The Unfair Elections Act:
A Page from the Republican Dirty Tricks Book
In a recent speech at the National Action Network convention in New York City, U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the issue of voter suppression and voter ID laws.
President Obama echoed Canadian election experts who point out that voting fraud is almost non-existent and there is simply no justification for introducing new, highly restrictive voter ID laws – as Republicans have done in the States and Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives are doing right now in Canada.
“So let’s be clear. The real voter fraud is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”
– President Barack Obama, April 11, 2014
Sadly, the Unfair Elections Act is doing exactly what President Obama is warning about.
Conservatives persist in making bogus arguments about voter fraud, despite the fact almost all the irregularities investigated by Elections Canada are administrative errors. As a result, they are ramming through an unfair bill that could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Canadians.
Canadians deserve a government that encourages people to vote, not the opposite.
To put it bluntly, Bill C-23 is a threat to our democracy, the latest in a series of attacks on what I would call “our Canadian way of Life”. We must not let the Conservatives get away with this unprecedented attack on our democratic process.
Our Prime Minister would have Canadians believe Elections Canada is being strengthened, when in fact, the opposite is true. The Unfair Elections Act is a thinly-veiled pursuit of a vendetta against the Chief Electoral Officer. Look no further than Bill C-23’s removal of the right of the Chief Electoral Officer to engage in democracy promotion and general public education which targets the more marginalized groups whose members are less likely to vote. Look also at how in C-23 the Chief Electoral Officer is put on the list of those expressly covered by the Conflict of Interest Act, when no other officer of Parliament is so singled out.