Opposition deems bill amendments unconstitutional
The conservative government passed a Bill in June of 2014 to tighten up election laws in Canada. Recently, the official opposition has refuted this Bill and proposed that these amendments to the Canada Elections Act infringe upon Canadians’ right to vote.
Just what does Bill C-23 propose? Fundamentally, its purpose is to eliminate the ability for voters to have other persons vouch for their address and identity. It also eliminates the use of voter information cards as proof of address.
…students living away from home will be disenfranchised by the amendments…
These amendments may come across as nothing exciting, but the consequences of having this bill remain as is could be significant. The Council of Canadians and Canadian Federation of Students predict that with these amendments, numbers in the hundreds of thousands could lose their ability to vote in the next election.
Critics of the bill argue that Aboriginal, homeless, and students living away from home will be disenfranchised by the amendments, and as such, accusations that the Conservatives of attempting a fix on the next election abound.
The amendments pushed through by Bill C-23 will greatly affect the ability to vote for Aboriginal persons, the homeless, and students living away from home. Photo Courtesy Jamie McCaffrey via CC BY 2.0.
A report of the 2011 election says that though people were using these methods of voter identification, there was no evidence that these avenues were being used to produce fraud. As such, the very need for the introduction of this bill is being questioned.
Essentially, Bill C-23 has very little ground to stand on, and with a history of alleged election fraud by Conservative MPs, the opposition governments are at arms to see these amendments dropped.
The Conservative government argues that Bill C-23 merely adds to the integrity of the voting process. They contend that bringing valid ID on voting day is common sense and should be common practice.
Conservative Minister Pierre Poilievre stated that the opposition’s position is simply “that someone should be able to walk in [to a voting booth] without producing a single shred of identification and have their ID vouched for by someone else.” The minister maintained that this idea is preposterous.
The opposition proposes that, at the very least, these change be made well known. One proposition was that voter information cards be marked prominently to indicate that they cannot be used as a valid ID. This was rejected by the committee responsible for reviewing the proposed amendments.
After this rejection, New Democrat MP David Christopherson said, “If they won’t even vote for this, then the last bit of the fig leaf, as ugly as that image is, is gone. And we know, and Canadians know, that this is all about trying to get the fix in for the Conservatives in every way they can, and that voter suppression is alive and well in the government of Canada.”
The open-ended policy is surely in need of alterations, but excluding large populations due to their social or residency status cannot be the answer, and with an already low voting populace, complicating the process may not make sense.