Canada Federal Polls 2015: Election Body Sets Readiness Date By March 1 Next Year

Canada will go to polls on Oct 19, 2015. But Elections Canada, the poll body, tasked to oversee the elections will be election-ready months before that. An alert EC has now set March 1, as its "readiness date". The information was published in an Elections Canada tender last week, when it invited bids for multimedia kits including USB keys, which are preloaded with information about political financing. The kits are to be distributed to all federal political parties.

Clarifying on the readiness date for Canada federal polls, spokeswoman Diane Benson said the agency is not expecting an election before next Oct. 19. However, having an advance readiness date is important in effective planning, reported Ottawa Citizen. "Having readiness dates is important, because our mandate is to be ready", Benson said. This means, even though the law specifies a fixed date for the next election, nothing precludes the Governor General from dissolving the Parliament earlier than that. "So, we have to be ready", Benson noted.

Multi Media Kits

In a tender document, the Elections Canada notified the requirement of 4,000 multimedia kits by January to meet the March 1 readiness date. The multimedia tender is only one of the several election-related contracts posted by Elections Canada. Another notable bid was for the tools to conduct a national survey of youth aged between 18 and 34, as a follow up to Elections Canada's first-ever national youth survey being held after the 2011 election.

Benson said the survey was "essential" to supplement Election Canada's efforts to understand "how the barriers to voting are evolving and ensure that the agency is equipped with evidence-based research to inform its outreach activities." Tenders were also invited for printing, storing and delivery of 26,000,000 voter information cards, and also for printing and shipping of candidate lists in Braille.

Main Contest

Even as the excitement of the upcoming federal election is kicking in, a newly released poll has said Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives will have a tough fight in hand with Justin Trudeau's Liberals, nationally as well as in provinces like Ontario, reported Globe and Mail. The opinion poll was conducted by Ipsos Reid for Global News and had a larger sample size.

According to the report, if elections were to be held tomorrow, the Liberals would get 34 percent of the popular vote and Conservatives 33 percent. The figures are indicative of the fact that the Liberals have lost four percentage points since September, while Conservatives gained two percentage of points. Thomas Mulcair's New Democrats may receive 24 percent of the natioanl vote if polls are to be held today. But that party does not have lead in any of the 10 provinces. The poll also said 15 percent of the voters are still undecided.