Latest news with #Ottawa-area
Winnipeg Free Press
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Electoral reform, dinosaurs and ‘spite': the ‘Longest Ballot' protest, explained
OTTAWA – More than 200 candidates are running in the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection, though only a handful have the support of official parties. Most of the rest are linked to a protest movement that's looking to change the way elections are conducted in the country. The front-runner in the race, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, is seeking a path back to the House of Commons after losing his Ottawa-area riding in the last federal election. Poilievre has attacked the Longest Ballot Committee's efforts to stack the ballot with a large number of candidates as a 'blatant abuse' of democracy. Here's what the Longest Ballot Committee says it wants, what its opponents say needs to change and how Elections Canada is planning to handle the Aug. 18 vote. Why are these protests happening? The Longest Ballot Committee is pushing for electoral reform, arguing that Canada must move beyond the first-past-the-post system to something that would better reflect the wishes of voters. The Longest Ballot Committee was responsible for adding 85 of the 91 names on the ballot in Poilievre's former riding of Carleton in the last federal election. While Poilievre lost that seat to a Liberal after holding it for nearly two decades, none of the Longest Ballot candidates got more than 57 votes. The group says it's trying to draw the public's attention to the need for electoral reform and has run dozens of candidates in multiple byelections in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba since 2022. What do the Longest Ballot Committee candidates promise? The Longest Ballot Committee candidates are — no surprise — promising electoral reform. Some have been going off-script, however. One Longest Ballot Committee candidate in Battle River-Crowfoot has a website that simply says they're running 'out of spite.' 'If you only get to vote once, vote for the person who isn't a politician,' the website for Abel Erazo-Ibarra says. Another for Nicola Zoghbi promises 'dinosaurs for everyone.' 'My first move as MP will be to rename the electoral district Raptor River—Crowfoot, in honour of the velociraptors that once terrorized the Albertan plains,' Zoghbi's website says. Zoghbi — apparently a Spielberg fan — is also vowing to lobby Universal to open a Jurassic Park-style theme park in the riding where 'visitors from all over the world will flock — like pterodactyls' to 'relive the adventures of Dr. Alan Grant and the other poor souls who had the (mis) fortune of seeing the dinosaurs up close.' Lori Turnbull, a political-science professor at Dalhousie University, said that while electoral reform is a worthwhile cause, the long ballot protests are alienating voters. 'Federal elections are supposed to be serious events. It's a serious decision to decide who is going to represent you,' she said. 'These people aren't looking to get elected — they're looking to make a point. That's going to depreciate the integrity of democracy and the overall sense that the election is serious and it means something.' What does the legislation say? To run as a candidate in a federal election, one must be a Canadian citizen at least 18 years old on election day and must secure signatures from at least 100 people in the riding. If the riding is larger or remote, the minimum signature requirement drops to 50. What are people proposing to end long ballots? Poilievre and Conservative MP Michael Cooper are pitching changes to the elections rules that would increase the required number of nomination signatures to 0.5 per cent of the population in a riding, rather than 100 people. According to 2021 Census data, that means a candidate in Toronto Centre would need nearly 600 signatures, while a candidate in Malpeque, P.E.I. would need 192. Poilievre and Cooper are also proposing that each of those signatures be exclusive to a candidate, and that official agents be barred from representing more than one candidate at any given time. Asked whether the government is considering those changes, a spokesperson for House leader Steven MacKinnon said the government 'shares the concerns' about long ballots and is 'examining the issue.' Turnbull said that while long ballots may cause frustration for candidates and those working the polls, the solution isn't to rewrite Canada's election laws. She said Longest Ballot Committee candidates don't receive a large enough share of the vote to affect elections in any meaningful way, beyond the administrative burdens they impose on Elections Canada. She also worries that requiring candidates to collect a higher number of signatures might freeze out serious Independent challengers like Bonnie Critchley, who is running against Poilievre in Battle River-Crowfoot. 'That's not a reasonable test to put on a serious, Independent candidate,' Turnbull said. How is Elections Canada planning to handle the byelection? Voters in Battle River-Crowfoot will be using an 'adapted ballot' that will have a blank space where electors can write in the name of their preferred candidate, replacing the typical list-style ballot. Sixteen candidates on the ballot have last names that are the same or similar. Most of them are candidates associated with the Longest Ballot Committee. 'As long as the elector's intention is clear, their vote will be counted, even if they misspell the candidate's name,' Elections Canada says. 'The list of candidates will be available at every voting table so that electors can find the name of their candidate of choice.' Elections Canada says counting the ballots in Battle River-Crowfoot is likely to take longer than usual. The agency has said long ballots create accessibility barriers for some voters because the ballots become 'overwhelming and confusing.' In a briefing document posted on the Elections Canada website, the agency raised concerns about voters who use wheelchairs. It said it's difficult for them to reach past the middle of a long ballot without pulling it off the table, which risks damaging or spoiling the ballot. 'These visual and physical challenges impact the independence and secrecy of the voting experience since some voters with disabilities must resort to asking for assistance from an election officer to properly handle or mark the long ballot,' the document says. — With files from Sarah Ritchie This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2025.
Global News
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Global News
Misspelling a name on the Alberta special ballot can still count. What won't?
Elections Canada says voters in the Battle River-Crowfoot byelection won't have to worry about a typo spoiling their adapted ballot as long as it's clear who they mean to vote for. The agency announced Monday it was changing how the Aug. 18 byelection will be conducted after more than 200 people registered to run. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is running for a second shot at getting elected to the House of Commons after losing the Ottawa-area seat he had held for 20 years in the federal election in April. To avoid another very long ballot form, an adapted ballot has been created. It is similar to the special ballots used by some Canadians in general elections, where people fill out the name of their preferred candidate to cast their vote. When asked if a spelling error might lead to a ballot being tossed out, Elections Canada referred Global News to its website guidance on the upcoming vote. Story continues below advertisement 'As long as your intention is clear, your vote will be counted, even if you misspell the candidate's name,' the agency writes in response to a frequently asked question on its information page for the byelection. To help Canadians when they vote, a complete list of candidates will also be provided to every voter. 1:55 Byelection called for Battle River-Crowfoot, Poilievre seeks path back to Parliament While a typo won't get your ballot tossed out, voters are still cautioned to only write the name of the candidate and not a political party in the space provided. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Voters who may need help, such as due to a disability or other reason, are asked to contact the Elections Canada office in the riding to discuss their needs. Those needing assistance can receive help from election workers at the polls or can bring a support person, such as a family member or personal support worker. Story continues below advertisement If you bring a support person, however, they will need to make a solemn declaration before voting to protect the secrecy of your vote. On election night, paid election workers will count the ballots in front of candidate representatives or other witnesses who don't work for Elections Canada. Each ballot will be shown to every person present, and the name will be read out loud for each ballot to be tallied. View image in full screen An example of the adapted ballot being used in the upcoming Battle River-Crowfoot byelection. The left shows a completed ballot with the name of the candidate, while the right shows a ballot with a political party filled in, which the agency says not to do. Elections Canada Due to the different ballot process and a longer list of candidates, Elections Canada says voting could take longer than usual. However, the agency adds that poll workers are being provided extra training and support to help complete the count as quickly as possible. The byelection was called last month after Conservative MP Damien Kurek, who won the riding in April with more than 80 per cent of the vote, stepped down so Poilievre could run. Story continues below advertisement Poilievre lost to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy in the April election. He will be joined on the ballot by Liberal candidate Darcy Spady, the NDP's Katherine Swampy, and dozens more that have been sponsored by the Longest Ballot Committee, a protest group bringing attention to the issue of electoral reform. — With files from The Canadian Press
Ottawa Citizen
6 days ago
- Climate
- Ottawa Citizen
Severe thunderstorm watch issued for Ottawa region
Article content Wind gusts of as much as 110 km/h, torrential rainfall possibly in excess of 50 millimetres and nickel-sized hail are potential hazards for Ottawa-area residents on Thursday evening, Environment Canada warned in a severe thunderstorm watch advisory issued in mid-afternoon. Article content In the notice published online at 2:55 p.m., the weather agency said conditions were favourable for the development this evening of dangerous thunderstorms capable of producing damaging wind gusts, large hail and torrential rain. Article content Article content Article content 'Utility outages are possible. Significant damage to property, buildings and trees is possible,' the advisory added. Article content Article content The Environment Canada severe thunderstorm watch was also issued for the Gatineau region on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River. Article content
Edmonton Journal
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Edmonton Journal
Lorne Gunter: 'Attention-seeking stunt': Group stacking ballot in Alberta byelection should stop
Article content As of Tuesday, the Longest Ballot Committee had signed up more than 130 candidates to run in the Aug. 18 byelection in the Battle River-Crowfoot riding. Article content All have the same registered agent, Tomas Szuchewycz, the official spokesman for the committee. And with a week left until nominations close, there is a chance the committee will reach its goal of signing up 200 candidates. Article content Article content Article content The rule is that each candidate must have 100 signatures from people who live in the riding, signed in front of witnesses. At the time of writing, Elections Canada had not responded to my question about whether they had verified the residence of all 130 candidates' nominators. Article content This is just an attention-seeking stunt. Most of the committee's candidates are not from the riding. I'd bet most have never been to the oil, farming and ranching riding in east-central Alberta. They might even have trouble pointing it out on a map. And most will never come — ever — not just during the campaign. Article content Many are people who let the committee place their names on the ballot in the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton during the April general election — the riding Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lost, necessitating this byelection. Article content The Longest Ballot Committee is not interested in what the voters of the riding want. They have no intent of listening to them or taking their views to Ottawa. They are in the race for one reason only, to gum up the works to draw attention to their demand that Canada jettison its first-past-the-post electoral system in favour of proportional representation. Article content Article content The irony is that their stated goal is to improve Canadian democracy. Politicians shouldn't be in charge of reforming the process. But they, who have never been elected to anything, who represent no one but themselves, believe they should decide. Article content Article content Want the system changed with legitimacy, folks? Dedicate yourself to the hard work of getting elected, then going to Ottawa and convincing the other MPs to vote for change, too. Article content The other irony? The committee focused its attack in the April election on Poilievre. They didn't also clog the ballot in Mark Carney's riding even though it was the Liberals who promised never to run another election on first-past-the-post after their 2015 election victory, then reneged.
Hamilton Spectator
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Hamilton Spectator
An Alberta riding sizes up Pierre Poilievre as its next MP
CAMROSE, ALTA. — The balloons have long since deflated and drifted back to earth, the lawn signs and ballot boxes packed away. In most of the country, anyway. But for Pierre Poilievre, the election campaign never really ended. After the Conservative leader lost the Ottawa-area riding of Carleton, which he'd held for 21 years, to a Liberal newcomer, he was cast out into the proverbial wilderness. Specifically, to a sprawling rural Alberta riding where the freshly re-elected Tory MP stepped down, allowing Poilievre a chance to win the seat in a byelection and rejoin the party he leads in the House of Commons. It's a significant change of scenery. His old riding was a compact slice of suburban Ottawa, popular with civil servants. The one he hopes to win now, Battle River-Crowfoot, is one of the biggest and least densely populated in the country, with only a handful of small towns knitted together by two-lane roads across a massive swatch of land that is a rich agricultural base in the north and coulees and hoodoos and prehistoric dinosaur fossil beds in the south. Picture the population of Thunder Bay spread out over an area bigger than Denmark. Poilievre has arrived just as canola — Alberta's most profitable cash crop — is at its most brilliant yellow. The occasional pumpjack bobs against the sky. This is one of the safest Conservative ridings in the country; in the last election, only one other riding voted more overwhelmingly blue. (The Liberals and NDP are nonetheless running candidates, energy leader Darcy Spady and former Samson Cree band councillor Katherine Swampy , respectively.) So in some ways, Poilievre — whose office did not respond to requests for comment for this story — is playing on easy mode. But beyond the matter of a seat, there's the pressure to show he's learned from his most recent loss and that he can still pitch himself as a true alternative to his fellow Albertan, a still-in-his-honeymoon-phase Mark Carney. 'A lot of people are writing him off, and I think people are writing him off at their own peril,' says Ben Woodfinden, Poilievre's former communications director. 'If, a couple years from now, he goes on to become prime minister, the comeback starts here.' And that's just where the rest of the country is concerned. Here in the riding, residents say he needs to earn it — to show he can put in the work and fend off criticism that he's just here to further his political career. 'If you're asking if we're star struck,' one resident said dryly, 'the answer is no.' In other words, one of his biggest competitors may be himself. 'You are going to put on some miles,' said Camrose Mayor PJ Stasko of waging a political campaign in the area. Stasko has been an elected official in the former railway town turned health-care hub, which is now the riding's largest city with 20,000 people, for more than a decade. 'You need to be present — and have a presence.' People in the riding are aware that a party leader has a separate job to do, he says. Still, Damien Kurek, the farmer turned MP who stepped down to make way for Poilievre, was popular because of his deep knowledge of the area, he adds, and voters will be looking for the same. As campaign pageantry goes, the grand opening of an office usually ranks low. 'Nobody really gives a s—t about opening a campaign office,' as Blain Fowler, publisher of the Camrose Booster, put it. Nonetheless, Poilievre's campaign office in a Camrose strip mall wasn't far from the cream-coloured stucco building where Fowler's parents founded the Booster in 1952. With speeches scheduled for 7 p.m., Fowler busied himself in his office past normal working hours so he wouldn't be the first person there. But when he drove up around 6:30 p.m., there wasn't a parking spot in sight. Counting the cars jammed into every possible spot, Fowler estimated there must have already been hundreds of people there, a number he found astounding for a small town on a Wednesday evening in the middle of summer. That turnout speaks to the power of the Conservative brand here, Fowler says, but also to the fact that the Poilievre who has come West is not the House of Commons question period scrapper, but a more 'mellow' version. He has driven to the smallest of the small towns and shown up to rodeos and community barbecues and parades, often in the cowboy hat demanded by Alberta election campaigns. 'Losing Carleton probably weighs on him — I know it weighs on him,' says Woodfinden, adding that he's also seen a softer side of Poilievre in recent interviews. (He stopped working for Poilievre in April.) 'When I worked for him I don't think we ever used the term 'government in waiting,' but he used that term himself a couple of weeks ago. I think that tells you a bit about their mindset, that they are trying to be more statesmanly, more prime ministerial.' The long history of people coming from the East to tell people here what their problems are and how to solve them has left many of them sensitive to outsiders, Fowler says. (A couple of years ago, some bank executives came to town to talk to customers about why a potential amalgamation plan would benefit the area, he said. As soon as they started talking about cows, the word used by the dairy industry, as opposed to cattle, the preferred term of ranchers, they lost the room entirely, he recalled.) Sometimes, the details of specific policies seem to matter less than the way they add up, especially if the governing class doesn't quite get the appeal or the challenge of living in a place like this. Dominant concerns in the riding include support for major industries like agriculture and oil and gas. Threats to the oil industry in particular can feel as much existential as economic in this part of the province, which is home to both local oilfields and to people who commute north to the oilsands. And Poilievre, who has lived in Ottawa for much of his adult life, seems to be listening. People here have voted for right-wing parties since the Great Depression. The only blot on that copybook came in the late 1970s, when 'Cactus Jack' Horner, a fiery rancher and seven-term MP from a prairie political dynasty, crossed the floor to join Pierre Trudeau's Liberals. (Horner was swiftly voted out at the next opportunity. As his brother put it in his obituary , the people loved Jack, but they hated Trudeau more.) Given the history and based on past results, it's largely a 'done deal' that Poilievre will win the seat on Aug. 18, says poll analyst Eric Grenier. But success can be measured in different ways, and Grenier believes Poilievre's margin of victory will matter. Given the historic support for Conservative candidates — the previous MP got almost 83 per cent of the votes cast — he says anything below about 80 per cent won't be great. 'If he's under 70, I would say that that was a bad result.' Making Poilievre's job harder is the fact that his personal approval rating has dipped since his election loss to 44 per cent, according to a Research Co poll , putting him 15 points behind Carney. Then there's the fact that he will have to navigate Alberta-style conservatism, which has always had a slightly more independent, if not contrarian flavour, than the federal variety. That said, blogger Dave Cournoyer noted that at least a couple of local United Conservative Party MLAs have been seen campaigning with Poilievre, suggesting some of the wrinkles between the two parties have been ironed out. But many headlines have been made in recent weeks by surging separatist sentiment in the province, particularly among right leaning voters. That sentiment has been fuelled by the idea that Ottawa has taken for Alberta for granted, and Premier Danielle Smith's suggestion that there could be a referendum on the province separating from Canada. People in Battle River — Crowfoot dismiss the idea that there is true support for a separate Alberta, pointing to a recent provincial byelection in which Cam Davies of the pro-separatist Alberta Republican party finished in third place. They add that Davies was even beaten by the NDP candidate — a truly dismal showing in rural Alberta. It suggests, they say, that the issue is more hat than cattle. Still, there are plenty of Albertans who are keen to push for a revised relationship with Ottawa, even if that vigour falls short of separation. Poilievre has said repeated he is for a united Canada but told CBC Radio's The House last week that the days of Alberta being asked to 'pay up and shut up' should be over. Then there are those who would like to return to what they say is a more traditional form of progressive Alberta conservatism — and turn away from what they argue is a more combative style imported from Ottawa. 'Much like me, my neighbours don't tend to really care what's in your pants or who you're sleeping with. Just don't do it in front of an open window,' said Bonnie Critchley, sitting in a cafe in Tofield, population roughly 2,000. 'They don't care. They want to deal with their crops. They would like their car to not lose a tire in that pothole. They want their taxes low.' Critchley is a fifth generation military veteran who decided to come out of retirement to try her hand at politics when she saw Kurek, a popular MP who had just received an overwhelming mandate, step down to make way for the Conservative party leader. 'I looked around and said, somebody should do something,' she said, looking theatrically over each shoulder. That person, she eventually concluded, would have to be her. (She says people have compared her to Bruce Fanjoy, the stay-at-home dad turned Liberal candidate who defeated Poilievre in his old riding, but insists her situation is very different. 'He had two years, I've got one month.') Critchley is running against Poilievre as an independent, with a flat-out campaign that has generated buzz within the province and, she says, significant donations from outside it. In a rare point of policy overlap, both she and Poilievre have spoken out against the 'longest ballot' protest planned for the riding; its advocates hope to get dozens of names on the ballot for the byelection to promote their advocacy of proportional representation. Critchley says such tactics just drown out legitimate independent contenders like herself. But she also says she's worried that Poilievre only wants to become the MP for Battle River-Crowfoot for his own political gain. And, as someone who wears one regularly — she moved back to the riding to help with the family horse breeding operation — it rankles her to see him suddenly wearing a cowboy hat. Even if he wins, she believes he won't stick around to represent her neighbours in the House of Commons if he loses an upcoming review of his leadership. So Critchley is challenging Poilievre with a platform drawn from both sides of the political aisle — she affirms the existence of climate change but rejects a carbon tax and vows to protect both lawful gun owners and the LGBTQ+ community — with a helping of Albertan determination. 'We all know that the election is over once it passes the western border of Ontario,' she said. 'We know that, we're tired and we're frustrated. 'But this is our home, our riding,' she added. 'We are not to be taken advantage of. We will not give you something because you say we should.'
