Juno News - October 16, 2019Elections Canada needs to take non-citizen voting seriously
Episode Stats
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178.60464
Summary
Non-citizens are getting voters' cards, but many of them don't know they're not supposed to be voting. Andrew Lutton talks about the growing number of non-citizens on Elections Canada's voter list, and why it needs to be enforced.
Transcript
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One of the most important things in a free country is its fair and open elections,
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meaning that a free country needs to safeguard the democratic process.
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That's such a paramount obligation for a nation.
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Unfortunately in Canada, Elections Canada doesn't seem all that concerned
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with the volume of non-citizens who would be logistically able to cast a ballot,
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Now I've written about this in the past, other people have raised the concerns as well,
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that you could go and add yourself to the voters list right at the polling station
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Now you have to declare an oath and sign a form that says you're a citizen,
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But it goes beyond that because non-citizens are actually on the list already,
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where they're getting voters cards, all they have to do is show up with their card,
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with their driver's license, and they can cast a ballot.
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Now this is something that's been raised by non-citizens who receive their cards,
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The ones who aren't speaking up are the ones who may not know
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When I was a candidate in the provincial election in Ontario in 2018,
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I encountered permanent residents who were genuinely unclear
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about whether they were legally entitled to cast a ballot or not because of these concerns.
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Because some of their friends were getting voters cards, other people would tell them,
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no, you don't need your passport or citizenship, you just have to go and sign up.
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We know that in May, Elections Canada acknowledged that it had more than 100,000,
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I think it was 103,000 non-citizens on the voters list.
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And it said it was going to work hard to get those names off the list,
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though it's unclear how they did that, and actually it's unclear if they did that.
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In my colleague Candace Malcolm's column on TNC.News,
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she talks about a couple of other incidents where people who are not supposed to be voting
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Now we have to assume that the majority of people who are not supposed to be voting
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But we've seen ridings where very slim margins have been the determining factors
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Which means that if you're talking about 100,000 or hundreds of thousands of voters
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that could be having a monumentally disruptive effect on the race in Canada,
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And it's not to say that this is being co-opted for sinister purposes by a particular party,
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but it's to say that we need to safeguard our democratic process
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to protect the democratic rights of those who are citizens and those who should be voting.
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This is not offensive, this is the law, and the law needs to be enforced.
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But unfortunately when we hear rhetoric from the government like a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,
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it's safe to say that platitudes are trumping the law in many cases.
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We see this with the immigration file, and yes, we're seeing it with Elections Canada and citizens voting.
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I once knew a woman who had no idea she wasn't a Canadian citizen.
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She assumed her mother had looked after it when she was younger,
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and it wasn't until adulthood, after she had cast ballots in several elections by the way,
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In many cases, these things can be dealt with, but people need to know.
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And when voters' cards are being sent to non-citizens,
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it's only muddying a process that needs to be protected and preserved.