I am one of 1.4 million Canadian citizens living abroad. For better or worse, every action we expatriates take, every job we do educates the world’s imagination about Canada. We are the de facto trade reps, cultural envoys and human lenses through which the world views Canada.
But at least for the 2015 election, Canadians who have lived outside the country for more than five years consecutively won’t be able to vote after the Ontario Court of Appeal struck down a constitutional challenge in a 2-1 ruling in July.
Allowing expats to vote, the court ruled, “would allow them to participate in making laws that affect Canadian residents on a daily basis but have little to no practical consequence for their own daily lives.”
Expatriates are angry. We are embittered and feeling truly abandoned by our home country.
Is Canada a great place? Does it have beautiful diversity, an awe-inspiring landscape and kind people? Undoubtedly we say yes.
Is it a place where rights are fundamental? Is Canada a healthy democracy worthy of risking life and limb to immigrate to? We don’t know any more.
We want to welcome the world, but we’re spurning the first points of contact with that world. We’re cutting loose a huge number of truly vital members of the Canadian diaspora.
The reasoning behind this law is confounding.
U.S. expats living abroad get to keep their right to vote as long as they continue to file tax returns. In the UK, the cutoff is 15 years. In other Commonwealth countries like Australia, expats can keep their right to vote by signing a simple declaration saying you intend to return at some point, or as long as you make a short visit to your home country. Up until 2007, that was the practice in Canada, too.
But the Conservative government argued for the five-year rule. And Elections Canada began enforcing a residency requirement soon thereafter.
What ties bind us to our nation? Economic and social relationships? Do those ties disappear when we cross an imaginary border?
We expatriates are connected to Canadian friends and relatives whose education, aging, mobility and livelihoods we care about deeply. And we are being robbed of the ability to show how we care, how we could help create a better future.
Are we human beings who happen to be Canadian or are we shopping carts that lock up when they reach the end of the parking lot, useless and irrelevant beyond their intended boundaries?
I want a Canada that not only allows its citizens to travel abroad for five years or more, but encourages them to do so. All of the relationships we form are vitally important in this world, and undoubtedly many will be economic.
How bizarre for our government to reject the right to vote, a fundamental right protected by the Charter regardless of residency.
Josef Szende is a Canadian expatriate living and working in Brooklyn, New York.
news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
Voting rules. If you live abroad, you must:
• register with the International Register of Electors.
• have resided in Canada before applying to be on the register.
• have resided outside Canada for less than five consecutive years.
• confirm that you plan to resume residency in Canada and provide a date.
Exceptions to the five-year rule:
• those employed outside Canada in the federal public administration.
• those employed outside Canada by an international organization of which Canada is a member.
• those who live with a member of the Canadian Armed Forces or with a person who is employed outside Canada by the Canadian Forces.
