BILL C-50: Liberals say it will stay dead!

[Oscar]

Proposed Harper voting rules to stay dead, new Liberal government says

[ http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12 ... nment-says ]

December 2, 2015

TORONTO — The new Liberal government wants more Canadians to vote in elections and won't be reviving measures proposed by the former Conservative regime that critics said would have the effect of suppressing voting, the Prime Minister's Office said Wednesday.

At the same time, a spokesman for the PMO said the government had made no decision on an existing law — currently subject of a court battle — that effectively disenfranchises expats abroad for more than five years.

"We will be able to clarify our intent in the coming months," Olivier Duchesneau, deputy communications director in the Prime Minister's Office, said in an email.

"But we believe that more Canadians should have the ability to vote, not the opposite."

Two expat Canadians in the United States launched a constitutional challenge to rules in the Canada Elections Act that bar them from voting from abroad. They were initially successful in Ontario Superior Court in 2014, but the province's Court of Appeal sided with the Conservative government in July.

The two are now waiting to see if the Supreme Court of Canada will take up their case. In the interim, they have called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to withdraw the government's defence of the legislation if the top court does agree to a hearing.

The PMO said no decision has been made on the litigation or the existing legislation, but made it clear the Citizens Voting Act — or Bill C-50 — proposed by the former government would stay dead.

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[ http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/12 ... nment-says ]