Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system is constitutional: court

OTTAWA — A panel of three Ontario Court of Appeal judges unanimously affirmed the constitutionality of Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system in a ruling released on Monday.

The system, laid out in the Canada Elections Act, sees the candidate who receives the most votes in a given riding or electoral district become the member of Parliament.

Fair Voting BC and the Springtide Collective for Democratic Society argued in court that the first-past-the-post system violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ guarantee of effective representation.

The groups also said the system leads to the under-representation of women and other groups in Parliament, breaching the Charter’s equality rights provision.

In a proportional representation system, the number of representatives a political