The National Register of Electors () is a continuously updated permanent database of eligible electors for federal elections in Canada maintained by Elections Canada. It was established in December 1996 when Bill C-63 was granted royal assent and the preliminary National Register of Electors was populated with data in April 1997 during the final Canada-wide enumeration. It replaced a system which required door-to-door enumeration of eligible electors for each electoral event. The database contains basic information about electors: name, address, sex, and date of birth. An elector may register or update their personal information between elections, or may request to be excluded from it per the Canada Elections Act. Eligible expatriate Canadians voters are included in the International Register of Electors.
Elections Canada has data sharing arrangements with federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and other agencies throughout Canada to update the National Register of Electors and ensure its currency, and to enable other jurisdictions to update their respective databases with information from the National Register of Electors. Obtaining data from other parties, and sharing of data with those parties, must be consistent with the Canada Elections Act or the various elections legislation of the respective province or territory. Elections Canada has two-way data sharing arrangements with the electoral agencies of each province and territory except Saskatchewan and Yukon, from which it may obtain but to which it cannot send information.
In conjunction with the National Geographic Database, the National Register of Electors is used to create preliminary voters lists for each electoral district in Canada for each election, by-election, and referendum. Each candidate from each electoral district is given a voters list for that district, which is a subset of the data in the National Register of Electors whose addresses are within the boundaries of the district as defined in the National Geographic Database. That data may only be used for election purposes; any other use of that data subjects the user to penalties including fines, imprisonment, or both. The voter lists are updated by returning officers based on information received during an election campaign, ultimately resulting in final voters lists being distributed by election day.
Use of the National Register of Electors has allowed Elections Canada to avoid over $100 million in election-related expenditures up to the 2006 federal election.
Creation The creation of a national permanent register of electors was first proposed in the 1930s, but serious consideration for such a project was not established until the 1980s. In 1989, the Government of Canada appointed the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, which in 1991 "recommended that provincial lists be used for federal purposes". A working group was established in 1995, which in March 1996 submitted the report The Register of Electors Project: A Report on Research and feasibility to the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada. It had six main conclusions:
a national register would be cost effective and feasible the minimum election period could be reduced from 47 to 36 days the best sources of information to update the register would be Revenue Canada, files from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and provincial and territorial driver's licence files and vital statistics files there was support amongst provincial and territorial agencies legislative changes to the Canada Elections Act and the Income Tax Act would be required the registration of electors for the first electoral event to use the register would cost the same as previous enumeration methods, and subsequent elections would avoid costs of about $40 million
To that point, the federal government, through Elections Canada, assumed responsibility for ensuring that every eligible elector was registered for each electoral event. For the 1988 federal general election, this required about 110,000 enumerators, who would canvass door-to-door so the cost and effort to the individual was minimal.
Canvassing to enumerate electors after drawing up ("dropping") the writ of election ensured that a high proportion of those electors were registered for each election, up to 98 per cent for some elections, minimizing participation inequality which typically affects individuals who are poor, young, or have little formal education that tend to not take the initiative to participate in electoral and related events. State enumeration, such as was done in Canada before the implementation of the National Register of Electors, "worked to augment voter turnout among all segments of society and thus mitigated a natural tendency toward participation inequality in electoral politics".
Legislation On 18 December 1996, Governor General Roméo LeBlanc granted Royal Assent to Bill C-63 for the creation of a permanent list of voters to be used for all federal elections and referendums in Canada, the National Register of Electors, to be maintained by Elections Canada. In April 1997, Elections Canada conducted a final house-to-house enumeration throughout Canada to establish the preliminary National Register of Electors, which was used for the Canadian federal election that June.
It replaced a system in which voter enumeration was conducted for each election once a writ of election was issued in the respective jurisdiction. Bill C-63 also reduced the minimum length of election campaigns from 47 days to 36 days, as the time required for voter enumeration was significantly reduced. Five provinces adopted similar provincial registers in the 1990s, joining British Columbia, which had relied on a permanent register for a long time.
Passage of the legislation, based on the earlier recommendation of the working group, was "facilitated by the consensus surrounding a single alternative" for a national register. Moreover, Elections Canada presented the idea to elected officials "at an opportune time, when both government and the main opposition parties found the arguments for change especially compelling and indeed self-serving".
Legislative changes The Elections Act as amended by Bill C-2 granted royal assent on 31 May 2000 contained thirteen clauses regarding the National Register of Electors, clauses 44 to 56. Maintenance of the register is specified in clause 44, and clause 45 specifies that "an electronic copy of the Register for each electoral district shall be sent to the MP for the constituency" by 15 October of each year Clause 55 permits the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada to "enter into agreements with provincial bodies responsible for establishing voters' lists" and that a payment may be issued to the provincial body. Prohibition of unauthorized use of the National Register of Electors is stipulated in clause 56, which also prohibits electors from providing false information.
Legislation was later introduced to amend the type of data collected and stored in the National Register of Electors. On 17 May 2007, the privacy commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs regarding Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act submitting a letter in which she criticized the proposed changes to the Canada Elections Act. One of the problems was the inclusion of an elector's date of birth in the voter lists sent to polling stations on election day for use by polling clerks and scrutineers; Stoddart stated that verification of an elector's birth year would be sufficient. The second problem she raised was inclusion of the date of birth in the voter lists sent to each candidate for all electoral districts in Canada, and also to all political parties.
She stated that inclusion of this information in the voter lists sent to candidates does not "contribute to protecting or improving the integrity of the electoral process".
Despite this, the committee recommended inclusion of an elector's date of birth in the elector lists "on the grounds that this would provide a further safeguard against electoral fraud, especially in cases where a prospective voter presents himself or herself at a poll without adequate identification", and this was included in the committee stage in the House of Commons. At the committee stage in the Senate, an amendment to sections 107(2) and (3) of Bill C-31 was made so that "lists provided to candidates will not include the elector's date of birth or the elector's sex", which is the version that was ultimately granted royal assent.
Bill C-31 also introduced the use of a unique personal identifier for each elector in the National Register of Electors, and changed the date by which electronic elector lists are to be made available to members of Parliament for an electoral district to 15 November from 15 October.
Unauthorized use Unauthorized use of data contained in the National Register of Electors or the list of electors generated from it may result in the imposition of a maximum penalty of a $5,000 fine or one year in prison.
Data sharing The Canada Elections Act permits Elections Canada to synchronize the data in the National Register of Electors with information obtained from external parties. These include federal agencies and Crown corporations including the Canada Revenue Agency, Canada Post (via the National Change of Address service), and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It also specifies that Elections Canada may obtain information from other jurisdictions, such as from provincial and territorial motor vehicle registrars, and provincial electoral agencies with permanent voters lists. Since 1999, Elections Canada has convened the Advisory Committee of Electoral Partners annually (known as the National Register of Electors Advisory Committee until 2008), usually in November in Ottawa, to discuss the permanent elector databases, data sharing arrangements, and other related topics.
In July 1998, Elections Canada signed a one-year interim agreement with the Division of Driver and Vehicle Licensing in Manitoba to transfer driver licence records to Elections Canada every three months. In September 1998, the first batch of data on storage tape contained in a plastic cartridge was sent to Elections Canada; it had information about 675,000 licensed drivers in Manitoba. In January 1999, Elections Canada lost the tape. A report about the investigation stated that "the tape had been deposited inadvertently into Elections Canada's non-recyclable waste"; before the investigation, there had been concern that the tape and its data had been stolen. It resulted in separate investigations by Privacy Commissioner of Canada George Radwanski, the Office of the Manitoba Ombudsman, and an audit commissioned by Elections Canada conducted by a private security firm. The interim agreement lapsed without renewal.
As a result of this incident, Elections Canada changed its practice so that "upon receipt...these tapes are now sent directly to the secured computer room".