By Sheena Roszell

federal elections

Voter cards mailed out to some non-Canadian citizens

Oct 17, 2019 | 12:04 PM

To vote in the federal election, you must be a Canadian citizen and you must be 18 years of age.

However, some people who are not Canadian citizens have received voter cards in the mail for the federal election.

A spokesperson for Elections Canada, Leanna Nyirfa says if you are not a Canadian citizen, at least 18 years old and you do receive a voter card in the mail, it is still illegal for you to vote.

“After the election, Elections Canada will be cross-referencing our list of people who have voted with data that we will receive from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and we will be able to tell if there were non-citizens who voted in the election.”

She says any cases of illegal voting they do find will be referred to the Commissioner of Canada Elections and they would be responsible for enforcing any penalties.

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Nyirfa says they receive their data from about 40 different data sources, and they use that information to create their list and sometimes errors can occur.

“For example, we get information from the provincial licencing bureaus and a number of other organizations like that, so sometimes errors on those lists may have occurred,” she said. “Or if you were to check off the Elections Canada voluntary box on your income tax form, that would automatically have you registered.”

If you receive a voter card and you are not a Canadian citizen you can call Elections Canada at 1-800-463-6868 and they will remove you from the list.