What was the Wartime Elections Act of 1917?

The Wartime Elections Act of 1917 (7-8 George V, c. 39) was a federal statute passed by Sir Robert Borden's Union government on September 20, 1917. The Act gave the federal vote to female relatives of Canadian servicemen (mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of soldiers and sailors serving overseas) and stripped the federal vote from immigrants from enemy countries who had been naturalised after 1902. The Act was widely understood as designed to skew the electorate toward the pro-conscription Union government in the December 17, 1917 federal election.

The Act was paired with the Military Voters Act of August 1917, which extended the federal vote to all members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force serving overseas (about 400,000 soldiers, of whom about 235,000 voted in 1917) and the Canadian Army Medical Corps' nursing sisters. The two acts together changed the federal electorate in ways that favoured the pro-conscription Union government. The estimated demographic effect was: (a) about 500,000 enfranchised women relatives of soldiers (overwhelmingly likely to vote pro-conscription); (b) about 235,000 enfranchised soldiers (overwhelmingly likely to vote pro-conscription); and (c) about 50,000 disenfranchised naturalised immigrants from Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria (most of whom would have voted Liberal and against conscription).

The Act was vehemently opposed by Wilfrid Laurier's Liberals and by women's suffrage organisations. Established suffragists like Nellie McClung opposed the Act because it enfranchised some women on a partisan basis (those with male soldier relatives) rather than on the principle of universal female enfranchisement. Naturalised Canadian citizens from enemy nations (many of whom had been in Canada for decades) felt deeply betrayed by the removal of their votes. Justice Minister Charles Doherty acknowledged in House of Commons debate that the Act was 'a partisan measure', though he defended it as wartime necessity.

The December 17, 1917 federal election delivered the Union government a 153-seat majority in the 235-seat House of Commons. Many observers concluded that the Wartime Elections Act and Military Voters Act had decided the election. The Act was followed by the broader An Act to confer the Electoral Franchise upon Women of May 24, 1918, which extended the federal vote to most Canadian women on the same basis as men (introduced for the December 1921 federal election). Naturalised immigrants from enemy countries had their votes restored after the war by the Dominion Elections Act of 1920. The Act remains a controversial example of wartime manipulation of the electorate and a tarnished milestone in the history of Canadian women's suffrage.