Mail has slowly begun moving this week as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) switches to rotating strikes — but it’s already too late for Canada Post to deliver voter cards and mail-in ballots for multiple upcoming elections across the country.
Provinces, territories and municipalities have scrambled to get voting details and documents out to residents through other means.
But some experts say despite those efforts, the disruption could still lead to fewer people casting their ballots, since voter registration cards provide essential information during elections for which rules can be different and turnout already tends to be low.
The national postal strike was particularly disruptive to the delivery of voter registration cards in Quebec, where most voters had to make sure they were registered this week to vote in the Nov. 2 municipal elections.
Concerned with the impact on voter participation, the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), which represents the City of Montreal and surrounding municipalities, is calling for all election documents to be deemed “essential mail.”
That way, voter information and mail-in ballots aren’t held up in the mail during any future Canada Post labour disputes.
Most elections in Canada allow voters to register on election day at the correct polling station with proper identification. That isn’t the case for provincial and municipal elections in Quebec.
In Quebec, residents have to make sure their name, address and other details are accurate on the voter list weeks before they cast their ballot — all information they would usually verify by looking at the voter card they got in the mail.
Canada Post strike disrupts delivery of voter cards, election ballots
To try to get as many of the cards out as possible before this week’s deadline, Elections Quebec allowed municipalities to deliver the information however they saw fit, suggesting they even use volunteer groups such as Scouts or junior hockey teams to help.
Some municipalities paid out of pocket for last-minute delivery through private companies.
“It’s been a lot of gymnastics,” said Me Charles-Hervé Aka, the returning officer for the western Quebec municipality of Chelsea, which paid a private courier to hand-deliver registration cards.
Aka said a small community like his doesn’t have the same resources a larger city might have to get voter information out.
“It’s challenging, but we try to do our best,” he said.
The nearby City of Gatineau paid a bailiff to serve voter information cards at a cost of $3 to $6 per door.
Other jurisdictions in Canada were also stuck troubleshooting how to get special ballots delivered to voters and sent back in time for their election days.
Special ballots, often referred to as mail-in ballots, allow someone to cast their vote outside of a regular polling location, most often through receiving and sending it back through the mail.
For upcoming territorial elections in Yukon and Nunavut, entire logistics plans with land and air transport were set up to ensure those ballots would make it.
Special ballots play an important role in rural and remote areas. In Yukon, for example, 17 per cent of electors used the option during the last territorial election.
“We have a philosophy and approach here that everything is ‘figureoutable,’” said Max Harvey, chief electoral officer for Elections Yukon.
“It all comes back to doing what we need to do so electors can have the right to vote.”
Elections Yukon also loosened the rules for in-person voting on its Nov. 3 election day, including creating a “vote anywhere” policy so people can show up at any poll in their electoral district.
“Obviously we want to make sure that we keep the integrity, the access, the services to the electors. So we put a lot of focus on that,” Harvey said.
Albertans will also vote in municipal elections on Oct. 20. Edmonton and Calgary opted to courier their mail-in ballots, and requested voters return them in-person or pay out of their own pocket to have their ballot couriered back.
Some municipalities, like Edmonton, gave up altogether on trying to send voter information cards, instead telling residents to look up their polling information online.
Elections Nunavut and Elections Yukon also made registration searchable on their websites; many Quebec municipalities, including Montreal, Quebec City and Gatineau, also did this.
While voter registration cards aren’t essential to cast a ballot, they do play a vital role in elections, according to Holly Ann Garnett with the Electoral Integrity Project, which researches election processes around the world.
“Some research has suggested the best way, after personal contact, to get somebody to be mobilized to go to the polls is through this direct mailing information,” Garnett said.
“So even though we might say that a voter information card, something mailed to your address is going to be a bit antiquated, in fact, it’s how Canadians prefer to get their electoral information,” she said.
The registration cards are especially important in provincial, territorial and municipal elections, Garnett said, because voters might not know an election is underway.
Plus, the rules to vote — like where to cast your ballot and what to bring with you — can all vary by jurisdiction. Voter cards help clarify all of that.
“It can really complicate the act of voting if you don’t have that information at your fingertips,” she said.
“Many people might choose just simply not to participate at all.”
That’s concerning, Garnett said, when municipal, provincial and territorial elections already tend to have lower voter turnout. (Municipal elections in Ontario in 2022 saw 32.9 per cent turnout, for example.)
CBC News reached out to both Canada Post and CUPW about the labour dispute’s impact on elections.
Neither responded directly to questions about the delivery of voter information or special ballots, or whether they would consider agreeing to make election materials essential in the future.
The two sides already have a longstanding agreement to continue to deliver government support cheques during strikes and lockouts.
Canada Post and CUPW remain locked in a labour dispute that is now nearly a year long. The crown corporation’s last contract offer to CUPW was on Oct. 3. The union has yet to respond.
