Commissioner of Canada Elections is flooded with complaints

The Commissioner of Canada Elections has released statistics about complaints received during the 45th general election, which saw Mark Carney’s Liberal party elected as to a minority government.

The office responsible for ensuring compliance with and enforcement of the Canada Elections Act received 700% more complaints than in the previous election. That’s 650 complaints per hour during the campaign!

Canadians filed 16,115 grievances with the office. These ranged from allegations of foreign interference to reports of unauthorized election advertising, voters posting images of their ballots on social media, and failures by third-party advertisers to register. Third-party advertisers are allowed to promote during elections but must first file the proper forms with Elections Canada.

Amusingly—and perhaps predictably—the vast majority of complaints reviewed so far have been deemed out of scope for the Commissioner. That’s a more technical way of saying the complainants didn’t have a case.

Due to the high volume, most complaints remain unprocessed. As of June 25, the office had only reviewed 2,330 of the 16,115 complaints.

The Commissioner noted that many complaints were the result of a general ignorance of the law.

As an interesting aside, the office had expected far more complaints related to artificial intelligence and disinformation, but such concerns turned out to be overblown in the lead-up to the election.

In case you were worried: so far, the Commissioner has found no evidence that any of the complaints processed to date had an effect on the final results of the election.

Damien Kurek resigns so Pierre Poilievre can lead

Battle River–Crowfoot MP Damien Kurek officially resigned from Parliament today. The move will trigger a by-election for the riding where Pierre Poilievre will throw his hat into the ring in order to secure a seat in the the House of Commons.

Damien Kurek and Pierre Poilievre
Damien Kurek and Pierre Poilievre

Despite growing the Conservative seat count and the party’s popular vote, the Conservative leader lost his own seat to Liberal Bruce Fanjoy in the riding of Carleton. Poilievre had held the Ottawa region seat for 21 years.

Battle River–Crowfoot is a rural Alberta riding which occupies the space East of Highway 2 between Calgary and Edmonton. Poilievre volunteers have already started door knocking in the riding in anticipation of a by-election to be called within six months. For his part, Prime Minister Mark Carney has indicated that a by-election will happen sooner rather than later.

Former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer taken up leadership duties in Parliament while Poilievre maintains his status as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Poilievre will face a leadership review likely in January of 2026 at the upcoming Conservative policy convention. Poilievre still enjoys widespread support within the party.

The collapse of Jagmeet Singh‘s NDP and the agitation of US President Donald Trump to remove Justin Trudeau and then install Mark Carney over a kayfabe fight on trade and sovereigty proved to be catastrophic for a Conservative Party that was on its way to forming a majority government just months ago.

So, Damien Kurek steps into the role of ‘good guy’ and steps aside so Pierre Poilievre can take his seat in the Commons. Perhaps we’ll be calling him Senator Kurek some day?