Procedure and House Affairs committee  Both the writ and the voting process are critical. All timelines need to be extended to increase participation.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I just looked it up. I would need more time to find the research, but there is data with respect to past elections and participation by place of birth, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. I think people obtain citizenship for a number of reasons and also do not obtain citizenship for a number of reasons. There are many jurisdictions globally that do not allow someone to have dual citizenship. It is at the cost of their identity that they would give up one in o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Very briefly, I arrived in Canada in October 1989 as a privately sponsored refugee. My family and I left Soviet-occupied Poland in about mid-1988 because of the civil unrest. We spent just over 14 months in a refugee camp in Germany before being resettled here. In the seven and

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That was not exactly a free democracy and those were not exactly free elections. I think it had the facade of elections, but certainly at that point there was suppression of the media, suppression of civil rights and the ability to gather and to disseminate information that ran c

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure I can comment on the goals of communism, because I was born about six months before martial law was introduced. In my most formative years, I grew up in a country that was fraught with poverty, food stamps and insufficient freedom, so I don't know that I can speak we

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would agree with that I think the role of government is to be centred on the best interests of the people, and especially the people who are left behind, so the 1% that certainly isn't at the top, but the 1% that is silenced and forgotten and neglected. I think everything built

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. I want to specifically point out the wonderful work that was done by “Got Citizenship? Go Vote!” a number of years ago in Winnipeg, which was organized by the Ethnocultural Council of Manitoba. Voting instructions and encouragement to participate were recorded in Yo

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that as much as possible we need to start as early as possible. I also want to point out that a lot of these platforms were made available online. I don't want to lose sight of the fact that what the pandemic has revealed to us is an enormous digital divide between commun

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would agree with my learned friend Professor Blais that the longest period possible would be the best service to all Canadians.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with you that there is a profound desire to participate. Among some newcomer communities, immigrant and refugee communities, there certainly is high participation. I don't want to discount that. I think we would need to look very carefully at disaggregated data, specific

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think it was mentioned by another speaker previously, but I believe that a non-partisan platform that summarizes the various positions of the different parties, which could be under the care of Elections Canada or another body with authority to oversee it and ensure it is corre

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think a great deal can be done through the ethnocultural community. I think there is a tremendously strong web of communities across the country who are interconnected, who are very invested in everyone having participation in the democratic process and who can be utilized in o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I believe that Elections Canada needs to prepare multilingual resources that explain how to use the mail-in ballot in order for voters to know exactly what they need to do and by when they need to mail the ballot itself. The instructions need to be very clear and provided to ethn

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, in terms of municipal and provincial movements toward—