Proportional representation in Canada
proportional multi-winner electoral system in Canada
Proportional representation in Canada refers to the ongoing debate over whether and how to adopt proportional representation (PR), usually mixed-member proportional or single transferable vote, to provincial and/or federal elections in Canada. Cities in Manitoba and Alberta elected representatives to their legislatures in various cities using proportional representation between the 1920s and 1950s. Federal adoption of PR has been historically supported by the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party with varying levels of support over time. In the 2010s, there was a brief all-party support for PR following the 2015 Canadian federal election.
Background
Members of the House of Commons of Canada (lower house) are currently elected by first-past-the-post (the candidate with the most votes wins) in single-member districts called "ridings." The prime minister of Canada is chosen by the parliament, typically by a party with a majority of seats.
In the past at various times, thirteen ridings elected two MPs through plurality block voting. That Halifax would have two seats was written right into the BNA Act, Canada's constitution.
Several different election systems have been used at the provincial level including single transferable voting (a form of proportional representation), instant-runoff voting, block voting, and a post/seat system where each seat in a district is elected through a separate contest either through FPTP or IRV.
History
The Proportional Representation League was founded in 1893 as an international (United States and Canada) association of PR advocates. The group put out a quarterly PR Review in the first decades of the 1900s.
In late 1915, the Canadian P.R. Society was formed.
“Proportional representation in Canada” enters the record as proportional multi-winner electoral system in Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Proportional, representation and Canada can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q138720067. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015, 1893 and 1915.
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