Unlike Canadian Expats Living Abroad, Non-Citizen Residents Are Directly Impacted by our Laws, Yet Have No Say in Them

Published in the National Post, July 31, 2015

Donald Sutherland is upset. He wants to vote in Canadian elections because he feels Canadian, because he has to restrain himself from saying “eh?” and because he’s a citizen. But he’s a non-resident citizen, and the Ontario Superior Court has just upheld a federal election law restricting the right to vote to Canadians who reside in the country.

Granting these populations the right to vote will remedy an injustice that persists in Canadian federal electoral law, which denies vulnerable individuals the right to contribute to decisions about the laws that influence their lives most significantly.

Canadians who have resided abroad for over five years are banned from voting in elections, even though they are citizens. Sutherland is supported by approximately 1.5 million Canadian ex-pats who believe that their citizenship guarantees them a right to vote in Canadian elections, even if they have lived abroad for nearly all of their lives.

The logic of those who criticize the ruling seems sound: the right to vote is a fundamental right of citizenship. To deny a citizen the right to vote would therefore seem to be a pretty clear violation of that person’s rights. When states deny women, felons, people of colour or the property-less the right to vote, all of which they have done historically, and some of which they still do presently, they are unambiguously denying them their full complement of citizenship rights.

But this case is different. Those who criticize the ruling, and those who are calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reinstate their supposed right to vote, ignore what is radical about it: it could pave the way for long-term, non-citizen residents of Canada — who are already subject to our laws but currently without any democratic representation — to vote.

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Taken literally, such a ruling could justify granting the right to vote to permanent residents of Canada (who are by law required to live in Canada for many years), as they await citizenship, and could even be applied to the thousands of temporary foreign workers who fill acute and chronic labour shortages in the Canadian economy for years and years without accruing the right to citizenship. And this would be a good thing.

The principle of democratic justice supports tying residence to the right to vote. This principle says that those who are governed by a set of laws have a right to a say in what those laws are. Permanent residents and long-term foreign labour migrants in Canada are unambiguously governed by Canadian laws: changes to Canadian tax laws, immigration laws, labour laws and so on, can have profound impacts on their lives.

Non-citizen residents are also significant contributors to the Canadian economy and social fabric. They are admitted to Canada because they are believed to be able to contribute in essential ways; in the case of temporary foreign workers, the government repeatedly reminds us that the economy would fail without them. What then justifies denying them the right to vote?

One worry is that the right to vote is what makes citizenship valuable. But Canadian citizenship is valuable for the passport that accompanies it and the protection it offers against deportation.

Another worry is that granting non-citizens the right to vote will give “foreigners” undue influence over Canadian law. But the court ruling suggests that the worry should be about giving influence to those who are not deeply affected by Canadian law; this reason doesn’t apply to those who reside and work in Canada for many years. On the contrary, granting these populations the right to vote will remedy an injustice that persists in Canadian federal electoral law, which denies vulnerable individuals the right to contribute to decisions about the laws that influence their lives most significantly.


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Granting the right to vote to non-citizens, at least in municipal elections, is not unusual. Since 1992, European Union citizens residing outside of their country of citizenship have been permitted to vote in the municipal elections in their country of residence. Legal residents of New Zealand are permitted to vote in all elections after one year of legal residence. Denying the right to vote to non-resident citizens is also common. Long-term non-resident citizens of New Zealand are not permitted to vote in elections, nor are Israeli non-resident citizens.

There is a significant number of individuals who stand to benefit from the right to vote in Canadian elections if the franchise were extended to all long-term residents: nearly 1.5 million residents of Canada are non-citizens. This is the same number of ex-pats whose right to vote is said to be denied as a result of the recent court ruling. But these individuals are governed by Canadian law on a daily basis. The principle of democratic justice demands that we give them the right to vote, and this ruling paves the way.

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