Terrebonne byelection to use adapted ballot due to high number of candidates

A person enters a polling station in the Vancouver East riding on federal election day in Vancouver on Monday, April 28, 2025. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press)

OTTAWA — Voters in Terrebonne will use a write-in ballot in the upcoming byelection, as the Longest Ballot Committee has made the Quebec riding its latest target.

Elections Canada’s advisory committee of political parties says voters will have to write in the first name, or initials, and last name of their chosen candidate, as is done on a special ballot.

It says a list of candidates will be provided to voters at polling stations during advance voting and on election day.

The same write-in ballot plan was used in a byelection in Alberta last summer that elected Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, when the protest group recruited nearly 200 people to run against him in protest of Canada’s first-past-the-post system.

That was at least the fourth time the group pulled the move, but the first time Elections Canada instituted the write-in ballot to avoid an incredibly long ballot that delays the voting and vote-counting process.

Terrebonne is expected to be the most hotly contested of three byelections taking place on April 13, after the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the Liberals’ single-vote victory from last year’s federal election due to a clerical error on mail-in ballots.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 24, 2026.

—With files from Sarah Ritchie

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press