The CJECE began as the Canadian Electrical Engineering Journal in 1976 with the support of Tom Pavlasek, then president of the Canadian Society for Electrical Engineering, and George Sinclair, then president of the Canadian Region (Region 7) of IEEE. It became the Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1988.

George W. Holbrook served as the first editor. He was succeeded by Ian McCausland (1979–80) and A.N. (Tas) Venetsanopoulos (1981–83, 1988) of the University of Toronto, V. Ramachandran (1983–85) from Concordia University in Montreal, V. Rajagopalan (1986–87) from Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Vijay K. Bhargava (1988–92) and Wu-Sheng Lu (1990–93) of the University of Victoria, Michel Lecours (1993–98) from Laval University in Quebec, Om P. Malik (1998–2003) from the University of Calgary, Witold Kinsner from University of Manitoba and Xavier Maldague from Laval University (2004-2008). The current co-editors are Bob Dony from the University of Guelph and Vijay Sood from the University of Ontario Technical Institute..

The first issue expressed the desire to "meet the longfelt need of the electrical engineering community to have a medium for communicating technical information of particular interest to Canadians, while also serving as a forum to make Canadian electrical engineering achievements known to a worldwide readership." That mission guides the CJECE to this day.