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On the Internet, you will find sites that provide election coverage and detailed results from Canadian elections. As well, there are discussions on the need to reform the electoral system to produce fairer results. You can also find information about direct-democracy processes like referendums and recall. The first-past-the-post electoral system in Canada produces some strange distortions between the number of votes a party wins and its share of seats in the legislature. You can connect to graphs that show the difference between vote and seat share:
As a result of the distortions, some Canadians argue
that we should reform our electoral system and consider adopting some
form of proportional representation. Two groups campaigning for electoral
reform are:
Canadians for Proportional Representation Some useful material on different election systems can
be found at the U.K. Electoral
Reform Society, which has been campaigning for electoral reform
in Britain since 1884. Also recommended is a visit to David
Barnsdale's Elections site.
Prof Fred Fletcher of York University has written an interesting paper on reform of the electoral process, "Media, Elections, and Democracy." One popular model for change is the mixed-member proportional system, where some seats are filled from party lists, while others continue to be elected by a plurality in individual constituencies. New Zealand recently adopted this model, which is explained at the New Zealand Elections Site. The Canadian Library of Parliament provides two useful research papers: The Canadian Electoral System and Electoral Systems. The Canadian
Election Study team provides in-depth research on voters' behaviour
in federal elections. A number of full-text research
papers on voting behaviour are available in Adobe Acrobat format.
The data from the 1997 election study are available on-line; the raw
frequencies for a number of variables in their massive survey can
be read directly with your browser, or you can download the full
data set in SPSS format to analyze on your own computer. CANADIAN FEDERAL ELECTIONS 2000 Canadians voted in a federal election on November 27, 2000. A wide range of information is available on the Internet to provide background information on the parties, issues, and conduct of the election. Elections Canada provides the interim election results for the country as a whole, by province and by major metropolitan area. Canadian Elections offers a table comparing the votes and seats won by parties on a national and provincial basis. Links to all the registered parties and information on their leaders, candidates, and platform are available. Links to profiles of each of the 301 ridings are also provided, as are annotated pages on women in politics, electoral reform, and the laws and policies governing the conduct of federal elections. A clickable map of the 2000 election results is provided by the National Atlas project of Natural Resources Canada. You can review the day-to-day developments in the campaign at the following media sites dedicated to the election:
GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS AGENCIES For useful information about elections, and especially about the rules that must be followed, you should connect to the official sites of the Chief Electoral Officers:
ELECTION RESULTSThe University of Waterloo's Centre
for Election Studies doesn't provide election results on-line but
can be contacted for hard copy versions.
Federal Election Results
Provincial & Territorial Election ResultsSummary results for elections since 1970 are available
on the Internet for all provinces. And riding-by-riding results are
available for a few recent elections:
Alberta: 1971 - 1997 Saskatchewan: 1971 - 1999 Manitoba: 1973 - 1999 Ontario: 1975 - 1995 Quebec: 1970 - 1998 New Brunswick: 1974 - 1999 Newfoundland & Labrador: 1949 - 1999 Prince Edward Island: 1978 - 2000 Nova Scotia: 1967 - 1998 Northwest Territories  MUNICIPAL ELECTIONSCanada's municipalities have several different electoral
systems. Vancouver is typical of many cities and towns in BC and across
the country, where all members of city council are elected "at large"
in city-wide elections. Some critics of this system, however, have argued
that the city should be divided up into wards, and members elected to
represent these smaller areas within the city. For an analysis of the
issue, read "Municipal
Accountability Crisis Looming in B.C." by Patrick Smith and Kennedy
Stewart. You can compare
the 16 biggest cities in Canada to see their relative size and different
electoral systems; as you will see, all the major cities outside BC
use the ward system rather than at large elections.
Results of some recent municipal elections available on the Internet include:
ARCHIVED NEWS SITES COVERING SPECIFIC ELECTIONSFederal 1997Riding-By-Riding Information Exchange - The site run by David Savitt had the best prediction of the electors' outcome by gathering contributed information from people from each riding in the country. UBC's Election Stock Market provided a novel way to follow the support for parties during the campaign. Provincial ElectionsNova Scotia 1999 Provincial Election (Halifax Herald) Newfoundland Election 1999 from CANOE 1999 Saskatchewan Provincial Election (CBC) There are two very useful sites on the 1998 Quebec election, one maintained by CANOE, and another by Radio Canada.
ELECTORAL BOUNDARIESConsiderable attention has been paid in the last 10
years to trying to limit the disparities in size among constituencies.
The redistribution of electoral boundaries is controversial. Added pressure
has arisen because the courts have rules that the right to vote in the
Charter of Rights includes the right to effective representation. The
Supreme Court of Canada ruled that citizens can only have effective
representation if the discrepancies among ridings for federal elections
are limited. See the Court's decision in the Electoral
Boundaries Reference [1991].
DIRECT DEMOCRACYDirect democracy occurs when all citizens vote on policy
issues through a referendum. Some aspects of the controversies involved
in direct democracy are raised in the Ontario government's 1996 discussion
paper on the referendum alternative. The Library of
Parliament in Ottawa has a couple of useful research papers on referendums:
Referendums:
The Canadian Experience in an International Context and Referendums
in Canada: The Effect of Populist Decision-Making on Representative
Democracy
British Columbia allows for citizens' "initiatives," where a province-wide referendum is necessary on an issue if a certain number of voters sign a petition; and "recall," where a sitting legislator's seat can be declared vacant and an election called if a certain number of his or her constituents sign a petition in favour of this action. But the conditions placed on the petitions to institute either a recall or an initiative make them highly difficult to use. Connect to Elections BC to read more about Recall or Initiatives in some detailed guides available on-line. Or you can read the details in the BC 'Recall and Initiative Act. Results from the 1995 Québec Referendum are available on the Internet. For a different point of view on the value of holding more referendums, visit Canadians for Direct Democracy. GENERAL ELECTIONS SITESRELATED LINKSYou can find more information on related issues in other
sections of Nelson's Canadian Politics on the Web:
Legislatures
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