First of all, an apology for the overextended silence. I couldn’t find anything interesting to blog on, I’m afraid. Fortunately the CBC has rescued me by reporting on a challenge to the provision of the Canada Elections Act, S.C. 2000 c. 9 (CEA) which prohibits Canadians who have resided abroad for more than five consecutive years (except members of the Canadian forces, civil servants, diplomats, and employees of international organization) from voting in federal elections. (Indeed the disenfranchisement potentially extends even to those Canadians who have been abroad for less than five years but do not intend to return to Canada as residents, or even those who are unable to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with “the date on which [they] intend[] to resume residence in Canada,” pursuant to par. 223(1)(f) of the CEA. It is not quite clear whether the challenge extends to the requirement of an intent to return (on a certain date). While the intent requirement is in the same provision (par. 11(d) of the CEA) as the five-year limit, it might be easily severable; certainly the individuals bringing the challenge emphasize their desire to return to Canada.
The CBC writes that
[t]he rule denying the vote to Canadians outside the country for more than five years was enacted in 1993 amid debate about the strength of their ties to Canada and how well informed they are about the domestic political situation. However, it was only in 2007 that Elections Canada began to enforce the rule to “more clearly reflect the intention of Parliament,” said spokesman John Enright. Until then, the five-year clock would reset for expats who returned even for short visits. Now, they have to “resume residency” before leaving again to regain their right to vote abroad.
It adds that
[a]ccording to economist Don DeVoretz, professor emeritus of Simon Fraser University, close to 10 per cent of all Canadians live abroad – a larger population than all but four of the provinces. About one-third of them live in the United States.
The leading case on the disenfranchisement of a class of citizens is Sauvé v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68, [2002] 3 S.C.R. 519, which the Supreme Court held ― by a 5-4 majority ― that denying the right to vote to prison inmates serving sentences of two years or more was a violation of s. 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides (in part) that “[e]very citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons,” and that this violation was not justified by s. 1 of the Charter. The government had conceded the s. 3 violation, which I assume will also happen in this case. The real debate in Sauvé was, and will be here, on the s. 1 justification.
Chief Justice McLachlin, writing for the majority in Sauvé, warned that “[l]imits on [the right to vote] require not deference, but careful examination” (par. 9). While “logic and common sense” could serve as justifications in the absence of hard scientific evidence, “one must be wary of stereotypes cloaked as common sense, and of substituting deference for the reasoned demonstration required by s.1” (par. 18). The prohibition on prisoner voting utterly failed the s. 1 test. For one thing, prisoner voting gave raise to no specific concern which Parliament sought to address by prohibiting it. Parliament’s stated objectives of promoting respect for the law and enhancing the purposes of criminal punishment were vague and symbolic, so much so that their “rhetorical nature … render[ed] them suspect” (par. 24); they were not pressing and substantial, as required by s. 1. For another, even if Parliament’s objectives were satisfactory, deprivation of the right to vote was not rationally connected to them. “[A] decision that some people, whatever their abilities, are not morally worthy to vote — that they do not ‘deserve’ to be considered members of the community and hence may be deprived of the most basic of their constitutional rights” (par. 37) runs against the direction of historical progress towards universality of the franchise and “is inconsistent with the respect for the dignity of every person that lies at the heart of Canadian democracy and the Charter” (par. 44).
How will these comments apply to the denial of the franchise to Canadians living abroad? It seems to me that the government is again going to have a hard time articulating the objective of this measure, “the harm that the government hopes to remedy” (par. 23). My best guess is it will be something like “preventing voting by people who are uninformed or do not care about Canadian politics, or who have abandoned their membership in the Canadian community.” The applicants who launched this challenge, as the CBC story describes them, certainly give lie to any such claims. Especially now, thanks to the Internet, it is in fact as easy to keep abreast of Canadian news while living in New York as in North York, in Melbourne as in Montreal, in Kolkata as in Calgary. And of course it is now easy to maintain one’s ties to one’s family and friends in Canada, and to remain part of the broader community (as indeed I am trying to do with this blog for example). Add to this the fact that those Canadians living in Canada need not show that they are in any way informed about politics or current events, or that they have any sort of community ties, in order to be able to vote, and the denial of this right to those living abroad looks perfectly arbitrary. As with the prisoners, it is a judgment that they are not morally worthy to vote ― and such judgments are not open to Parliament, according to Sauvé.
I wish the challengers, and their lawyers, the best of luck.
Double Aspect 
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