Canadians may soon get to vote abroad

Dubai: Canadian expatriates living in the UAE may be happy that they can now take home a cup of Tim Horton's java when they're feeling homesick but under a 1993 federal law, they still can't vote in their own elections back home if they've lived away from the country for more than five years.

All of that could change after a legal challenge was filed this week in Ontario Superior Court arguing that the law unfairly excludes expatriate Canadian citizens from exercising their legal rights to shape their own society.

Two expatriates living in the United States filed the application which was officially served before authorities on Tuesday asserting that the law is unconstitutional for more than one million Canadians posted around the globe.

Informed choice

If overturned by the courts, some of the 26,000 Canadians living in the UAE could cast special ballots by proxy just as before the time in 2007 when Elections Canada began enforcing the law because it argued those living abroad were not following domestic issues enough to make informed election choices.

Canadian Gillian Frank, 33, is finishing his post-doctoral history degree in New York and has been away from home for more than ten years.

He told Canadian media outlets that when he learned he could no longer vote, he decided to file suit.

"My sense of being disenfranchised and the fundamental unfairness of it all motivated me," Frank told Canadian Press. "I have a stake in the kind of country I want Canada to be," said Frank, who served in the Canadian military and was a Governor General's Award winner.

John Wright, an engineer from Saskatchewan working for a UAE oil firm, told Gulf News yesterday that as a Canadian-born citizen he believes his right to exercise his franchise cannot be revoked by anyone in government, save the courts.

"Why should I be punished for wanting to see the world and be part of it? I never revoked citizenship. Tell me how my birthright should be taken away because of some pencil pusher at a desk in Ottawa who has little understanding of the world because he has never lived outside his own country?" Wright asked.

According to Let Canadians Vote!, the law is being enforced by Elections Canada.