A Canadian Votes From New York
The dance floor was empty when I walked in, except for two American girls. Bridget and Amanda; I had just met them outside and they stood right beside the makeshift stage, emphatically gesturing for me to join them. “Get over here,” Bridget yelled over the music, a playlist that had so far featured Grimes, Justin Bieber, and Our Lady Peace. “Why is no one dancing yet?” they asked when I walked over.
It was October 15th, 2015, four days before Canada’s federal election, and I was at a fundraiser for Canadians living in New York called #NoHarper. More people were walking in, but they lingered by the back of the room, near the folding table operating as a makeshift bar. Slow Down Molasses, a shoegaze band from Saskatchewan, began to play. The audience remained mostly still. A few people swayed, imperceptibly, to the rhythm. Canadians, I thought, not for the first time, make the worst audiences.
Towards the end of their set, the band members re-shuffled for a new formation, exchanging instruments and microphone stands. “We can change everything, hopefully, by voting,” Jeanette Stewart said as she adjusted her guitar strap, her mouth on her mike. “Right?” We applauded politely.
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The inevitability of moving to America, if you grow up in Canada, is a benevolent ultimatum: will you or won’t you? Will you stay in Canada, your home and native land, a country with the kind of social infrastructure that (in theory) respects the life and health of its citizen, that gives communities and their individual inhabitants (in theory) the rights and support necessary to live their lives as they please? In doing so, will you resign yourself to swirl in a drain of repetitive platitudes and ineffective yet unimpeachable traditions that never stops moving but seems, somehow, to never move forward?
Or will you move to America — a default term so often compromising only New York — to take advantage of the wide spaces and vast resources (in theory), the promise of unfettered financial opportunity and limitless professional acclaim (in theory)? In doing so, will you admit to callously abandoning your neighbours, your family, the very lifeline that provided the privileges necessary to even reach out and touch such a Northern Hemisphere-specific dream, without so much as a culturally obligatory apology?
Canada is a country constantly defined by opposition. Often (almost always) this opposing contrast comes from America, a neighbour close enough to cast a country-wide shadow. Canada, as seen from America, is an eerily similar counterpart, close enough for scrutiny but not far enough for perspective: either a nearby nirvana or a malevolent microcosm. The promise of our cheerfully praised globally recognized political characteristics, such as socialized healthcare or Drake, suggests a welcome respite from what are America’s less-favourable globally recognized characteristics — the cynicism, the capitalism, the crushing pursuit of no less than complete control.
One of the truest clichés about young, career-driven Canadians living in Toronto is that the “upwards” in “upwardly mobile” refers to the ascending ninety-minute flight to New York. There is, my peers and I tell ourselves, simply more in America: there are more schools, more people, more jobs, more money. There is, our friends back home remind us, simply nothing better in America: nothing secure, nothing guaranteed, nothing given. To leave one for the other is to address the unanswerable question at the root of choosing Canada or America: why leave? The response — why stay? — is maddeningly unsatisfying for both the asker and answerer. In any case, I left Toronto for New York six months ago.
Today is a federal election and my first time voting as an ex-pat. Canadians vote for candidates in their electoral district (called a “riding”), as per the regulations of Canada’s electoral system; there are currently twenty-three registered political parties candidates can be affiliated with, but the predominant parties to watch are the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the New Democratic Party (known as the NDP), as well as, to a slightly lesser extent, the Green Party and the Bloc Quebecois. Candidates who win a riding represent that district as a Member of Parliament (known as MPs), and the party with the most winning candidates becomes the ruling government and their leader the Prime Minister. The risk of splitting the vote is high, and real, particularly between the two left-leaning parties, the Liberals and the NDP. As voters, we can vote for the candidate we think would be best for our neighbourhoods, or we can vote for the candidate who belongs to the party we want to become the ruling government, or we can hope for a candidate who fulfills both those requirements. It is…confusing!
Recently my friend, Nicolae Rusan, told me he was helping to organize the #NoHarper event for Canadians living in New York: together with some of his friends from McGill University — often referred to as “Canada’s Harvard” — they were fundraising for an independent advocacy group called Leadnow currently running a campaign to ultimately defeat the sitting Conservative government and Stephen Harper — often referred to as “Canada’s Richard Nixon” — by educating people to vote strategically in the ridings with the most contentious campaigns for MPs.
His former classmate, Marie-Marguerite Sabongui, sits on the board of Leadnow. She had the idea for the event while drinking beers at Ontario Bar in Williamsburg (it is an Ontario-themed bar). They were, according to Sabongui, “disenfranchised and angry” about the recent Ontario Court of Appeals decision to uphold a rule that prevents Canadians from living abroad for more than five years to vote. Originally put into place in 1993, most Canadians retained their right to vote simply by visiting the country every five years — even a connecting flight through a Canadian airport counted as a visit — until 2007, when the ruling began to be strictly enforced in the most literal terms: if you didn’t have an address on Canadian soil, you could not vote. A 2014 lawsuit restored the original interpretation, but this was overturned in June 2015.
As a direct result, approximately 1.4 million Canadian citizens are not eligible to vote in the current federal election. As an indirect result, the comparison between Harper and Nixon has become particularly apt. Harper’s party has been directly implicated in the push to disenfranchise as many voters as possible, alongside a multitude of other sins. In The Guardian, Nick Davies recently outlined some of the most recent and egregious offences:
In the 11 years since he became the leader of the country’s Conservatives, the party has been fined for breaking electoral rules and various members of Team Harper have been caught misleading parliament, gagging civil servants, subverting parliamentary committees, gagging scientists, harassing the Supreme Court, gagging diplomats, lying to the public, concealing evidence of potential crime, spying on opponents, bullying and smearing.
This does not even cover other recent incidents in which Harper was accused of relying on “dog-whistle” politics, a high pitch for racist ears. He has been referencing “old stock” Canadians in debates, a classic code for white Canadians; a ban on allowing women to wear niqabs during citizenship oaths became a crusade for the Harper government. The Federal Court of Canada found the ban unlawful and an appeals hearing upheld that decision; the Harper government is planning to take the matter to the Supreme Court. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known as the CBC) reported Harper saying that “showing one’s face at the moment of becoming a Canadian citizen is consistent with Canada’s values and a necessary measure to ensure national security.” During the advance polls in the federal election, an Alberta cowboy “protested” the ruling on niqabs by covering his face with a black bandana and cowboy hat while voting. “We have a long tradition of civilized procedures,” he said, the ‘we’ referencing Canadians, “and I respect that, and if people come to the country and they want to change that, I’m going to fight them.” His face, under the bandana, was what you would expect of the old-stock Canadian voter Harper was invoking.
Last year, in an essay published on n+1, Marianne Lenabat quoted Harper in 2006: “You won’t recognize Canada when I’m through with it.” His point, punctuated for dramatic flourish, is often cited to underscore the one-sided mirror of a relationship between Harper and his constituents. There is an “I” in Harper and a “you” in us. But this statement suggests that Harper was taking for granted Canada already had an identity that is both easily recognizable and internally accepted, a firm identity with leftist leanings that he was reorienting towards a more austere path, a face only a fellow Canadian could love. I am not sure that that identity ever completely existed or if it is, like other forms of nostalgic reference, a past fantasy used to foster present frustrations: yes, we’re supposed to think in the simplest terms possible, clean up this place, which is so messy I don’t even recognize it anymore!
So, there are two issues #NoHarper was looking to address, Rusan and Sabongui explained to me: the first is how to vote, and the second is if voting is still an option. Together with other volunteers, they decided the fundraiser would be a party: a concert, guest speakers, a raffle. The Brooklyn restaurant Mile End (it is named for a neighbourhood in Montreal) would serve poutine and smoked meat sandwiches; the dress code would be denim-on-denim. They booked bands (Slow Down Molasses, Nancy Pants, Rococode, White Cliffs, and TEEN), and invited Gill Frank, a plaintiff from the 2014 lawsuit who is currently working on the appeal for the Supreme Court of Canada, to speak.
Behind the hashtagged name they had given the event, I thought, I was presented with two possible outcomes for Canada: either Harper is re-elected, or he is…not. His toughest opposition, the Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau, is supported not by robust convictions that they are the better party but by the repeated mantra to vote strategically, to think of the greater good, to not waste your vote at a time when so much hangs on such slim percentages.
Sabongui’s parents left Egypt for Canada forty year ago, and she was born in Canada, she told me. Her parents still vote in Egyptian parliamentary elections. Voting is, for Sabongui, “tied to citizenship and identity. Americans who live abroad have the right to vote; Americans in Canada continue to vote in U.S elections. It just doesn’t seem sensical that Canada, a champion of human rights and democratic freedoms, would limit the rights of its citizens.”
I agree. I would like to retain my right to vote, even if I remain in New York indefinitely; I agree, too, with the arguments made by Gill Frank and his legal team in their lawsuit against the attorney general of Canada, where they stated that paying taxes or owning property is not something every citizen living in Canada does or has, and that their right to vote is hinged on neither attribute; I agree with Sabongui when she said, after I asked her why she thought this law about Canadians abroad was being enforced at this crucial point, that “the Conservatives are trying to restrict the rights of voters who might have a progressive bent. It might sound like a lefty conspiracy, but you look at the numbers and it’s hard to come to any other conclusions.”
I’m not sure about the numbers; I couldn’t find any statistics related to the voting proclivities of Canadians living abroad, or specifically in New York. I agreed only because my personal experience has led me to conclude that Sabongui is probably right, that our particular demographic of Canadian is the kind of Canadian Harper would like to exclude from the country he is reshaping in his image. But why, I thought not for the first time, were our options always so either/or? Why tell people to vote not as they saw fit, but through a convoluted campaign that would have no real impact on choosing the leader of the country, the face we put forward to the rest of the world? Why settle for a shot at the parties that were, more so than their other positive attributes, simply not Harper’s party?
Sabongui aptly points out that Harper has, more than any other Canadian politicians, enforced the binary I was thinking of for his own benefit. “I feel like he’s brought the attention,” Sabongui said. “He’s a figure that captures so much of what is misaligned between the government we have now and who we are, culturally. People love to hate on him…in terms of developing strategy that will get to people’s hearts, I think calling it #NoHarper very much does that.” She mentions how, in 2010, a directive was sent to all public servants telling them that correspondence should refer to “the Harper Government” instead of the previous “Government of Canada” when applicable. Two years earlier, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Harper had, in the House of Commons, hung multiple portraits of…himself. The official Christmas card from the prime minister’s office had featured Harper standing in a room that had 24 photos of…himself. Various sizes, various poses, but all of one man. This tact is almost cartoonishly opposed to all those stereotypical Canadian values of polite deference, of modest humility, of a careful resignation to our political realities. When he’s through with Canada, perhaps, he will be the only Canadian face we recognize.
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About 250 people attended the #NoHarper event. It was hosted at the Williamsburg Hand Wash & Detail Center, and as I turned the corner to the entrance I was stopped behind a couple walking their dog; they were asking the bouncer what was happening. Over their shoulders I could see a large photo of Stephen Harper pinned to a wall. People were drawing facial hair and blacking out his teeth with markers and chalk. “It’s a fundraiser for the Canadian election,” the bouncer told them, and the man replied, “Canada is having an election?” The bouncer shrugged and gestured for my I.D., the Canadian passport I carry everywhere because I don’t have a driver’s license. I thought about telling them more, perhaps to prove I knew something they didn’t, but they were already gone.
In the outdoor area, people were mostly clothed in the requested “Canadian Tuxedo” dress code. A friend asked if I had seen Nicolae and I said, pointing, “He’s over there, in the wool sweater and toque,” before realizing he was standing in a crowd of at least thirty men who fit that description. Most people were milling around the food even as volunteers implored them to come inside, to watch the bands who were ready to start playing. I wanted to talk to the other Canadians who were at the party, not just my friends, but when I approached a few strangers and asked if they would speak on the record they respectfully declined. The people who agreed to speak turned out to be Americans, including one man who handed me a card printed with a scenic seascape and the title “Hono(u)rary Canadian.” The tagline was “Seeing Canada from Away.”
I asked Sabongui about the carefully cultivated Canadian ambiance of the party. “I think it’s tapping into that energy of dancing it off. We’re going to come together and have a great time and not just be aggressive and shout-ey. We still have this Canadian ethos that is polite and fun-loving.”
I felt polite, but not fun; I fulfilled my own bitter thoughts about Canadians as audiences by slowly moving towards the wall. Gill Frank gave an impassioned speech before the second band. Sabongui introduced him as the “hero” of the ongoing case to bring back voting rights for ex-pats, and Frank, currently a visiting fellow at Princeton’s University Center for the Study of Religion and a winner of Canada’s Governor General Academic Medal, stepped up to the microphone with recently unfolded sheets of paper in his hand. “You’re going to hear a lot of nonsense from the defenders of the status quo, the Conservatives, who say that you need to pay taxes or live in Canada to vote. There’s only one thing you need to know, and that is Section Three of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” He paused; a few stray whoops came from the crowd. “Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election.” The crowd applauded, and cheered, and he repeated that sentence for effect. “Stephen Harper, and the Conservative party, have done their damnedest to take our vote away from us…we should be neither surprised, nor dismayed, that the attempts of the radical right to disenfranchise us, to resist progressive change. Stephen Harper has an agenda that flies in the face of traditional Canadian values that we grew up with: these are multiculturalism” — applause — “responsive government” — cheers — “and respect for democracy” — more applause. “Prime Minister Harper believes he should have the right to choose who votes.” Boos. “We believe it is the voters who should choose our government, and it is the government who should be responsive to us. Stephen Harper and the Conservative government are enemies of democracy.”
“But we have to ask ourselves,” Frank continued, “who have our friends been?” I eyed the crowd; I had spoken to Frank earlier and knew that the Liberals had been hesitant to support Frank’s lawsuit, declining to officially integrate an opinion on the voting rights of ex-pats into their official platform, instead offering a promise to help all Canadians vote via graphics posted on social media. “Since 2011, the NDP have been our staunchest ally.” A few cheers came from the back of the room. “If you look at the NDP platform for this election, they have enshrined restoring our right to vote, should they be elected. We have had no better friend than the NDP in the past four years.” He mentioned Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, and the crowd cheered wildly; he mentioned the Liberal’s recent postings, and the crowd clapped. “Let me be clear: I believe our right to vote should be a non-partisan issue, supported by all political parties. But the Conservatives have a partisan agenda, and they have sought to undermine our right to vote in order to further their own political careers.” He quoted former prime minister John Diefenbaker as saying Canadians must vigilantly stand on guard within our own borders to protect our fundamental rights, before saying, “We must stand on guard for democracy not only within our own borders, but from abroad. We must support the political parties that have supported us, financially, and with our votes. And we must never forget that it is the Conservative party who have made us into second-class citizens.”
In that same Guardian article, Davies mentioned one of my favorite anecdotes about Harper: while his brothers became accountants, he pursued a pre-political career as an economist, claiming he did not have the personality to become an accountant. This aligns with the Stephen Harper public persona I know best: the man I’ve seen represent my country for the last nine years is known for his dullness, his dryness, his perceived disdain for other people. It is hard to reconcile the idea of a man who felt himself antisocial enough to choose the kind of career that would allow him to work in solitude, yet wants to represent millions of Canadians to the world; the kind of man who self-identifies as most comfortable when unobserved, yet also decorates his office with self-portraits. And yet this is an equation that continues to add up in Harper’s favour, as befits an economist who knows his calculations. Harper has won three elections. Despite the best efforts of multiple parties, activists, and lobbyists to convince Canadians to vote otherwise, multiple polls leading up to the election were consistently too close to accurately predict which party will pull ahead and with what percentage of votes, suggesting that, at the very least, Canadians were not ready to declare their firm opposition to Harper, but had not settled on their other, singular option. This is, I think, a symptom of the confusing messages dispersed across our wide and disparate land mass: vote, but vote with caution. As a result, Harper’s version of divide-and-conquer becomes not so ominous as it is elementary: for him, Canada will be a long division equation to solve, and he will keep breaking down the numbers until there are simply no remainders left.
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I left #NoHarper to meet other friends celebrating a birthday in a nearby neighbourhood. Some were visiting from Toronto and I offered to put them in touch with my immigration lawyers. We speculated on the election before our American friends pleaded with us to stop: “This is boring!” they protested, and I agreed, and then left to go home and check the polls. The CBC was reporting that the Liberals had, just that day, pulled ahead — only by 4%, but still. I checked the Instagram hashtag on the event to see if I had missed anything. It looked like after I left attendees had been invited to throw eggs at Harper’s defaced image. There was egg yolk on his forehead and a pile of broken shells under his chin and a joke to be made, I’m sure, about counting chickens before they hatch.
My cynicism is mine and mine alone. I feel constantly grateful to have been born and raised in Canada; I plan to return there soon, but have not decided if I will ever live there again. But I do not, and cannot, know what the responsibilities are for Canadians as a group, or a demographic, or a representative of a geographical region within a very large world. I do not want Stephen Harper to win this election, and I am carefully balancing that desire with my very limited power as just one person who is, in many ways, much further away from my citizenship than a simple plane ride. I am inspired by the deep convictions and truly selfless commitments the organizers of #NoHarper have made to their heritage; their work is a clear message that Canadians are not apathetic, not resigned, and I am confident that their work will add up to something greater than a sum of its parts. I am, simultaneously, unsure of what else can or should be done to show what Canada is or should be. By day’s end, Canada will have re-elected Stephen Harper, or they will have…not. Neither scenario makes me feel like dancing.