Following the Supreme Court decision in the case of Frank and Duong, Parliament amended the legislation. Any person who has Canadian citizenship and who lives abroad may register.
The act provides that the place in which they vote, the place in which they register in Canada, is their “last place of ordinary residence”. However, the act also states that every person is deemed to have a place of ordinary residence in Canada, and section 9 says that if we are unable to determine by the normal rules what is the “place of ordinary residence”, then the relevant election officer—which in this case would be Madame Duquette and her team—would come to a determination of what that place is. It could be where the family members in Canada are or last were. It could be a place of work. Even though they are abroad, they may have worked in Canada. It would be some place of connection.
At the end of the day, we are required to find the most appropriate location for that elector. As I indicated earlier, once that location is identified, the person stays with that location until and if they come to Canada to reside again—not just to visit but to actually reside in Canada.