Last October, True North founder Candice Malcolm wrote a report for the Toronto Sun about how Elections Canada had given a non-citizen a voter registration card telling her to register in order to vote in the 2019 federal election. The asylum seeker had only been in the country for 18 months when receiving the unsolicited letter from Elections Canada encouraging her — an ineligible non-citizen — to illegally vote.
When Malcolm asked Elections Canada how an asylum seeker ended up on the voting list — something that the asylum seeker said was common — the hallowed institution in charge of running and protecting Canada’s federal elections said it was “rare” for non-citizens to receive voter registration cards.
“From time to time, a non-citizen may inadvertently be included in the register and may therefore receive a voter information card in error. In the rare case that a non-citizen gets a voter information card, we ask that they call their local Elections Canada office and ask to be removed from the National Register of Electors,” said Natasha Gauthier of Elections Canada to Malcolm last October.
As Malcolm’s article blew up on social media because Canadians were miffed that newcomers without citizenship were being invited to vote, Elections Canada swiftly responded denying this concerning story was a major problem to the integrity of the federal vote.
“The voter information card is not currently accepted as ID. At no time have electors been allowed to vote by showing a voter information card as their only piece of ID,” Elections Canada’s Twitter account shot back. “Bill C-76, currently before Parliament, would allow the voter information card to be used as a proof of address. Elections Canada would not accept the voter information card alone–it would have to be shown with another accepted piece of ID that proves their identity.”
Yet the new voting rules under the Trudeau government’s Bill C-76 have severely weakened the requirements for voters to prove their identities, not to mention show they’re even Canadian.
Now, under the new legislation, anyone can vote (albeit illegally if a non-citizen) by providing a voter information card and bank statement or utility bill and student ID card or other combinations of paperwork that do not require photo verification. If an individual doesn’t have these documents — which do not prove citizenship — the individual can have another person vouch for them that they’re telling the truth.
But what is even more disturbing is that at the beginning of May, news broke that Elections Canada was removing 103,000 people illegally on the voter register who are not Canadians. That’s hardly the “rare” occurrence Elections Canada adamantly claimed it was last year, trying to dismiss Malcolm’s report. And with tens of thousands of asylum seekers illegally entering the country in the past couple of years one wonders if many of these non-citizens are receiving voter registration cards in the lead up to this election.
In light of the recent news Elections Canada paid Liberal-loving social media influencers $325,000 before pulling the plug on their biased get-out-the-vote campaign, serious questions arise if Canadians should have faith in this institution to deliver a fair and clean election this October.
Should Canadians trust Elections Canada — encharged by the Trudeau government to monitor fake news during the election — to set the record straight when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s director of communications spread categorically false information on Twitter about then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s record?
Should Canadians trust Elections Canada to effectively allow Canadian expats to vote?
Does Elections Canada — accused of anti-Conservative bias and too many Liberals in its ranks — unfairly target the Conservative Party of Canada while letting the Liberal Party of Canada largely off the hook?
Will Elections Canada investigate Liberal stalwart John McCallum telling China it’s in its interest to get Trudeau re-elected?
As the mainstream media take a bailout bribe from the Trudeau government and follow its directive to focus election coverage on the Russian ruse and “fake news” as the main culprits assaulting Canada’s democracy, we at True North will look at domestic actors poisoning and weakening our democracy from within.
