REPEALING CANADA’S DATED BAN ON TRANSMISSION OF ELECTION RESULTS
A Canadian law three-quarters of a century old bans disclosing national election results from one part of Canada to voters in different time zones where polls are still open. This should be repealed to reflect modern communications realities and human rights perspectives, says the Canadian Minister responsible for democratic reforms.
Hon. Tim Uppal,
PC, MP, in Ottawa. Mr Uppal is Canada’s Minister of State (Democratic Reform). A Conservative Member of the House of Commons since 2008, he was appointed as a Minister of State after the country’s 2011 general election. Born in British Columbia, he has spent most of his life in Alberta where he was a residential mortgage manager and a Senior Advisor to the Conservative Party of Canada before entering the House of Commons.
freedom to communicate with friends, family and personal networks about election results and democratic processes without considerable restriction on their fundamental right to freedom of expression.
Hon. Tim Uppal, PC, MP
The government of Canada believes that Canada’s democratic rules should, as much as possible, reflect present realities and should not unnecessarily restrict fundamental rights that Canadians hold dear. In the era of the internet, where
the use of email, Facebook and Twitter are commonplace, Canadians should have the
104 | The Parliamentarian | 2012: Issue Two
A restriction of another century Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act is such a restriction and it needs to be repealed. The section prohibits the transmission of election results such that “no person shall transmit the result or the purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all the polling stations in that other electoral district”. Canada extends over six time
zones. Parliament adopted the ban on transmission of election results, and its associated penalties, in
1938. At the time, voting hours were uniform across the country, representing a real-time difference of four hours between the closing of polls in Atlantic Canada and the closing of polls in British Columbia (Newfoundland was not yet a part of Canada). The intent of the ban was to prevent voters in Western Canada from knowing the formation of a government before casting their ballots. Proponents argued that knowing the results of polls from Central and Atlantic Canada influenced the way electors in Western Canada voted. In the intervening years since
the ban’s enactment, the proliferation of new media and communications technologies correspondingly increase the difficulty in balancing freedom of expression against the original intent of the ban. Not only does the ban ever more infringe upon