Indigenous Voting Rights | The Brian Mulroney Institute of Government

Up until 1960, Indigenous peoples in Canada did not have the right to vote in federal elections, unless they were willing to give up their 'Indian' status through enfranchisement.
Enfranchisement was the process of stripping Indigenous people of their Indian status to gain citizenship rights instead.
Prior to 1960, laws around voting contained several qualifications that voters needed to have and many of these automatically excluded Indigenous peoples (such as owning property, British citizenship, being a taxpayer, etc).
If an Indigenous person was willing to relinquish their Indian status, they would be able to vote as long as they still met existing qualifications.
Like many policies surrounding Indigenous affairs, enfranchisement was used to assimilate Indigenous people and strip them of their rights, culture, language, and traditional practices.
In 1960, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's government, as promised in his election campaign, helped amend Section 14 of the Canada Elections Act.
This is the record of the House of Commons Debate on March 10, 1960, where the House of Commons came to a virtually unanimous decision to give Indigenous peoples the right to vote without revoking their treaty rights in exchange.

Citation

Canada. Parliament. House of Commons Debates, 24th Parliament, 3rd sess., vol. 2. March 10, 1960. Accessed August 4, 2022. https://www.lipad.ca/full/1960/03/10/7/