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OTTAWA — A House of Commons committee is calling on the government to make it harder for protest groups to sign up dozens of candidates in a single riding, after Elections Canada announced Wednesday that voters in an upcoming byelection in Quebec will use a write-in ballot because of the high number of candidates.
The Longest Ballot Committee has targeted ridings in a number of byelections dating back to 2022 and has said it is signing up candidates in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne.
The group has said it’s trying to call attention to the need for electoral reform. More recently, a spokesperson claimed its aim is to put pressure on lawmakers to appoint an independent citizens’ body to set election rules.
But the long ballots have caused problems for Elections Canada, which says they are more difficult to print and count and pose accessibility challenges for voters.
Chief electoral officer Stéphane Perrault has called for legislative changes to make it more difficult for such protests to happen in the future.
He noted that in most cases, there was one official agent listed for all the candidates signed up through the Longest Ballot Committee and their nomination papers tended to be signed by the same people.
Candidates require signatures from 100 residents in a riding.
Perrault suggested changes to limit the number of candidates one person can nominate in a riding, and to ensure candidates in the same riding have different official agents.
The House procedure and affairs committee, which has been studying the issue, is now recommending those changes in a new report.
It’s calling for penalties for individuals who sign more than one candidate’s nomination paper, and for disclaimers on nomination papers that warn about the rule change.
The committee is calling for changes that would limit official agents to representing one candidate per riding, and a new penalty for collecting signatures on nomination papers before a candidate has been identified.
It also calls for new penalties for anyone who conspires to violate the Elections Act or encourages others to do so.
Government House leader Steven MacKinnon is set to hold a press conference on Thursday to announce proposed amendments to the Elections Act.
A notice sent to media on Wednesday said the proposed changes would “strengthen and protect Canada’s democratic institutions and processes.”
The protest group signed up over 100 candidates in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s former riding of Carleton during last April’s general election.
Voters there were confronted with a ballot that was nearly a metre long. Elections Canada had to show people how to properly fold the ballots and fit them into the ballot boxes.
Poilievre and the Conservatives have called the long ballot protests a “scam” in the past and have urged the government to make changes.
Last August, when Poilievre was running in a byelection in Alberta, the group signed up more than 200 candidates in the riding. For the first time, Elections Canada had to print a modified ballot that required voters to write in the name of their preferred candidate.
The same thing will happen in the tightly contested Quebec riding of Terrebonne on April 13.
Liberal Tatiana Auguste beat the Bloc Québécois candidate, Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, by a single vote last April but the Supreme Court of Canada invalidated the result last month after a court challenge.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2026.
Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press
