ARCHIVED - Building a Just Society:
A Retrospective of Canadian Rights and Freedoms

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom

Vote

Democratic Rights

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Election officers at Hiawatha Council Hall, near Rice Lake, Ontario, during the first federal election in which all adult aboriginal people in Canada could exercise their right to vote (from left to right: Lawrence Salleby, Chief Ralph Loucks, Lucy Musgrove, Eldon Muskrat), October 31, 1960

3. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

4. (1) No House of Commons and no legislative assembly shall continue for longer than five years from the date fixed for the return of the writs of a general election of its members.

(2) In time of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection, a House of Commons may be continued by Parliament and a legislative assembly may be continued by the legislature beyond five years if such continuation is not opposed by the votes of more than one-third of the members of the House of Commons or the legislative assembly, as the case may be.

5. There shall be a sitting of Parliament and of each legislature at least once every twelve months.

Men waiting in line to vote, June 1957
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Election campaign button depicting William Lyon Mackenzie King, no date
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Lithograph poster for an election campaign in Russell County, Ontario, depicting the flag of the Dominion of Canada and other emblems above the slogan "Vote & Influence for Malcolm Cameron," August 1872
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Cover of a publication by the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing entitled Les Peuples Autochtones et la réforme électorale au Canada, 1991
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Cover of a book by Margot I. Duley entitled Where Once Our Mothers Stood We Stand: Women's Suffrage in Newfoundland, 1890-1925, 1993
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