OTTAWA: The Canadian government introduced a bill to increase voter eligibility – including rolling back a measure that excluded more than one million expatriates from voting in 2015.
The Minister for Democratic Institutions – Maryam Monsef – said that the reforms will ‘break down unnecessary barriers to voting while enhancing the efficiency and integrity of the elections’.
However, the measures do notgo as far as the Liberals pledged during their last campaign to revamp the way Canadians vote – by dropping the current system in favour of a more ‘representational’ model.
Those efforts have been met with a significant pushback from the opposition which called for a referendum on such proposals –with Canadians showing little appetite for such a drastic changein the polls.
Monsef said she hopes to introduce that legislation in the first half of 2017 while renewing her opposition to holding a referendum.