Mr. Speaker, that is the irony of Bill C-50, which the government claims is a response to the court's ruling.
The court ruling indicated that all Canadians should have the right to vote. That right is protected by the charter. All Canadian citizens have a right to vote. The existing legislation bars Canadian citizens living abroad for more than five years from voting. That provision has been struck down.
However, there is a paradox here. The government wants to give all Canadians the right to vote, but it is discouraging them from doing so by making it extremely difficult or even impossible to exercise that right. That is hard to understand.
We had hoped for a much broader and much more satisfactory response in order to make things easier for Canadians who want to exercise their right to vote. Instead, we have before us today a bill that does quite the opposite.
Canadians will have to re-register every time an election is called and they cannot even pre-register. If we had a fixed election date, then at least Elections Canada could be given a timeframe. That would be the minimum. However, that is not the case. The government decided to add a provision to the bill specifying that people cannot register until the day the election is called and they must register for each election.
That means that if a person registers to vote in the 2015 election and another election is called in 2016, that individual will have to register again. The registration is good for only one single election. What is more, people have to register during the election period.