Foreign National Fined for Voting in 2021 Federal Election, Elections Canada Says

An Elections Canada logo is shown in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Canada’s election watchdog has reported another case of a foreign national having voted in the 2021 federal election. This revelation followed an Elections Canada internal survey indicating that a third of election officials encountered attempts at ineligible voting in the 2019 federal election.

“Michael James Wiest was determined by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada [IRCC] not to be a Canadian citizen as of polling day for the 44th federal general election but was identified as having voted,” Elections Canada said in a “Summary of the Notice of Violation“ on Feb. 19, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

Wiest, whose nationality was not disclosed, voted at a polling station in the electoral district of Simcoe—Grey in Simcoe County, Central Ontario, on Sept. 20, 2021, according to the Official List of Electors.

Under the Canada Elections Act, only Canadian citizens age 18 or older are entitled to vote. Elections Canada said the case has been referred to the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections for investigation. Wiest was issued an Administrative Monetary Penalty of $1,250 following a review by the Chief Electoral Officer.

An aggravating factor was added to the baseline penalty of $1,000, the summary noted, because despite informing the investigator that he was aware of being ineligible to vote, Wiest went to the polling station, signed a registration certificate, and cast a ballot.

“This series of deliberate steps suggests that the contravention was deliberate and intentional,” which constitutes an aggravating factor under the Canada Elections Act, the summary said.

The case comes amid ongoing concerns about voter list inaccuracies.

A survey of election officers conducted following the October 2019 federal election indicated that 35 percent of poll staff said “they sometimes or often encountered individuals asking to vote who were not on the list of electors and who were unable to be registered at the polling station.” The survey, commissioned by Elections Canada, was conducted by Phoenix Strategic Perspectives between mid-December 2019 and mid-January 2020 and released in June 2020.

Elections Canada, in a February 2020 document on the issue of potential non-citizens being listed in the National Register of Electors, said it used data from IRCC for the first time in April 2019, initially identifying roughly 103,000 potential non-citizens in the register. This number increased to 112,000 following further analysis. Then, based on revised data provided by IRCC, the number was corrected again to 85,000.

Following this correction, Elections Canada sent letters to those potential non-citizens to seek confirmation as to whether they were in fact non-citizens or were Canadian citizens aged 18 or over. As a result, about 74,000 non-citizens were removed from the register.

“I can tell you we have made some considerable improvements to ensure the accuracy of the list, to make sure it is a list of Canadian citizens,” Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault told reporters at the time, as reported by Blacklock’s Reporter. “We’ve had a chance to clean up the list considerably.”