Canada’s Liberal 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, told a news conference the reforms will “break down unnecessary barriers to voting while enhancing the efficiency and integrity of our elections.”
The measures do not, however, go as far as the Liberals pledged during the last campaign to revamp the way Canadians vote, by dropping the current first-past-the-post system in favour of a more representational model.
Those efforts have been met with significant pushback from the opposition which has called for a referendum on proposals, while in polls Canadians showed little appetite for such a drastic change.
Monsef said she hopes to introduce that legislation in the first half of 2017 while renewing her opposition to holding a referendum.
