An electoral district in Canada is a geographical division upon which Canada's representative democracy is based. It is officially known in Canadian French as a but frequently called a ('county'). In Canadian English, it is also colloquially, and more commonly known as a riding or constituency.
Each federal electoral district returns one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of Canada; each provincial or territorial electoral district returns one representative—called, depending on the province or territory, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Member of the National Assembly (MNA), Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) or Member of the House of Assembly (MHA)—to the provincial or territorial legislature.
Beginning with the 2025 federal election, there have been 343 federal electoral districts in Canada. In provincial and territorial legislatures, the provinces and territories each set their own number of electoral districts independently of their federal representation. The province of Ontario used to define most of its provincial electoral districts to align with federal boundaries; no other province does so, and even Ontario maintains a few variances from federal boundaries. However the practice stopped in 2024, when the Ford government did not follow the 2022 Canadian federal electoral redistribution and held the 2025 Ontario general election using the same 2012 Canadian federal electoral redistribution boundaries used in the previous provincial election. The ward boundaries of Toronto City Council also correspond to provincial electoral district boundaries. They are numbered with the provincial names in brackets.
Elections Canada is the independent body set up by Parliament to oversee Canadian federal elections, while each province and territory has its own separate elections agency, such as Elections Ontario, to oversee the provincial and territorial elections.
Terminology In Canada, the most commonly used colloquial term for electoral district is riding in English, and comté in French (meaning "county"). The usage of both terms reflect the fact of electoral divisions being organized around counties in the 1800s. While both these terms were used in England and France and their respective spheres of cultural influence as divisions for feudal or local governance, their usage to denote electoral division is unique to Canada.
The word "riding", from Old English and Old Norse *þriðing, meaning one-third (compare farthing, literally "one-fourth"), is an English term denoting the three sub-divisions of Yorkshire each with its own local administration. The origin of ridings stem from the ancient county of Yorkshire being subdivided into the North, West and East ridings when Yorkshire was ruled by the Vikings in the late 9th century.
The term "riding" was introduced to Upper Canada via the royal proclamation issued by Lieutanant Governor John Graves Simcoe on July 16, 1792. The proclamation defined the province's original nineteen counties, and further divided three crucial counties — Glengarry (the eastern most county, bordering Quebec), Lincoln (where the provincial capital was located) and York (where the capital would move to in a few years) — further into "ridings". Ridings were however not initially defined for electoral purposes, but instead as judicial districts "for the speedy execution of justice". The two York ridings, for example, were not granted seats either individually or together in the 1st Parliament of Upper Canada, convened in 1792. York County, with its two ridings, had to share a seat with Durham County and the first riding of Lincoln County.
It was not until the 12th Parliament of Upper Canada, convened in 1834, that every defined riding had its own representative. Even then, riding seats only accounted for eight of the House of Assembly's sixty-one seats, with counties accounting for forty-seven of the remaining fifty-five. As the population of the counties grew, more and more of them needed to be further divided for administrative reasons. The creation of more ridings naturally led to the increasing use of the term in an electoral context.
At the time of Canadian Confederation, the first schedule of the British North America Act (in 1982 retitled the Constitution Act, 1867) specifically named Ontario's original 82 electoral districts to be used for both the dominion and provincial elections held that year, with details of how the counties with multiple seats are to be divided. While riding meant one-third, the term was applied to counties with two electoral districts as well. In fact, only three counties — Middlesex, Wellington and York — were divided to three ridings. The Country of York (at Confederation consisted of the area of present day York Region and City of Toronto, excluding the downtown area) were divided as East Riding, West Riding, and North Riding of York, as Yorkshire was divided, possibly by design to pay tribute to its origin.
In some of Canada's earliest censuses, in fact, some citizens in the Ontario ridings of Bothwell, Cardwell, Monck and Niagara listed their electoral district as their "county" of residence instead of their actual county.
Although the term "riding" is no longer used officially to indicate an electoral district, it remains the colloquial term most commonly used in English Canada. Soon after Confederation, the urban population grew—and more importantly, most city dwellers gained the franchise after property ownership was no longer required to gain the vote, and the term was adopted even for urban constituencies. A political party's local organization is generally known as a riding association; the legal term is electoral district association or EDA at the federal level, and constituency association in most provinces.
Historical multi-member districts While electoral districts at both the federal and provincial levels are now exclusively single-member districts, multiple-member districts were used in the past. The federal riding of Ottawa elected two members from 1872 to 1933. The federal riding of Halifax elected two members from 1867 to 1966 as prescribed in the British North America Act. The federal riding of Victoria elected two members from 1872 to 1903. As well, eight other federal ridings elected multiple (two) members at different times.Parliament Guides
As well, every province plus the territories of Yukon and North-West Territories at one time or another used multi-seat districts. The use of multi-member districts usually led to the use of plurality block voting but occasionally other forms of voting were used in the multi-seat districts.
In the 1914 and 1915 Manitoba elections, Winnipeg was divided into three districts. Each time each district elected two members using a separate contest for each seat.
From 1920 to 1949 Winnipeg used single transferable vote (STV) to elect 10 MLAs in a single city-wide district. And then the city was made into three four-member districts, again with the seats in each district filled through STV. St. Boniface elected two MLAs in 1949 and 1953 through STV.
Alberta had three provincial districts that at various times returned two, five, six or seven members: see Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat. Prior to 1924 these seats were filled through plurality block voting but from 1924 to 1956 the seats were filled through single transferable voting (STV). The Medicine Hat district reverted to being a single-member district prior to the 1930 election.A Report on Alberta Elections, 1905-1982
Saskatchewan used multi-member provincial districts from 1921 to 1967. Saskatoon, Regina and Moose Jaw used multiple-member districts from 1921 to 1967. These seats were filled through plurality block voting. District magnitude in each place varied from two to four between 1921 and 1964. Regina was broken up into two two-seat districts and two single-member districts in 1964; Saskatoon was given a fifth seat in the 1964.
British Columbia provincially had a mix of multiple-member districts and single-member districts at the provincial level from 1871 to the 1991 election. Members were elected through plurality (first past the post or plurality block voting). The only exception were the 1952 and 1953 elections, when instant-runoff voting was used. In the case of multi-member districts, separate contests were used to elect separate MLAs in the same district.
Prince Edward Island had two-member districts at the provincial level from Confederation to the 1996 election. MLAs in each were elected in each district using a separate contest for each seat.
In the case of New Brunswick, between 1935 and 1974, some ridings were multi member districts, electing more than one MLA in a district at each election. In 1935, districts ranged in size from two to four members. Block voting was used to fill the seats in each district.
In the case of Ontario, Toronto in 1886 and 1890 was a multi-member provincial district. limited voting was used to ensure mixed representation and voter satisfaction. From 1908 to 1914, the four Toronto districts elected two MLAs each, using a separate contest for each seat.
With just a few exceptions, voters in multiple-member districts were able to cast as many votes as there were seats in the district (block voting). Usually, under block voting, one single party took all the seats in the district. STV was used in Alberta and Manitoba multi-member districts from 1920s to 1950s. STV almost always produced mixed representation with no one-party sweep.A Report on Alberta Elections 1905-1982
As mentioned, limited voting was used in Toronto when it was covered by a city-wide district in 1886 and 1890.
IRV was used in all BC districts including the multi-member districts, in 1952 and 1953. This voting system ensured that the winner had the support of a majority of votes in each contest (although in some cases member elected with majority of votes still in play at the end of the vote count, instead of majority of votes cast originally), but the seat/post system and instant-runoff voting election system did not produce proportional representation.
Naming conventions Electoral district names are usually geographic in nature, and chosen to represent the community or region within the electoral district boundaries. Some electoral districts in Quebec are named for historical figures rather than geography, e.g., Louis-Hébert, Honoré-Mercier. Similarly in Alberta, provincial districts mix geographic names with those of historical personages (e.g., Edmonton-Decore after Laurence Decore, Calgary-Lougheed after Peter Lougheed and James Alexander Lougheed). This practice is no longer employed in the other provinces and territories.
Redistribution – Boundary adjustment for federal electoral districts Electoral district boundaries are adjusted to reflect population changes after each decennial census through a process formally known as redistribution. Depending on the significance of a boundary change, an electoral district's name may change as well. Any adjustment of electoral district boundaries is official as of the date the changes are legislated, but is not put into actual effect until the first subsequent election. Thus, an electoral district may officially cease to exist, but will continue to be represented status quo in the House of Commons until the next election is called. This, for example, gives new riding associations time to organize, and prevents the confusion that would result from changing elected MPs' electoral district assignments in the middle of a Parliament.