Activists longing to add candidates for Toronto byelection
Failure of reform spurs long-ballot as way of protest
OTTAWA • A group of election activists pushing for electoral reform plans to once again plump up the ballot for an upcoming federal byelection.
Already responsible for a series of record-breaking ballots, the Longest Ballot Committee is closing out a successful 2023 with a vow to continue their campaign in the new year — with their sights set on the now-vacant federal riding of Toronto-st. Paul’s.
“We’re going to make the longest ballot ever in Toronto-st. Paul’s to remind Trudeau of his broken promise to scrap first-past-the-post,” committee founder Kieran Szuchewycz told the National Post.
“There is a conflict of interest when the party that won the last election can make the rules for the next.”
Indeed, election reform remains one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s most venerable broken campaign promises — first vowing in 2015 to do away with the controversial “first-past-thepost” (FTTP) electoral system, a simple “winner-takesall” process where a winning candidate only needs to garner the most votes.
That stands in contrast to systems such as ranked voting, where voters rank candidates in their order of preference, and winners are only declared if they capture the majority of the votes.
Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett announced earlier this year that she would not be running in the next election, followed by further news earlier this month that she would be stepping down immediately.
First elected in 1997, the 73-year-old Bennett held her Toronto-st. Paul’s seat through nine elections for nearly three decades, with 10 of those years spent in cabinet.
Long considered a safe Liberal seat, elections in Toronto-st. Paul’s have attracted between four and five candidates since the 2000 federal election.
“Political commentators seem to agree that the Liberals will win this riding no matter what,” read the committee’s press release on Thursday.
“Nonetheless, we think it is important that we continue to break records and exercise our right to stand for election (as guaranteed by section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) because it is a small thing we can do to remind our politicians and voters that FPTP must go.”
The date to elect Bennett’s replacement has yet to be announced.
Under current election rules, federal election candidates don’t have to live in the riding they’re running in, which opens the door for anybody in Canada to toss in their hat.
Szuchewycz’s brother Tomas, along with fellow committee member and Rhinoceros Party Leader Sébastien Corhino, ran in elections commandeered by the committee, despite living well outside of the ridings.
Previous ballot-bloating campaigns by the Longest Ballot Committee have so far resulted in some comically large ballots.
The ballot for the 2022 federal byelection in Mississauga-lakeshore — a contest won by former Ontario Liberal MPP Charles Sousa — swelled to 40 candidates, with most running as independents.
That result broke Canada’s previous record for most number of candidates in a single riding, set the previous September during the 2021 federal election when the committee-swelled ballot in Manitoba’s Saint Boniface-saint Vital riding consisted of 21 names.
The current record of 48 names was set in June in a byelection in Winnipeg South Centre, which resulted in a ballot so large it required an amendment to the Canada Elections Act to legally permit its 50-by-30 centimetre dimensions — a piece of paper as wide and nearly as long as a single page of the National Post.