Keywords Politics

A party can win almost identical shares of the popular vote in consecutive elections but lose the first disastrously and score a triumph in the second, as the LIBERAL PARTY did in 1930 and 1935. A party can be weak nationally, but if its support is concentrated in one area, it may elect several members, as the SOCIAL CREDIT Party did in Alberta through several elections beginning in 1940, as the REFORM party (later CANADIAN ALLIANCE) did in the 1990s, and as the BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS has continued to do since its first electoral success in 1993. A party can have a stable national support, but if votes for it are scattered across the country, its share of victories in any election may lag far behind its share of the vote, as both the CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH FEDERATION and its successor, the NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY, have experienced, and as the Progressive Conservatives did in 1993and 1997.

The unbalanced nature of many election results can be attributed chiefly to the single-member constituency system (see ELECTORAL SYSTEM), in which a candidate need poll only one vote more than the runner-up to win the seat, no matter how many votes the other candidates amass, and to the federal distribution of the seats in the House of Commons (see REDISTRIBUTION). The distribution not only makes it easier for a party concentrating in one area to win seats there, but the disproportionate size of Ontario and Québec (which between them have always had more than half the seats in the Commons) permits a party to do reasonably well in either of them without necessarily winning many seats. The classic case is that of the federal Conservative party in Québec prior to the 1984 election, but since the 1950s the Liberals have had similar difficulties in the West.

National elections can occur for several reasons. A House of Commons mandate ceases to exist five years after the writs for the last election are returned, and an election may be necessary because the existing Commons has constitutionally expired, as happened in 1896 and (almost) in 1935, and might have happened in 1916 if the CONSTITUTION had not been temporarily amended to prolong the life of the Parliament chosen in 1911.

A PRIME MINISTER has the power to advise the dissolution of Parliament when he considers it wise or expedient, when the government is defeated in the Commons on an explicit vote of non-confidence (a piece of legislation deemed by the government to constitute a confidence vote), or on a budget. Elections have been held as far apart as five years and as close together as two years or less, as was the case in 1872 and 1874, 1925 and 1926, 1957 and 1958, 1962 and 1963, 1979 and 1980, and 2004 and 2006. A change of prime minister may bring on an election; eg, when John Turner became prime minister in 1984, one of his first official acts was to advise the dissolution of Parliament. The defeat of a government in the House of Commons may precipitate an election as happened in 1926, 1963, 1979, and 2006. If the government loses the ensuing election, it is replaced; if it wins, it simply continues in office.

While elections and changes in either the prime minister or the government as a whole may be related to each other, there is no necessary connection between elections and changes in the executive. The Conservatives won in 1872, but their leader, Sir John A. MACDONALD, resigned in 1873 because he was convinced he had lost the support of too many of his own party members in the Commons to carry on; the next election, called by his Liberal successor, Alexander MACKENZIE, was in 1874. Macdonald, who died after the election of 1891, was followed by 4 consecutive Conservative prime ministers, one of whom also died in office, but there was no election until 1896. In 1925 the Conservatives won more votes and seats than the Liberals, but remained in Opposition. In 1926 the Conservative leader, Arthur MEIGHEN, did become prime minister without an election, but when he called an election in that year and lost it, he also lost the prime ministership. Usually there is a connection between an election and executive changes, but sometimes there is not.

All the prime ministers mentioned above were party leaders, and the election system relies wholly on parties (see PARTY SYSTEM); Parliament provides through elaborate laws for the holding of elections, but the laws do not require anybody to come forth to hold one. Each party assumes that function in its own interests, providing candidates, planning and financing the campaigns, selecting the issues over which each election is fought, and providing the leader who, each party hopes, will become prime minister or at least leader of the Opposition (see LEADERSHIP CONVENTION). While it is not impossible for independents to get elected to Parliament, it is unusual; the parties, in effect, provide candidates for each election. They use an elaborate and closely regulated administrative machine provided by the state, but in so doing they privately raise and spend large amounts of money. The amounts, and the purposes on which the money can be spent, are now also closely regulated (see ELECTION EXPENSES ACT) but the limits on both parties and candidates are generous. The Canada Elections Act, which governs the financing and running of elections, is administered by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Each general election is unique, for while the basic principles on which elections are conducted have varied remarkably little since the beginning, the personnel involved and the issues fought over are never entirely the same. Some elections are fought mainly on one clear-cut issue: eg, in 1911, the governing Liberals favoured a comprehensive reciprocal trade agreement with the US; the Conservatives opposed it and won. The same issue, though with parties on different sides of it, separated the Liberals (and NDP) from the Conservatives in the 1988 election, fought largely on the sole issue on the Canada-U.S. FREE TRADE Agreement.

In 1917 the Conservatives favoured CONSCRIPTION for overseas service, and the issue so deeply divided the Liberals in Opposition that they could not mount a united campaign either for or against it; the leader, LAURIER, opposed conscription, and while the issue in 1917 reduced Liberal strength in Parliament to its lowest ebb since CONFEDERATION, the Conservatives thereafter found Québec all but closed to them for several consecutive decades. If a government has been long in power, as the Conservatives were under Macdonald to 1891 and the Liberals were under KING and ST. LAURENT to 1957, its record is invariably an issue in each election.

Rising prosperity is generally good for a governing party, as the Liberals showed after 1896 and 1945, and its opposite, depression, can haunt a party for decades, as the Conservatives found after 1935. Modern electronics has created new kinds of issues, since the parties' credibility on television, and in particular the leaders' image, have become factors in attracting and repelling voters. In a manner that successful former electioneers such as Macdonald, Laurier, BORDEN and King might find difficult to approve, a modern election produces a series of selling campaigns in which each leader and party is packaged for marketing as enticingly as possible. In a modern election an individual party leader may become an issue, as Trudeau discovered in 1979 and as Mulroney did in 1988.

The raising of fundamental principles as election issues in Canada is not often attractive to political parties because of two considerations that are also fundamental. Quite apart from the difficulties of making abstract principles comprehensible as useful material in election campaigns, the Canadian electorate is so varied that a basic issue can provoke vastly different and even opposing responses in different parts of the country. The clearest single historical example is the question of whether Canadians should be conscripted to fight in wars abroad: in 1917 the Government gave one answer, and the party chiefly responsible for it suffered electorally for decades. In WWII the Government believed that a yes or no answer at the national level was not possible and produced for the 1942 national plebiscite on conscription a slogan that is a Canadian model of its kind, "Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription."

The diversity of the country produces the other basic consideration; any party hoping to find electoral success in Canada has to have a broad appeal, and the result is that the parties rarely differ deeply on fundamental issues. All parties successful in elections contain individuals of enormously varied opinions, but during elections the parties generally present a united front. This discourages the expression of the extremes of opinion within the party during a campaign. All parties are committed, in admittedly varying degrees, to a broad range of health and welfare policies, to immigration, and to a mixture of public and private enterprise. No "extreme" party in Canada has ever, in fact, successfully used elections to produce a regular contingent of members of Parliament.

The 1993 election resulted in a serious challenge to the history of Canadian elections up to that point. Although the Liberal Party, which still held to traditional federalist policies, swept to a majority government, two protest parties, the Bloc Québécois in Québec and the Reform Party in the West, returned large numbers of representatives with strictly regional agendas. In the process, the Conservative coalition of Westerners and Québecers disintegrated and the federalist NDP was reduced to its lowest numbers. The Bloc promised to work for a sovereign Québec and the Reform Party vowed a "renewed federalism" which to some was seen as an attempt to exclude Québec. That election introduced a series of elections (1993-2006) in which four or five parties won seats in the Commons and two minority governments resulted.

See also ELECTORAL BEHAVIOUR; PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION: TABLE.

Elections and the Media
John Turner surrounded by reporters (photo by Hans Deryk/Canapress).

Debate, Political
John Turner and Brian Mulroney during their acrimonious television debate (photo by Fred Chartrand).

Election Night, 1908
June 8, on Bay Street (courtesy Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library/T13292).

Author NORMAN WARD Rev: JOHN C. COURTNEY

Suggested Reading
John C. Courtney, Elections (2004).

Links to Other Sites
Elections Canada
The official web site of Elections Canada. Just about everything you need to know about elections in Canada.

First Women in Provincial and Territorial Legislatures
This Library and Archives Canada website is dedicated to pioneering women politicians in Canada. Produced in recognition of Women's History Month.

Canadian Opinion Research Archive
The website for the "Canadian Opinion Research Archive" website at Queen's University.

The Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University
CSD is a non-profit, non-partisan organization affiliated with the School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University. CSD works jointly with individuals or institutions abroad on research projects of mutual interest that contribute to democratic governance.

Electoral Atlas of the Dominion of Canada (1895)
This website features an interactive map that shows the federal electoral boundaries in Canada in 1895. From Library and Archives Canada.

The Hill Times
The website for the Canadian newsweekly "The Hill Times." Features news and opinion about Canadian federal politics.

Atlas of Canada: Learning Resources
Useful cartography resources for both teachers and students. Includes an interactive glossary tool and much more. From National Resources Canada.

Politics
The latest Canadian political news from CTV.ca

Canadian Election Results
This SFU site will be of interest to any devotee of Canadian politics. Offers extensive information about federal election campaigns, the electoral system, polls, and more.

Elections Ontario
The official website for Elections Ontario. Features election regulations and results, information about active political parties, and much more.

CPAC
CPAC, the Cable Public Affairs Channel, provides a window on Parliament, politics, and public affairs in Canada. Click on "Telling Times" to view a series of short historical documentaries that showcase pivotal Canadian events.

Political Institutions and Process
This website is all about Alberta politics. Learn about Alberta’s Legislative Assembly, the process of elections, and more. From Alberta’s Heritage Community Foundation.

Public Opinion Polling in Canada
An overview of the development and political impact of public opinion surveys in Canada. From the Library of Parliament.

The Canadian State: Documents & Dialogue
The Canadian State Web exhibition enables students to explore the various aspects of Canadian governance and to use a set of unique "real life" activities to create their own political party. The activities cover a wide variety of Social Science disciplines: History, Civics, Law, Language Arts, World Issues, Communications, and Canada in a North American Perspective. From Library and Archives Canada.

Glossary: Electoral Terms
A glossary of electoral terms and pictures from the website for Elections Canada.

The Canadian Press
The Canadian Press website offers the latest news headlines and information about the company's media products.

Glossary: Elections
A bilingual glossary of terms used in reference to elections in Canada. From the "Translation Bureau," a Government of Canada website.