Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
In March 2011, I learned that I was no longer eligible to vote when I attempted to obtain a special ballot through the Elections Canada website. I discovered that because I had lived outside of Canada for more than five years, I could not participate in the then-upcoming election. I had moved to the United States in 2001 to pursue a Ph.D. Under previous interpretations of the rules, my regular visits to Canada had reset the clock, thereby allowing me to retain my right to vote.
In 2011, I was a post-doc at Stony Brook University where I taught an undergraduate course on the history of civil rights movements in the United States. The irony was not lost upon me that while I was teaching my students about the struggles of individuals and groups to apply their citizenship to the fullest of its means, and to press forward persistently for freedom and democracy and the removal from their society of any forms of second-class citizenship, I was unable to vote anywhere. Essentially, I was teaching my students about people who had far less privilege than me who understood a basic truth: that enfranchisement is a basic recognition of citizenship. The right to vote empowers and dignifies citizens.
If the committee is interested, I can take you through the details of the various attempts I have made, along with others, to ask the government to restore expat voting rights, but I want to rest upon one detail. At the beginning of our effort, we attempted to petition Parliament to ask for redress, only to learn that Parliament does not recognize petitions from non-residents. In other words, until recently I had no vote and no means of petitioning my own government while living abroad.
Over the past four years, I have heard from many Canadian expats from around the world who shared my desire to have their voting rights restored. We believe that democracy, like the Canadian flags we wear on our backpacks, should travel abroad with us. Like me, these expats are likewise concerned about Bill C-50, which they see as an attempt to disenfranchise us.
Because of the tenaciousness and support of our lawyer, Shaun O'Brien, the generosity of her law firm, Cavalluzzo Shilton McIntyre Cornish, and the wisdom of Justice Penny's 2004 decision, we saw vindicated our conviction that the right of every citizen to vote was at the heart of Canadian democracy. Each citizen must have the opportunity to participate in the selection of elected representatives.
Justice Penny wrote the following:
...the government is making a decision that some people, whatever their abilities, are not worthy to vote—that they do not “deserve” to be considered members of the community and hence may be deprived of the most basic of their constitutional rights. But this is not the lawmakers’ decision to make. The Charter makes this decision for us by guaranteeing every citizen’s right to vote and by expressly placing all citizens under the protective umbrella of the Charter through constitutional limits on the power of the government to limit a citizen’s right to vote.
When I learned of Justice Penny's decision last year, I was elated. I am, however, dismayed at Bill C-50, which threatens to undermine much of our hard work over the past four years. I therefore offer the following to the committee.
Bill C-50, as it is currently written, violates the spirit of Justice Penny's rulings and attempts to perform an end-run around them. It adds onerous requirements by creating a narrow timeframe to submit burdensome paperwork. These new requirements make it more difficult for most expats and impossible for others to vote.
I am directly impacted by the ID requirements. I no longer have my Ontario driver's licence, which was my sole Canadian document listing both my former address and containing a photo. I had to turn this in upon obtaining a driver's licence in the U.S. I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of my expat peers in the United States are in a similar position.
While I can probably secure some other forms of documentation, I now have to go through a process that is unnecessarily time-sensitive, time-consuming, and subject to the unpredictable schedule of post offices in Canada and the United States. I wonder why the government is not seeking to make voter registration easier, less time-sensitive, and more accessible. Rigour and access need not be mutually exclusive.
In my course on the history of civil rights, we studied in detail the history of voter suppression. A favoured tactic to thwart further registration, we saw, was the use of bureaucratic red tape to create administrative roadblocks that were justified in the name of protecting the integrity of the system, electoral fairness, or maintaining the democratic process.
Such justifications offered a respectable veneer to those who were actively undermining the democratic process by requiring frequent re-registration, registration at inconvenient times, provision of information unavailable to many targeted voters, and so forth. It also sent a strong message to targeted segments of the population that their vote is not welcome. I fear that by attempting to accomplish administratively what can no longer be accomplished since our recent court victory, Bill C-50 falls squarely within this inglorious tradition.
Over the past four years, reporters have asked me to justify my right to vote. My answer is simple. I am a Canadian citizen and want to have the right to exercise my citizenship to its fullest capacity. I also point out to these same reporters that it is the politicians who are attempting to limit constitutional rights who deserve far more scrutiny than those asking for access to their constitutional rights.
In closing, I wonder why my own government is so determined to spend so much time, money, and energy disenfranchising expat Canadians. Other witnesses have generously suggested that this legislation is a solution in search of a problem. I would merely ask who stands to benefit from making voting so difficult for so many Canadian citizens.
Thank you for allowing me to make these remarks.