Canadian Municipal Elections See Surge in AI Adoption
Candidates and voters in British Columbia and Ontario are increasingly using AI for campaign management and candidate research, sparking calls for provincial regulation.
Municipal elections across Canada are seeing a significant rise in the use of artificial intelligence by both candidates and voters. In British Columbia, candidates in Esquimalt and Highlands utilized AI for tasks ranging from grammar assistance for learning disabilities to analyzing municipal tax schedules. Some candidates, including incoming Esquimalt councillor Holly Courtright, employed ChatGPT as a de facto campaign manager to build websites and generate weekly updates.
This trend has prompted Jeremy Caradonna, a Victoria councillor, to urge the Union of B.C. Municipalities to seek provincial regulation to combat AI-generated disinformation and third-party advertising. While some candidates avoided the technology due to environmental concerns, others argued that low civic budgets make cheap AI tools inevitable.
Simultaneously, voters in Ontario are using chatbots like Anthropic's Claude to research candidates for the 2026 municipal elections, largely because the lack of party affiliations requires more independent research. However, researchers from Western University and McGill University warn that chatbots may provide false or inflammatory information. This follows a Quebec provincial election where an estimated 40 percent of voters used AI and received inaccurate data. In response, Anthropic updated its policies to prohibit using Claude to deceive voters or disrupt elections.
