1980. To no avail,
the Pépin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity proposed in January 1979 that the House of Commons be
21
expanded by sixty seats to be apportioned proportionately among federal parties. Unable to convince the
ruling party caucus, the government opted for an Australian-style PR-elected Senate, but the parliamentary
committee appointed to inquire on the issue opted instead for a plurality-elected Senate. In Quebec, there
were two unsuccessful attempts to implement a list system of proportional representation in 1978–1979
and 1982–1984. The possibility of a Charter challenge to the existing electoral system has been explored
22
(Knight 1999; Beatty 2001), but the single judicial decision on that issue has been negative.
The years 2000–2007 were quite active in the eld, with reform e orts in Ottawa and in ve provinces.
Through a federal government agency (the Law Commission of Canada), royal commissions (New
Brunswick and Prince Edward Island), or the government itself (Québec), the issue was explored at length,
and detailed proposals were made (Law Commission of Canada 2004; British Columbia Citizens Assembly
on Electoral Reform 2004; Ontario Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform 2007; Massicotte 2004; New
Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy 2004; Prince Edward Island Electoral Reform
Commission 2003). British Columbia pioneered the use of a “Citizens Assembly” composed of randomly
selected interested individuals, excluding politicians, an approach that was emulated by Ontario. Immediate
catalysts seem to have been either wrong-winner or lopsided-majority recent elections, though wider
concerns were invoked as well. British Columbia stood out by proposing STV, while all others opted for a
New Zealand–inspired MMP system. Yet, in the end, it came to nothing. STV was endorsed by 58 percent of
British Columbia voters at a referendum in 2005, short of the 60 percent threshold the legislature had
imposed right from the start, while in a second referendum held four years later, the same formula won only
39 percent against 61 percent for FPTP. Ontario held a referendum on MMP in 2007, subject to the same
threshold as British Columbia, and FPTP won over MMP by 63 percent to 37 percent. Prince Edward Island’s
referendum on MMP was held under no xed threshold of victory, but the premier made it clear during the
campaign that he would feel bound to adopt MMP only if the latter was endorsed by more than 60 percent of
the voters. In the end, support was only 36 percent, on a turnout of about 33 percent, as this referendum,
unlike the three previous ones, was not held simultaneously with a general election. A referendum on the
New Brunswick proposal was scheduled for May 2008, but the incumbent government was defeated in 2006
p. 757 and the issue was shelved. Québec’s proposal was killed by the government caucus.
The debate was reignited by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s commitment that the 2015 federal election
would be the last one held under FPTP. Two options were envisaged, either AV, which Trudeau preferred, or
some form of proportional representation. The promise was made at a moment when a minority parliament
with the Liberals in third place seemed the most likely outcome, but Trudeau de ed the odds and emerged
instead as the leader of a majority government. The Conservatives made it clear that such a change would
necessitate a referendum, a position that met with much sympathy in opinion polls. During the summer of
2016, a special committee of the House heard academic experts, both Canadian and foreign, as well as the
general public. The government had accepted that the representation of parties within the committee
mirrors the distribution of the popular vote instead of party strength in the House. In December 2016, all

opposition parties agreed to recommend that a national referendum be held on two options, one being
23
FPTP, and the other a proportional formula the government was invited to devise. As the ruling party
members within the committee dissented from this recommendation, claiming that Canadians were not
su ciently engaged on the issue, and with the government criticizing the majority report, prospects for
reform became poor. Failure became o cial in February 2017, when electoral system reform was eliminated
from the mandate of the newly appointed minister for electoral reform. The most common interpretation is
that many Liberals found AV attractive in a political context where New Democrat (NDP) voters were
expected to give their second preferences to Liberal rather than Conservatives candidates. However, AV
fared poorly among supporters of electoral system reform, while MMP emerged as the strongest alternative
24
to FPTP. As the prime minister was strongly opposed to PR, the status quo prevailed.
In Prince Edward Island, a “Plebiscite on democratic renewal,” actually a nonbinding referendum inviting
the electorate to express sequential preferences for ve reform options, was held in October and November
2016. After rst preferences were counted, rst past the post led with 31.2 percent, followed by MMP (29
percent), proportional representation with 2-seat districts (21.4 percent), preferential voting (10.6 percent),
and “ rst-past-the-post leaders” (7.6 percent). The elimination of the least favored options and the
transfer of preferences produced a narrow victory for MMP with 52 percent of the votes. However, the
premier expressed doubts that the result constituted a clear expression of the public will, as turnout reached
only 36.5 percent, and expressed his intention to hold another referendum to be held simultaneously with
the next election and with only two options. In New Brunswick, an independent commission on electoral
25
reform proposed that AV be adopted in time for the next election, scheduled for September 2018. Premier
Gallant decided instead that a referendum on this proposal would be held simultaneously with the next
municipal elections, scheduled for 2020, should of course his government be re-elected in between. It is
interesting to point out that in November 2016, voters in the neighboring American state of Maine approved
a reform to the same e ect (locally known as ranked-choice voting) for state and federal elections. On May
2, 2017, the city of London, Ontario, decided that future municipal elections will be held using the “ranked
ballot,” as alternative voting has come to be called by some in recent years. Following the inconclusive
p. 758 outcome of the British Columbia election in May 2017, the Greens accepted to support a minority NDP
administration. The accord between both parties states that both are committed to proportional
representation and will campaign together in support thereof, at a referendum to be held in the fall of 2018.
If endorsed by the electorate, the new system would be in force for the next election.
Conclusion
As this chapter makes clear, the preponderance of rst-past-the-post in Canada did not preclude
interesting debates in the twentieths century on the number of members to be elected by each constituency,
or on the introduction of proportional representation during the new millennium. The virtues and defects of
both the existing system and of various reform options have been explored at length in the literature and in
public consultations, with the public remaining divided so far. The chief obstacles to electoral system
reform in Canada remain the aversion of most politicians to power sharing through government coalitions
and the reluctance of MPs to share constituency representation. In view of the failure of all attempts so far,
it remains doubtful whether these obstacles can be overcome.
Notes
1. This chapter expands on another contribution from the author (Massicotte 2005).
2. Between 1898 and 1905, an elected legislative assembly in the Northwest Territories allowed the people living in what is
now Alberta and Saskatchewan to acquire experience in representative institutions before these two provinces were

formally created.
3. Ten US states still have multiseat constituencies for electing state legislators, down from thirty-nine in the 1950s (Kurtz
2011).
4. Electoral districts are o icially called “constituencies” in Saskatchewan and Nunavut. The expression “electoral divisions”
is used in Manitoba and Alberta, as well as in the English version of Quebec Statutes, together with the French
circonscriptions.
5. For a summary of the arguments, see Qualter (1970, 118 and 122).
6. Voters split 43 percent to 57 percent, on a 39 percent turnout (Steele and Tremblay 2005).
7. There is no boundary commission for Ontario because in 1996, the province decided that in the future provincial
legislators would be returned by the same districts delimited by an independent commission for federal elections. Subject
to a few adjustments, this arrangement has prevailed since then.
8. The most important decision was made by the Supreme Court of Canada: Reference Re Provincial Electoral Boundaries
(Sask.), [1991] 2 S.C.R. 158.
9. Courtney (2001, 2004); Courtney, MacKinnon, and Smith (1992); Carty (1985). The last three redistributions are
summarized in Massicotte (1997, 2006, 2016a).
10. In Ontario, the United Farmers government of Premier Drury tried to introduce a similar system in the dying days of the
legislature in 1923 but was forced to withdraw it because of Conservative opposition. In 1933, the Legislative Assembly of
p. 759 Saskatchewan passed a motion supporting in principle an AV–STV hybrid, but the vote (twenty-six to twenty-one)
revealed profound divisions within the ruling coalition and the issue went no further. See Journals of the Legislative
Assembly of Saskatchewan, March 9, 1933, 72–73.
11. However, a consensual form of governance excluding political parties exists in the Northwest Territories and in Nunavut.
12. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was forced in August 2002 to announce that he would retire by late 2003 a er clear
indications emerged that he would lose a vote of confidence at the next party convention. In recent years, the following
provincial premiers were forced out of o ice: Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Alison Redford in
Alberta, both in 2014. In Manitoba, Premier Greg Selinger withstood strong pressures within his own caucus to resign the
same year and narrowly won the ensuing party convention. Earlier examples are the resignation of Prime Minister
Mackenzie Bowell in 1896 and of Premiers Parent in Québec (1905) and Greenfield in Alberta (1926).
13. Standard examples are John Turner (1984) and Kim Campbell (1993).
14. Only Mackenzie King in 1940, John Diefenbaker in 1958, and Brian Mulroney in 1984 won more than 50 percent of the
popular vote. In 1949 and 1953, Louis St-Laurent came very close to that figure.
15. Pearsonʼs Liberals had to select a new leader a er five years in o ice before winning such a majority.
16. One candidate at a provincial election (Québec, 1944) was elected with 21 percent of the votes, apparently a Canadian
record. In the 2015 federal election, 28.5 percent was enough to elect an MP.
17. Computations made by Angelo Elias for the author.
18. When the NDP became the fi h party to reach o ice in Alberta in 2015, they terminated the existence of a 44-year-old
Progressive Conservative dynasty, itself preceded by a 36-year-old Social Credit dynasty.
19. For exact figures, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Canadian_provincial_and_territorial_legislatures.

20. Three useful readers include the most significant academic contributions: Johnston and Pasis (1990, 313–384); Milner
(1999); and Howe, Johnston, and Blais (2005). See also Weaver (1997); Blais (2008); Massicotte (2016b); and the special
issues of Policy Options 22, no. 6 (July–August 2001); Policy 4, no. 1 (January–February 2016); and Policy Options, June
2016, available at http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/june-2016/electoral-reform/ .
21. Canada, Task Force on Canadian Unity (1979); Irvine (1979).

22. Brian Gibb et al. v. A.G. Québec, Québec Superior Court, [2009] QCCS 1699. In September 2011, the Québec Court of Appeal
rejected an appeal from this decision.
23. Canada, Special Committee of the House of Commons on Electoral Reform, Report. Strengthening Democracy in Canada.
Principles, Process, and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform, Ottawa, December 2016.
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/3229059/ERRE-ElectoralReform-9466525-Final-E.pdf.
24. For a detailed analysis, based on insider accounts, of the considerations that led to the shelving of the reform, see Althia
Raj, “Fears of Alt-Right, Divisive Referendum behind Liberal Electoral Reform Reversal: Insiders.” Hu ington Post, February
4, 2017, http://www.hu ingtonpost.ca/2017/02/03/liberals-electoral-reform-alt-right-fears_n_14603884.html.
p. 760 25. New Brunswick Commission on Electoral Reform, A Pathway to an Inclusive Democracy, Fredericton, March 2017.
http://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Departments/eco-bce/Consultations/PDF/PathwayToAnInclusiveDemocracy.pdf.
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Electoral Systems in Canada 2017

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Electoral Systems in Canada 2017

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The Oxford Handbook of Electoral Systems

Erik S. Herron (ed.) et al.

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35 Electoral Systems in Context: Canada 

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190258658.013.39 Pages 741–762

Keywords: Canada, electoral system, constituencies, plurality, single-member districts, proportional

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Jurisdiction Legislative Number of Year MMDs Latest. Electoral Population

Canada House of 338 1968 2015 FPTP 35,151,728

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Prince Edward Legislative 27 1996 2015 FPTP 142.907

Nova Scotia House of 51 1981 2013 FPTP 923.598

New Brunswick Legislative 49 1974 2014 FPTP 747.101

Québec Assemblée 125 1861 2014 FPTP 8,164,361

Ontario Legislative 107 1926 2014 FPTP 13,448,494

Manitoba Legislative 57 1958 2016 FPTP 1,278,365

Saskatchewan Legislative 61 1967 2016 FPTP 1,098,352

Alberta Legislative 87 1959 2015 FPTP 4,067,175

British Columbia Legislative 87 1991 2017 FPTP 4,648,055

Northwest Legislative 19 1894 2015 FPTP 41.786

Yukon Legislative 19 1920 2016 FPTP 35.874

Sources: Websites of assemblies, Canadian Census 2016.

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Experiences with Other Electoral Systems

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The Impact of the System

Virtues Claimed by Supporters of First Past the Post

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Criticism Raised by Opponents of First Past the Post

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Attempts at Reform in Recent Years

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17. Computations made by Angelo Elias for the author.

19. For exact figures, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Canadian_provincial_and_territorial_legislatures.

21. Canada, Task Force on Canadian Unity (1979); Irvine (1979).

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Courtney, John C. Elections. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004.

Dyck, Rand. Provincial Politics in Canada. Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1986.

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Qualter, Terence H. The Election Process in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1970.

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