The
Right Honorable Justin Trudeau P.C., M.P., Prime Minister of Canada
Office of the Prime Minister of Canada
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
1.5 million disenfranchised Canadians
Dear Prime Minister,
I write to you today not to advocate for a controversial issue or to bring an ethically questionable issue to light, but to seek redress for the unconstitutional laws that bar 1.5 million overseas Canadians from their right to participate in free and fair elections. Her Majesty the Queen has informed me to refer all Canadian matters to the Governor General, whom has in turn informed me to refer this matter to you.
Born a jus soli Canadian citizen, I left Canada at a young age due to the nature of my father’s work and turned 18 in Paris to discover that I had lost my right to vote before I even came of age to vote.
Our right to the franchise is one that has not come easily. In 1902, Cunningham v. Homma affirmed the government’s power to disenfranchise on the basis of race. By 1940, every province of Canada granted full suffrage to women. In 1948, Canada helped draft and signed the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, finally restoring the franchise to minority ethnic groups in Canada. But it wasn’t until 1982 when your father’s government enacted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that section 3 of the Charter read:
“Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of the members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.”
However, in 1993, an unconstitutional law was enacted that stripped overseas Canadians of their right to vote. Although the Ontario Superior Court overturned this in 2014, the Ontario Court of Appeals repealed it in 2015. Now, Canadians who reside abroad for more than five years still cannot vote in Canadian elections.
Justice Strathy (of the 2015 case) commented that “Canada’s current law is fair”, but it doesn’t make it right. Justice Penny noted in his decision in 2014 that the constitution guarantees the right to vote based on citizenship and not on residency. Canadians abroad are still Canadians and the government has no right to create two classes of citizens, one of which are deemed not worthy of the franchise. In addition, section 3 of the Charter is exempt from section 33 of the Charter; further affirming that Canadians’ right to vote is inviolable under any circumstances.
Canadians overseas actively contribute back to the homeland by promoting trade, cultural, and economic ties with foreign countries as well as being ambassadors of Canada on a daily basis. Overseas citizens that take up little to no government resources pay over $6 billion in tax to the government every year. I find it bizarre that convicts in jailhouses can vote, but 1.5 million non-resident Canadians who propagate Canadian values around the world cannot vote.
Though we are not subject to Canadian jurisdiction, we are still affected by tax law, immigration law, and Canadian foreign policy, part of which has made Canadian expatriates welcome around the world. I personally know of American friends who travel to developing countries with a maple leaf flag on their backpacks to avoid negative sentiments associated with the aggressive foreign policies of our southern neighbor.
As a matter of fact, in 2005, IOM-Canada has helped set up polling booths across the country for the estimated 25,000 Iraqi-Canadians to participate in Iraq’s first national elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein. I feel encouraged that Canadians are helping new democracies organize their voting processes wherever their citizens may be, but disheartened at the fact that overseas Canadians are not allowed to vote.
I turned 19 in Malaysia and when I turned 20, I spent a brief period of time in Vancouver and all my friends were surprised to know that I had lost my right to vote. After I left Canada later that year I moved to Berlin, where I was welcomed with open arms. Upon arriving as a Canadian citizen, I was granted full citizenship of the free city of Berlin with the right to free state university education, free public transportation as a student, subsidized national health insurance, housing and transport subsidies, as well as the right to vote in municipal elections.
Many German states have public school programs called “Jungendwahl” (youth vote), where children from the age of 12 participate in mock elections in real poll booths to learn more about universal suffrage. The youth are gradually allowed to participate in local and state elections at 16 and are granted Bundeswahlrechts (federal voting rights) upon turning 18. Despite having been torn apart by the ideologies that came from Berlin (both Marx and Engels went to my alma mater in Humboldt University) for over 40 years, it’s recent return to the free world has made it a more comprehensive and well-informed democracy than Canada.
It’s my pride and joy to claim the maple leaf as my own; in being a part of a nation that builds strength on diversity, a land abundant in natural beauty, a people that sing about guarding their rights and homeland in the French iteration of the national anthem, overcoming the folly of our southern neighbors with goodwill, and eating tree sap with pancakes for breakfast and saucy gravy chips for dinner. But for as long as we are denied our right to vote we cannot claim to be “the True North strong and free”.
But for now, President Kennedy’s words resonate with me: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”” And until my right to vote in Canada is restored, I’ll have a stronger identity with the strangers who welcomed me as one of their own than the fellow countrymen that have forsaken me.
Before I end this letter, please allow me to share with you a stanza of a poem from the suffragette movement. I feel that it understands me in times of tears and distress over my disenfranchisement:
“There
are wrongs that must be righted – bitter woes that seek redress.
We can hear our sisters calling in their distance and distress.
We need the power to lift them from their sad and unjust plight –
‘Tis for this we want the franchise – and we claim it as our right.”
I’d like to know, and I’m sure many of my fellow Canadians in Europe and Asia and elsewhere would like to know what you plan to do as Prime Minister to ensure that the constitution is exercised fairly to all. Canada’s history est une épopée des plus brilliants exploits, and I sincerely hope that one of these deeds will be restoring the franchise to all Canadian citizens – a franchise that we claim as our right.
Sincerely,
Jonathan C. Got
