What is a federal electoral district (riding)?

A federal electoral district (commonly called a 'riding' in Canadian usage) is the geographic area represented by a single Member of Parliament in the House of Commons. Canada has 343 federal electoral districts after the 2024 redistribution (up from 338 between 2015 and 2024). Each riding elects one MP by first-past-the-post voting, and each riding has a single population (with provincial and territorial averages varying significantly).

The term 'riding' comes from medieval Yorkshire, England, where the county was divided into three ridings (the Old English word 'thriding' meaning third). The Canadian usage is informal and applies to federal, provincial, and (in some places) municipal districts. The official term in federal law is 'electoral district' (in French, 'circonscription électorale'). Some Canadians call ridings 'constituencies', though this usage is more common in British and Atlantic Canadian English.

Riding sizes vary widely by population and area. The most populous federal riding is Brampton South (Ontario), with about 154,000 voters; the least populous is the territorial ridings of Yukon, Nunavut, and Northwest Territories (each about 25,000 voters). The geographically largest riding is Nunavut at 2,093,000 square kilometres (the entire territory); the smallest is Toronto Centre (Ontario) at about 8 square kilometres. Population per riding is constitutionally constrained by the Senate floor and grandfather clauses (which keep PEI at four ridings despite its small population), creating significant variation between provinces.

Each riding has a Returning Officer, a federally appointed Elections Canada official responsible for running federal elections in the riding, administering polling stations, counting ballots, and reporting results. Ridings are subdivided into polling divisions (with one or more polling stations per division). The Returning Officer's office in each riding is established at least 60 days before an expected election. Ridings are renamed and reorganised every 10 years through the redistribution process. New ridings created in the 2024 redistribution include Brantford-Brant South-Six Nations (Ontario), Vaughan-Woodbridge (Ontario), Calgary-Crowfoot (Alberta), and several others. Riding names typically reflect geographic features, historical figures, communities within the riding, or hyphenated combinations of the major communities.