MONTREAL – The upcoming by-election in Montreal will have the longest ballot in the history of Canadian federal elections, breaking a record that had just been set (earlier this summer, in Toronto). According to Elections Canada, in fact, at least 91 candidates will be running on September 16 for the LaSalle—Émard—Verdun seat left vacant by former minister and MP David Lametti, who left politics. The record had stood since last June 24, when another by-election was held, that of Toronto-St. Paul, with 84 candidates: on that occasion, Elections Canada had to print ballots almost a meter long with two columns of names. 

Of the 91 candidates (at least 91, because at the time of writing the list is not yet definitive) for the by-election scheduled for September, 79 are linked to the “Longest Ballot Committee”, a group that protests against Canada’s majoritarian voting system and which claims that political parties are too reluctant to make the government more representative of the different opinions of the electorate.

Sébastien “CoRhino” Corriveau, organizer of the protest and leader of the satirical “Rhinoceros Party”, hopes the campaign will raise awareness about electoral reform and proportional representation. Corriveau said that when committee members went door-to-door asking for signatures to get potential candidates on the ballot, one in two people signed the documents. “The voting system is not anyone’s daily concern in Canada right now, but people agree that it needs to be changed” he said.

The group in question also participated in the previous by-elections, those of Toronto-St. Paul, with 77 candidates out of 84. The inconveniences and delays in the counting were inevitable, due to such a massive presence of names on the ballot: according to Elections Canada, in fact, compared to normal elections, the enormous ballot papers took longer to be opened and counted, and more ballot boxes were needed to contain them. In the end, the final tally of the June by-election was made public only after four o’clock the following morning, when the victory of Conservative candidate Don Stewart was announced, ousting the Liberals who had held that district for over thirty years. The latter is a risk that the Liberals also run in the LaSalle—Émard—Verdun district, held by the Liberals with David Lametti since 2015 and, previously, (when the district was called LaSalle-Émard) by former prime minister Paul Martin from 1988 to 2011. The Liberal candidate is, this time, a Montreal city councilor, Laura Palestini; the NDP is nominating Craig Sauvé, another Montreal city councillor; the candidate of the Bloc Quebecois is Louis-Philippe Sauvé; The entrepreneur Louis Ialenti is running for the Conservatives.

Among the most curious candidacies, that of Donovan Eckstrom, an Albertan who describes himself on Facebook as the “candidate for an independent Alberta” and who, in a video published on Facebook, promised to “replace all the dairy cows in Quebec with far superior Alberta beef” if elected. Another well-known name is Felix-Antoine Hamel, who made headlines in June (he was also a candidate there) for being the first candidate in Canadian electoral history to receive zero votes.

Many records, therefore, even if, including all the elections at various levels, the one of the race for mayor of Toronto, a year ago, remains unbeaten: 102 candidates, including even a dog represented by his owner.

(Photo: Elections Canada – https://www.elections.ca)