Canada's Chief Electoral Officer: responsibilities and independence.

• Author: Courtney, John C.

There are two significant dates in the history of Canadian elections. The first was 1874 when changes ensuring the secret ballot and simultaneous voting were approved. The second was the creation of the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer in 1920. Though the importance of the 1874 changes cannot be minimized, this paper focuses exclusively on the Chief Electoral Officer as an Officer of Parliament. With the announcement in late December 2006 of the resignation of Jean-Pierre Kingsley as Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, this brief summary of the office is designed as a simple "reminder" for the new Chief Electoral Officer of how the office has evolved over the past eight decades and its vital importance to Canada's electoral system.

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Now commonly referred to as Elections Canada, the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer has imparted a legitimacy and a credibility to Canada's electoral process that is unmatchable. This is explained largely by the fact that the position got off to a very good start in 1920 and that the statute initially establishing the Office was both well-designed and well-executed. All provinces and territories have fashioned a reasonably close institutional facsimile to that of Elections Canada, and established and emerging democracies alike have repeatedly demonstrated that they value the advice and assistance of our election Officials in establishing their own election machinery or in monitoring their elections.

This article focuses on five aspects of the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer: the Office's origins, independence, responsibilities, responsiveness, and the impact on the Office and the Canada Elections Act of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Origins

The creation of the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer can best be understood in the context of the events of 1917 and the immediate postwar years. The Unionist Government brazenly manipulated the electoral process for its own partisan purposes in the midst of the First World War. The Wartime Elections Act and the Military Voters Act of 1917 proved to be the most controversial pieces of electoral legislation in Canadian history. The acts enfranchised for that election only the female relatives of men serving with the Canadian or British armed forces as well as all servicemen. At the same time they disenfranchised conscientious objectors and British subjects naturalized after 1902 who were born in an enemy country or who habitually spoke an enemy language. It was a low point in Canadian electoral history. In 1920, with another election pending, the status quo was clearly no longer acceptable.

By 1920 there were other forces as well that were laying the groundwork for substantial changes in the way elections would be run. Various provincial Farmer's parties and the Progressives gave strong support to reforms aimed at making the electoral system fairer and more open. Women's groups successfully pressed for female enfranchisement and they did so openly claiming that if women had the vote that would do much to ensure that the political system would be cleaned up. In such a context the establishment of an independent, non-partisan Officer charged with overseeing the administration of elections made a good deal of sense. It was clear that by 1920 public opinion was prepared for substantial changes in the way elections would be managed. Additionally, with the electorate effectively doubling in size because women were about to enter the electorate, the job of organizing elections would suddenly become a much larger and more complicated undertaking than it had ever been in the past.

Thus, to guarantee an electoral organization that would be distinguished by its managerial competence, administrative fairness, and institutional non-partisanship, the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer was established nearly a century ago.

Independence

From the outset the General Electoral Officer (the first name given to the Chief Electoral Officer) was to be, in the words of the minister responsible for introducing the legislation, "in every way a permanent and independent officer." (1) As an...