This is a strange time for Canada to stand on principle: To stop Tunisian-Canadians from voting for the members of the assembly who will write Tunisia’s new constitution.
It’s doubly strange because the principle has been bent before, by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and their Liberal predecessors, to let Italian-Canadians elect Canadians to Italy’s parliament.
Canada, alone among Western nations, is banning some types of foreign voting, meaning expatriates and dual citizens can’t vote in Tunisia’s election, and in the legislative elections of Italy and France, too.
Tunisia’s ambasssador to Canada, Mouldi Sakri, is still hoping talks will yield an 11th-hour reversal from Ottawa before the Oct. 23 election. But so far, Tunisian-Canadians won’t be able to vote for the founding institution of a new democracy.
The Tunisian vote gives some Canadian officials the willies because it’s not just an absentee ballot that allows people to vote for representatives back home, like a U.S. dual citizen voting for a New York senator. Instead, Tunisia has carved up the outside world into ridings, so that Canada is part of a Tunisian constituency just like Edson, Alta., is part of the federal riding of Yellowhead.
To Ottawa, that’s a danger to our sovereignty. A foreign government is electing representatives from Canadian soil.
It’s a new policy, or a newly-asserted one, anyway. The Foreign Affairs Department sent a Sept. 8 circular to Ottawa embassies asserting that elections which include Canada in a foreign constituency will be refused. On Wednesday one official said the government doesn’t want foreign politics playing out on Canadian streets.
Ottawa insists the policy was set in 2008, but communicated through diplomacy and not made public. But it has surprised some. French officials have been in talks with Ottawa for a week because France is planning 2012 legislative elections that will, for the first time, elect a member from North America, including the votes of 57,000 French citizens in Canada. Two Canadians already represent North America in Italy’s parliament.
Some Tunisian-Canadians suspect the policy is being enforced because the Conservative government doesn’t like the idea that the riding that includes Canada, and 23 other countries, might choose an Islamist candidate as one of its two members. But the government insists it’s the sovereignty principle that’s at play. Ottawa insists the principle must be observed without exception, and that’s where the argument really falls apart.
First, they have made an exception before. The Liberals gave Italy the go-ahead for such an election in 2006. So did the Conservatives, in 2008. Officials said Wednesday that Mr. Harper’s government decided in 2008 that Italy’s outstanding request would be allowed, but all future ones would be refused.
More importantly, this month’s election is not a vote for Tunisia’s parliament. It will elect a short-term constituent assembly to write the rules for a new democracy. Tunisia overthrew a dictator, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January, and his 23-year rule was one of the reasons one-million Tunisians scattered to France, Germany and Canada. That’s a good reason to make an exception to allow that diaspora a say in designing the new Tunisia.
Ottawa insists it wants Tunisian-Canadians to vote, but with absentee ballots, not as part of a foreign constituency. But Mr. Sakri, the Tunisian ambassador, said that despite talks, it’s too late to change the rules for this vote. And thousands of Tunisian-Canadians might miss their first chance to vote for Tunisian democracy.
Campbell Clark writes about foreign affairs from Ottawa
