It was established in December 1996 when Bill C-63 was granted royal assent and the preliminary National Register of Electors was populated with data in April 1997 during the final Canada-wide enumeration.
The database contains basic information about electors: name, address, sex, and date of birth.
Elections Canada has data sharing arrangements with federal, provincial, territorial, municipal, and other agencies throughout Canada to update the National Register of Electors and ensure its currency, and to enable other jurisdictions to update their respective databases with information from the National Register of Electors.
Elections Canada has two-way data sharing arrangements with the electoral agencies of each province and territory except Saskatchewan and Yukon, from which it may obtain but to which it cannot send information.
In 1989, the Government of Canada appointed the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, which in 1991 "recommended that provincial lists be used for federal purposes".
For the 1988 federal general election, this required about 110,000 enumerators,[3] who would canvass door-to-door so the cost and effort to the individual was minimal.
[3] Typically, there would be several visitations for those initially missed or not at home, and while at some point the onus shifted to the uncontacted (and thus unlisted) individual to take some minor steps to become registered, the dominant thrust of the approach amounted to a reaching out on the part of the state — literally to the doorsteps of the citizenry.Canvassing to enumerate electors after drawing up ("dropping") the writ of election ensured that a high proportion of those electors were registered for each election, up to 98 per cent for some elections,[3] minimizing participation inequality which typically affects individuals who are poor, young, or have little formal education[3] that tend to not take the initiative to participate in electoral and related events.
[3] Passage of the legislation, based on the earlier recommendation of the working group, was "facilitated by the consensus surrounding a single alternative" for a national register.
[7] Legislation was later introduced to amend the type of data collected and stored in the National Register of Electors.
[8] The second problem she raised was inclusion of the date of birth in the voter lists sent to each candidate for all electoral districts in Canada, and also to all political parties.
[8] Providing date of birth information to politicians for the purpose of target-marketing of constituents is neither a use consistent with protecting the integrity of the electoral system nor a use that a person would reasonably expect when registering to vote.She stated that inclusion of this information in the voter lists sent to candidates does not "contribute to protecting or improving the integrity of the electoral process".
[13] In September 1998, the first batch of data on storage tape contained in a plastic cartridge was sent to Elections Canada; it had information about 675,000 licensed drivers in Manitoba.
As a result of this incident, Elections Canada changed its practice so that "upon receipt...these tapes are now sent directly to the secured computer room".
Every year, about 400,000 Canadians reach voting age and 200,000 Canadians die, resulting in changes to the National Register of Electors based on information obtained from the Canada Revenue Agency, provincial and territorial motor vehicle registrars, and provincial electoral agencies with permanent voters lists.
If consent is granted, the Canada Revenue Agency will provide the resident's "name, address, date of birth, and Canadian citizenship information".
[28] As part of the process, Elections Canada mails out letters to 18-year-old citizens explaining how to register for inclusion on the voters list.
Provincial agencies which maintain permanent lists of voters include those in British Columbia and Quebec.
[20] By 2000, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec had each conducted one election using a permanent voter register, Newfoundland and Labrador had established one, and New Brunswick had passed legislation to create one.
[17] Despite the sharing agreement, Elections Alberta does not immediately integrate updates received from the National Register of Electors, as the provincial register includes only individuals who satisfy the "six-month residency requirement in the provincial legislation which is not reflected in the federal legislation",[17] and thus excludes some electors from the national registry.
[23][37] A revision period beginning 33 days before an election and ending six days before the election enables eligible electors to update their names and addresses on the National Register of Electors, to add their names to it, and request deletion of deceased and other individuals not qualified to vote from the list.
[40] Elections Canada and Statistics Canada used the National Register of Electors to generate the National Geographic Database (NGD),[40] a spatial database[41] which contains roads[42] and related attributes such as road "name, type, direction, and address ranges",[41] amongst other data.
[43] Since 2001, data quality improvements focussing on road and address range currency has been the primary area of updates to the National Geographic Database.