If the Conservatives secure another majority there's a good chance that the next time Canadians are allowed to vote, I won't be considered "Canadian" enough to count.
So I'll get up early for the taxi, catch an intercity bus for an hour-long ride over the mountain, spend another forty minutes crawling through traffic in a big-city cab, be searched and stripped of my smart phone, fill in my ballot, then do much the same (minus the search) to get home.
And I'll do it with pleasure. Because this year I'll be voting as though my life depends on it. Which, in figurative sense as a citizen of the country where I was born, it does.
The party asking for a renewed majority would rather I didn't vote at all. Politically, it wants to disappear me, to make me a non-person in my own land.
In 2007, the Harper government revised long-standing Elections Canada practice that allowed expatriates who maintained regular contact and an occasional presence in Canada to keep the right to vote. With the Conservatives, reside legally outside of Canada for five years and you lose what the third paragraph of our Constitution guarantees to "every citizen of Canada": "the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons." Earlier this year a lower-court judge in Ontario upheld the vote-stripping rule.
Of course, I'm not alone among Canadians the Harperites wish to disenfranchise. Not nearly. But their intent is anything but casual.
'Just go to the embassy'
This March, after an earlier test-run, I moved to Mexico to become the equivalent of a legal "resident alien" in this country.
Within 48 hours of the dropping of the election writ, I was on the phone to Canada's embassy in Mexico City to ask how I could vote.
The first response was a question. "How long have you lived outside the country?"
The diplomatic staff's first priority -- rationally, I suppose --was to eliminate as many potential voters under the new rules as possible. Once satisfied that I was still a few years away from losing my right to vote, the embassy referred me to Elections Canada's website for instructions on voting abroad.
There I learned that I needed to fax an application to Elections Canada with a photocopy of identification from the list of acceptable documents (these of course not including the election registration cards the Conservatives fought so hard to exclude). Once this was approved, a special ballot package would be sent to me by ordinary mail or, if I preferred, to the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City by diplomatic bag.
In either case, I would need to fill out my ballot, enclose it in a succession of envelopes, and return it to Elections Canada by Oct. 19. If I chose to receive my ballot at the embassy, I could attend there to vote and my ballot would be returned to Elections Canada again by diplomatic bag.
I followed the instructions. Given the vagaries of Mexico's postal service I opted for the embassy route. Then I waited. After about three weeks, I called Elections Canada's information line to inquire about the status of my application.
A young man named Jeff, or maybe Jess, was happy to inform me that I really didn't need to go to all that trouble about the special ballot. "You can just go to the embassy on election day and cast your ballot."
Really? That was decidedly not what the Elections Canada website indicated. But indeed, yes, the cheerful and sincere-sounding Canadian voice on the line insisted. Just walk in and vote and walk out.
I pressed ahead anyway, pointing out that I'd already applied for my special ballot, so could someone just confirm that it was on its way? He put me through to something called the Special Voting Assistance Group.
Another fellow -- older voice, didn't catch the name -- went through the to-and-fro to establish who I was and confirm that I was indeed registered to vote. My special ballot package was in the hands of DFAIT -- the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade -- he informed me, for delivery to the embassy in Mexico City.
Much appreciated. So, about what your front-line guy said, voting at the Embassy on election day…
"No! No, no, no." At least four sharp "Nos" in a row. The only way for one of Canada's estimated one million citizens abroad to vote is the somewhat creaky, and for those not close enough to an embassy, snail-mail-based special paper ballot. And it better get back to Elections Canada before Oct. 19.
And if I show up at the embassy on voting day? "They won't be able to help you. You won't be able to vote."
Script or freelancing?
I don't know whether Jeff, or Jess, was reading a script, making an assumption, or freelancing for the Harper campaign. With the Conservatives' record of convictions for Elections Act violations, and its gutting of most of the Act's safeguards, the last can't be ruled out.
The fact that I have to wonder says much about the state of democracy in Canada. I wish that worried more of you who are closer to a ballot box more than it seems to.
I didn't move here to become a Mexican -- hard to do at my age anyway. Or to turn my back on Canada. I have spent four decades telling Canada's stories, from tragedy in Saint John, New Brunswick, to the deliberate way our federal governments have abandoned our natural security. If anything, I hope to contribute here to bringing Canada closer to a country we mostly misunderstand, often abuse, and could find much opportunity with.
If I remain here another three and a half years, Mexico may accept me as permanent resident, even shortly after as a citizen. I may do one or even both. They talk about democracy very differently here. Often with cynicism and anger, yes, but also with a stubborn persistence that betrays how deeply people hope it might one day actually happen, or work.
It used to happen in Canada. And as old Winston Churchill quipped, it worked better than all the other systems. It can always be tweaked and maybe improved (though tweaks like proportional representation always carry their own unintended drawbacks). But it mostly worked and it beat the alternative.
Stephen Harper and his party want to own it, torque it, and introduce us to an alternative. One where they run the machine to churn out wins by, among other things, taking away votes.
So I'll go to the trouble of taking the day from work. And really, the privations are few. The bus will have Wi-Fi. I'll get an excuse for lunch at one of the capital's scores of great eateries. I'll be home by dinner-time.
I hope I get to do it again.
Original Article
Source: thetyee.ca/
Author: Chris Wood
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