A non-citizen who received a voter card for the upcoming election is sharing his concerns about the integrity of Canada’s election.
Paul Gabriel, a British man living in Alberta, was shocked to find that he had received a voter card in the mail for the October 21 election.
“I didn’t think very much of it. I thought, ‘this is just a mistake,'” said Gabriel.
“I’ve been here 19 years and I’ve never had one yet.”
Gabriel has lived in Canada for almost 20 years without receiving a voter card, he has never been a Canadian citizen.
While it could have been an isolated incident, Gabriel decided to speak out when he learned that one of his co-workers, another non-citizen, received the same voter card telling them where and how to vote.
Gabriel’s post sharing his story on Facebook has been shared over 16,000 times, with many other non-citizens saying they also received voter cards.
How many of us are there?” Gabriel said.
“I’m looking closer at the card and thinking there must be something else that stops me from voting.”
Gabriel fears that the little identification needed to vote may lead to some non-citizens voting.
“There must be a safety valve or a check or something like that… and I’m looking at it, and no, there isn’t. I can just use my driver’s licence.”
It was only a few months ago that Elections Canada identified over 103,000 potential non-citizens on the voter registry.
Over 40,000 of these had been on the registry since 1997.
Elections Canada, in the wake of this serious risk to the integrity of Canada’s election, chose to remind everyone that it is illegal for non-citizens to vote.
While Elections Canada has claimed that every potential non-citizen on the registry either had gotten citizenship recently or been removed situations like Gabriel’s appear to still be occurring.
This is not a new issue either, as early as October 2018 True North founder Candice Malcolm reported that a Mexican asylum seeker had received a letter from Elections Canada telling her that “registering in advance will ensure you’re on the voters list and will save you time at the polls.”
“I don’t know where they got her information to begin with, but they sent her a registration card,” the woman’s husband told the Toronto Sun as she was still learning English.
“She’s taking ESL classes, we haven’t even been in the country a year and a half, and the Liberals are sending a vote registration card.”
It is unclear how many non-citizens will receive voter information cards, or if Elections Canada has a plan for when they come to the polls.
