PROC report: Challenges Regarding Special Voting [Recommendations]

2026/06/18 1 Comment

In general, sensible recommendations with my comments below each one. On a personal note, both of our children are expats, one’s ballot arrived in time (from the USA) the other not (from Europe):

Recommendation 1: That the Government of Canada should consider introducing legislation to amend the Canada Elections Act so as to require electors residing abroad to provide proof of their last place of Canadian residence as part of their application to be added to the International Register of Electors. 

Agree. While the current honour system has merit, given the potential for significant increases in expatriate voting due to C-3 expansion of citizenship transmission beyond the second generation, this would enhance the integrity, and perceived integrity, of expatriate votes.

Recommendation 2: That the Canada Revenue Agency and Elections Canada consider pursuing closer cooperation in order to determine, where possible, the most recent Canadian addresses of voters living abroad so as to assign them the electoral district in which they may vote, and improve the delivery of election information to voters living abroad. 

Worth considering as part of integrity measures and complements recommendation 1. Would only apply to those who submitted tax returns.

Recommendation 3: That for elections held on a fixed date under 56.1(2) of the Canada Elections Act, voters should be allowed to apply for a special ballot at least 45 days before election day, even if the writ has not yet been issued. Elections Canada would then be able to send a special ballot to the elector as soon as the writ has been issued. 

Makes sense. Unfortunately, given fixed election dates are more notional than real so likely little practical impact.

Recommendation 4: That the Canada Elections Act be amended to set the deadline for candidate nominations to close three days earlier than at current (i.e., on day 24 before election day, instead of on day 21 before election day). 

Would help. Not supported by Conservatives.

Recommendation 5: That Elections Canada should use couriers, when it deems appropriate, to send ballots to voters living abroad who are on the International Register of Electors. They should also provide voters with a return label to return their ballot via courier. 

Given that most expatriates don’t pay Canadian taxes, should Elections Canada pick up the tab? Alternatively, Elections Canada could offer a fee-based expedited delivery service, as it does for passports.

Recommendation 6: That Elections Canada should undertake further study of the hybrid ballot delivery systems that are used elsewhere in the world, such as printing a ballot at home to assess the feasibility of implementing them in Canada. 

Never argue about further study but found Elections Canada testimony convincing in terms of some of the issues. Conservatives expressed considerable concerns regarding possible negative impact on integrity.

Recommendation 7: That the Government of Canada should not consider any measures which would see special ballots cast by electors electronically. 

Clear response, based on integrity concerns.

Recommendation 8: That, at present, the Committee does not hold the view that electors, who cast their vote by special ballot, ought to be permitted to write the name of a political party instead of writing the name of a candidate, as was proposed in Bill C-65, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act of the 1st Session of the 44th Parliament. 

Interesting that they ended up here. But the logic is sound, even if one’s vote is party-based, MPs are elected individually. Also required expatriate voters to research the names of candidates, not just indicate the party they support.

Recommendation 9: That the Government of Canada should undertake a study to assess the feasibility of embassies providing ballots and/or acting as polling stations during Canada’s federal general elections. 

No issue with studying the issue but suspect some integrity and operational issues.

Recommendation 10: That the Government of Canada should ensure that, subject to security and logistical considerations, Canada’s embassies, high commissions and consulates provide opportunities for Canadian electors abroad to submit their special ballots for expeditious return to Elections Canada. 

Easier than Recommendation 9, but given the “subject to security and logistical considerations” and the impact on regular mission operations, even the mailbox function would raise complications in terms of meeting ballot deadlines and when they would be counted.

Recommendation 11: That having conducted a comprehensive review of the testimony, the Committee holds the view that there is no consensus on the creation of extraterritorial electoral ridings. 

Fair enough. Good discussion on issue and various complications.

Recommendation 12: That the Committee believes that candidates and political parties bear the greatest responsibilities for motivating electors, including those residing abroad, to turn out to exercise their franchise. For greater certainty, this recognition does not remove or diminish from the responsibilities borne by Elections Canada and Global Affairs Canada to provide information to Canadian electors residing abroad on how to exercise their right to vote. 

Agreed!

Source: PROC report: Challenges Regarding Special Voting [Recommendations]

Filed under Citizenship, elections, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Borrows: What does blood have to do with being Anishinaabe?

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Nice counterpart to the “quantum test” advocates. Laurence Hill, in Blood, made a similar point “who among us is not mixed:”

…Anishinaabe people, like every human community, are genetically diverse. We may have mixed Indigenous roots. Most of us also have ancestors from other continents too. Despite these truths, some don’t see Anishinaabe as multi-ethnic, self-determining political communities with constitutional rights as First Nations. We are racialized by percentages, and this diminishes us in the process. 

Blood quantum is the vampire of our people. I am wholly Anishinaabe, just as I am wholly a Canadian citizen. I should not be required to divide, apportion or segregate myself into smaller units. No one, including five-year-olds, should be considered more or less Anishinaabe because of their genetic heritage. We must insist on our rights to self-determination, to freely choose who we are and who we will be. 

Our children must be made and become whole. 

John Borrows is the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law at the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, and a Class of 2026 Guggenheim Fellow. He is the author of The Seven Cycles of Life: Seeking Healing, Connection and Justice in Anishinaabe Teaching, from which this essay has been adapted.

Source: What does blood have to do with being Anishinaabe?

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More recent immigrants in Canada are becoming homeowners. Here’s why

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Of interest:

A rising proportion of recent immigrants are becoming homeowners, nearly catching up with the home ownership rates of their Canadian-born peers, says a new report.

In the three provinces with multiple-year data available, the home ownership rates of permanent residents measured between 2018 and 2021 all rose, according to the Statistics Canada study, which examined recent immigrants’ home ownership trajectories.

“Paired with historically low interest rates starting in 2020, the larger income gains among recent immigrants may have contributed to their increased home ownership rate in 2021, even as ownership rates declined among the Canadian-born population,” said the report released Tuesday.

In Ontario, the home ownership rate for recent immigrants in the fifth year after admission rose from 35.7 per cent in 2018 to 40.3 per cent in 2021. In B.C., it went up from 33.4 per cent to 37.5 per cent. In Nova Scotia, it soared from 34.8 per cent to 48.1 per cent.

During the period, the home ownership rates for their Canadian-born counterparts fell slightly in all three provinces. In Ontario, it dropped from 50.7 per cent to 47.8 per cent; B.C., from 44.7 per cent to 43.3 per cent; and Nova Scotia, from 51.1 per cent to 49.8 per cent.

Statistics Canada said it could be related to recent immigrants’ significant gains in wages relative to the rise among Canadian-born individuals. In Ontario, for instance, recent immigrants’ median family income went up by $14,000, from $61,000 in 2018 to $75,000 in 2021, while it crept up by $2,000 from $107,000 to $109,000 for the Canadian-born….

Source: More recent immigrants in Canada are becoming homeowners. Here’s why

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Their Country [Bahrain] Revoked Their Citizenship, Then Tried to Expel Them to Iran

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Sigh…:

The phone calls that upended their lives came during a family lunch, or while they were at the gym. One man heard the news from a friend, who told him to rush to the bank to withdraw his savings while he still could.

Some of them thought it was a joke, at first. Then Bahrain’s state news agency published their names, confirming that they and their children were among 69 people whose citizenship had been revoked.

Officials in Bahrain, the Persian Gulf monarchy that these families called home, were accusing them of disloyalty during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. A government statement on April 27 described them as individuals of “non-Bahraini origin” who were being stripped of their nationality for “glorifying or sympathizing with hostile Iranian acts.”

For weeks, Bahrain had been arresting people on similar accusations. Some had shared videos online showing missile and drone attacks that Iran had launched at Bahrain, a close U.S. ally that hosts a major American naval base….

Source: Their Country Revoked Their Citizenship, Then Tried to Expel Them to Iran

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Immigration department suddenly suspends citizenship of scores of ‘Lost Canadians’

2026/06/18 Leave a comment

Further coverage with predictable comments by Chapman. Most of the coverage to date raises few concerns regarding the limited connection to Canada that most applicants have. Will continue to monitor numbers as they emerge:

…Don Chapman, who campaigned for decades for Lost Canadians to receive their citizenship, said for people with Canadian ancestors stretching back hundreds of years birth certificates were not always available, and other official documents such as census records have been accepted by IRCC. 

One Lost Canadian, he said, had an ancestor born in a part of Quebec that did not issue birth certificates. But it did have baptismal records. However, as her ancestors were Jewish they were not baptized. She relied on other official records, including the official census, to prove her ancestors was Canadian. 

“To revoke citizenship by e-mail and without a judicial review is horrifying. It also sets precedence in that no Canadian will ever be secure until citizenship is a right versus a legislated privilege,” he said. 

“I want everyone who was given citizenship to be reinstated, with assurances that they keep it. If not, I expect court challenges where the government should pay all expenses and damages.”

“After decades of being unconstitutionally denied their citizenship, Lost Canadians need to be welcomed home, not shunned,” he added. 

In its statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said that “trained officers review all the evidence before them before approving a citizenship certificate.”

The fresh review “is to determine, through an individualized process, whether the certificate was properly issued based on the evidence required by law,” the statement added. 

“This is a necessary and important safeguard, and all affected individuals will have an opportunity to provide additional documentary evidence in support of their case. If the review confirms that the individual is entitled to the certificate, it will be returned.”

Source: Immigration department suddenly suspends citizenship of scores of ‘Lost Canadians’

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Annual Summary of Total Immigration 2019-25

2026/06/17 Leave a comment

Someone asked me whether there was an easy table summarizes total immigrants, temporary and permanent. Generated this table using the annual totals in the various IRCC open data sets. 2023 was the highest total for all categories save for Permanent Residents. Greatest increase from pre-pandemic 2019 to peak 2023 was IMP, followed by TFWP and then international students. Greatest decrease from peak 2023 was for international students followed by IMP.

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Canada asks new citizens to hand back their citizenship certificates

2026/06/17 Leave a comment

Sigh…. Once again, none of these potential issues came up during Commons and Senate hearings on C-3, no such complications were raised and in general hearings did not focus on the effective shift to jus sanguines that C-3 engendered. Only Indian media I recall raised the “endless chain of citizenship” potential:

…The letters from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) give two reasons why these applications were flagged for review.

First, the documents submitted did not come from the source authority: the civil registry, the vital statistics office, provincial archive, or another official body that creates and holds the record needed to support a citizenship application.

Looking for a guide on how to obtain the needed descent documents from the province of Quebec? Visit our dedicated webpage to get all the details.

Second, when an applicant could not get a source document, they did not include a written explanation and proof that they had tried to obtain said documents.

Read against what citizenship by descent applicants describe as submitted, the cause for concern on the part of the citizenship department is generally that applicants do not adequately prove an unbroken lineage (through the appropriate documentation) from a Canadian citizen to themselves.

In other words, these surrender letters have been served to applicants who are Canadian but haven’t proven it the way the government needs.

Common trends among those who were flagged

Based on information they have submitted to citizenship forums, the people who received these surrender request letters tend to fall into a few groups.

Some used printouts from Ancestry or FamilySearch as their main proof for an ancestor. Some had certified records but from an archive rather than a vital statistics office, and now wonder whether an archive counts.

Some had a real gap; no birth record exists for an ancestor born in the 1850s, but they never formally documented the gap to IRCC in their application.

What can I do if I have already received a letter?

Individuals who have received a surrender letter are usually told explicitly what factors have raised an immigration officer’s suspicions, and they can still submit further documentary evidence in support of their application.

In the referenced round of issued letters, the two reasons cited (1. submitting “documents not from an original source authority”; and 2. missing explanations for unavailable records) point straight at the fix.

Utilizing the best practices covered in the previous section and carefully documenting any gaps in the supporting documentation proving your line of descent will already put your application on a significantly stronger footing.

Source: Canada asks new citizens to hand back their citizenship certificates

Government abruptly suspends citizenship certificates issued under ‘lost Canadians’ law

…Estimates of how many people could qualify for Canadian citizenship under the change vary. While the Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated that 115,000 people could be affected by the change, Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab told the House of Commons immigration committee that they didn’t expect a surge. 

Since the change went to effect on Dec. 15, the wait times for IRCC to process applications for citizenship certificates has increased substantially from five months in May 2025 to 15 months. 

While the backlog was in 56,000 applications in April and 70,400 in May, IRCC’s website shows 82,000 people are now waiting for their applications for citizenship certificates to be processed.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/7bUPP/1

Lisa Middlemiss, a Montreal immigration lawyer, said it is very unusual for IRCC to suspend a citizenship certificate once it has been issued — let alone suspend so many of them at the same time.

“It’s very unfortunate and very concerning,” she said in an interview. “If IRCC had concerns about the documentary evidence submitted in favour of a proof claim, then they should have investigated that before making a positive determination and not be reopening people’s closed cases.”

Filed under C-3, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Is This the End of Political Islam?

2026/06/16 Leave a comment

Good commentary. Delivery failures and corruption (not unique of course to Islamic governments):

…For now, many scholars doubt that political Islam will rise again soon. In a new book, “Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam,” Faisal Devji, a historian at Oxford, compares political Islam to Communism, Baathism and other ideologies that sprang up during a specific historical moment and later lost their relevance. Terrorism tarnished the Islamist brand, too, Professor Devji told me. Most Muslims abhorred the cinematic violence of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. “With the emergence of Al Qaeda and ISIS, you had a massive rethinking of what a Muslim public life and politics should look like,” he said.

Of course, measuring what people want across an area as vast as the Middle East is difficult. A further tangle is how to define political Islam, which can encompass everything from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, an Islamist at the head of a constitutionally secular state, to radical jihadists who attack anyone who disagrees with them, including other Muslims.

To avoid such complications, Arab Barometer, a public opinion tracker, focuses on specifics, said Michael Robbins, the group’s director. Its surveys ask whether it is better for religious people to hold state positions, whether clerics should have sway over government decisions and whether religion should be private and separated from socio-economic life. It compares those indicators in six Arab countries — Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia.

Overall, its results suggested that only a minority was enthusiastic about political Islam. From 2012 to 2025, support for religious people in government ticked above 50 percent in just two of the countries, Jordan and Morocco. Support for clerical influence over state policy rose in five countries, but was above 40 percent only in Iraq, at 58 percent. (In the United States, by comparison, 43 percent of people say the government should promote Christian values, according to the Pew Research Center.) Solid majorities in four of the countries agreed that religious practice should be a private matter.

But public opinion holds limited sway in the Middle East. Polling in many countries is scant, and power is held mostly by autocrats who don’t have to worry about angry voters chucking them out in the next election….

Source: Is This the End of Political Islam?

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with

Desperate temporary residents in Canada are using this tactic to extend their stays. It may no longer work

2026/06/16 Leave a comment

Never underestimate the loopholes that people will explore:

Desperation is sparking a growing phenomenon among temporary residents that’s complicating Ottawa’s plan to cap their population and reduce Canada’s nagging immigration backlogs.

Stuck in the pipeline for permanent residence, some migrants are filing what are known as “dummy applications” to extend their stay in the country, knowing that the applications are baseless and would get refused. They know they can maintain their status while a decision is pending, and current lengthy application processing helps.

According to the Immigration Department, the number of extension applications for visitor status and work permits grew significantly in the last five years, from 167,955 to 275,905 and from 442,715 to 1,039,275, respectively. That’s not surprising, given the surge of international students and foreign workers admitted to Canada after COVID.

But new data also showed the refusal rates for visitor extensions have doubled from six per cent to 12.1 per cent, with work permit extension refusals up from 6.5 per cent to 10.1 per cent.

While it’s not known how many extension applications in the system are unfounded, experts believe the soaring refusal rates can be attributed in part to the rising number of dummy extensions and in part to the tightened scrutiny by immigration officials.

These applications, with little substance or chance to succeed, are contributing to the growing immigration queue. In the first quarter of this year, there were 2.15 million immigration applications to be processed in the system; 865,000 were for temporary residence, 38 per cent of which were deemed backlogged for exceeding the service standards.

Amid job cuts at the Immigration Department, these applications further strain processing times — 312 days for visitor and 201 days for work permit extensions as of the end of May — and provide more incentive for people to file one.  …

Source: Desperate temporary residents in Canada are using this tactic to extend their stays. It may no longer work

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Dotan Rousso: Canada must vet new immigrants for cultural compatibility 

2026/06/16 Leave a comment

Increased focus by right leaning media. Repeats earlier fears regarding earlier waves of immigrants:

…The most common objection to using culture as a selection criterion is that cultural compatibility cannot be measured. That is simply not true. Democracies already test for civic knowledge, constitutional understanding, and commitment to democratic institutions. Canada could place greater emphasis on civic integration requirements, stronger citizenship standards, constitutional literacy, and screening for support of extremist organizations and ideologies. It could also examine integration outcomes more carefully when determining immigration levels from particular regions.

A successful immigration policy does not merely ask whether an applicant can fill a job vacancy. It asks whether newcomers and the host society can realistically build a common future together.

Canada’s political leaders have spent decades insisting that culture is largely irrelevant to immigration. The evidence increasingly suggests otherwise. The real question is no longer whether culture matters. The real question is whether our leaders have the courage to admit it.

Source: Dotan Rousso: Canada must vet new immigrants for cultural compatibility 

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

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