Pierre Poilievre calls on government to act as more than 150 candidates register in byelection

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling the long list of names on his byelection ballot a "blatant abuse of democracy."

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the government to take action against the advocacy group that’s encouraged nearly 150 candidates to register as Independents in the upcoming byelection in rural Alberta’s Battle River—Crowfoot riding, where he too is running in the hopes of winning back a seat in the House of Commons.

In a letter addressed to the Government House Leader, Steven MacKinnon, Poilievre calls the ballot flooding “a blatant abuse of our democratic system.”

The “Longest Ballot Committee,” an electoral reform advocacy group, has already registered nearly 150 candidates, a record in Canadian election history, with the intent to surpass 200 names on the ballot.

There are currently 152 names on the ballot, only five of which are not running as Independents: Poilievre running for the Conservatives, Darcy Spady for the Liberals, Grant Abraham for the United Party of Canada, Michael Harris for the Libertarians, and Jeff Willerton for the Christian Heritage Party.

“This is not democracy in action,” Poilievre wrote in his letter to MacKinnon, which he also posted to social media. “It’s a deliberate attempt to manipulate the rules, confuse voters, and undermine confidence in our elections.”

Poilievre is asking the government “to take immediate steps… to end the longest ballot scam,” when MPs return to Parliament in September.

In his electoral reform demands, the Conservative leader is asking the government to require 0.5 per cent of the population in a riding to sign, “not just 100 people,” to meet the threshold for candidate nomination.

His second requirement is that “each signature in support of a candidate be exclusive,” barring signatories from endorsing more than one candidate in the same election.

His final demand is to restrict official agents from representing more than one candidate. Currently, 146 Independent candidates are represented by an individual by the name of Tomas Szuchewycz.

Only one Independent candidate is represented by someone other than Szuchewycz.

‘Too much skin in the game’

Despite Poilievre’s call on the government for electoral reform, the Longest Ballot Committee still believes that politicians like the Conservative leader should “step aside and recuse themselves from deciding election rules.”

In an emailed statement to CTV News, Szuchewycz says “politicians just have too much skin in the game to be calling the shots” when it comes to electoral law. “There is a clear and inappropriate conflict of interest.”

During the April election, 91 candidates were registered in Poilievre’s former riding of Carleton. Elections Canada approved starting to count advance ballots six hours before polls closed.

With 91 names on it, each ballot was about one-metre long, and Elections Canada estimated it could take about three times as long to count them, factoring the time it takes to unfold and tally each one.

“This ill-conceived and self-serving electoral reform proposal by the leader of the opposition is downright dangerous, and reinforces our conviction that politicians are not well suited to decide the rules of their own elections,” Szuchewycz said of Poilievre’s demands to the government.

“So long as we are legally permitted to do so we will continue to use long ballots as a platform to call on politicians of all stripes to do the right and ethical thing.”

With file from CTV News’ Spencer Van Dyk