National Post (National Edition)
Why a silly campaign shouldn’t give us pause
There are election rules, after all
In Newfoundland right now, a dog is running to be mayor of St. John’s.
Finn, an Australian cattle dog, promises tax reduction and an end to potholes. Of course, Finn can’t actually appear on the ballot, since Newfoundland and Labrador bars non-humans from standing as candidates.
And so it is across the rest of Canada. To guard against governments run by cats, dogs or parrots, it turns out there are provisions buried deep in our legislation to ensure that politics remains exclusively a human domain.
In Finn’s case, he technically meets every qualification to be on the ballot except one: St. John’s mayoral candidates have to be able to vote for themselves.
Or, as the province’s Municipal Elections Act puts it, candidates must be “a qualified voter in the municipality in which he/she is seeking nomination.”
To be a qualified voter, Finn has to be 18, a resident of St. John’s for at least 30 days and be a Canadian citizen.
He’s not a citizen, of course, but Finn satisfies a stunning number of criteria to qualify.
One of the stranger websites maintained by the Government of Canada is Am I A Citizen?, an online questionnaire in which it’s possible to determine if someone is a Canadian citizen.
Since Finn was born in Newfoundland and Labrador after 1949 and does not have diplomats for parents, the website states that he is “most likely a Canadian citizen.”
SIMPLE FACT AN ANIMAL CANNOT SWEAR AN OATH.
Ultimately, it’s in the actual text of the Citizenship Act where dogs like Finn run into a brick wall.
There, only a single word stands in the way of non-human candidates for office: “person.”
Incidentally, this is the exact same word under which women were once barred from occupying offices such as the Senate.
It was only after the famous Persons Case, a direct appeal to the Privy Council of England, that the term “qualified persons” was ruled to include women.
Across Canada’s various election acts, the word “person” is the universal bulwark against animal candidates.
“It says ‘any person who is eligible to vote,’ so it clarifies it right in the act,” Yukon’s Assistant Chief Electoral Officer David Wilkie said, explaining the ineligibility of dogs or cats for the territorial legislature.
In 2012, a black and white cat named Tuxedo Stan was put forward as a mayoral candidate for Halifax, earning endorsements from the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
However, under Nova Scotia’s Municipal Elections Act the cat would have been disqualified on several levels: He was not 18, he was not a Canadian citizen and the act makes clear that electoral office is only for a “person.”
There may be very deliberate reason why so much Canadian law uses the word “person” rather than vaguer terms such as “individual” or “resident.”
Not only does the word keep out animals, but it also prevents other non-human entities, such as corporations, from thinking that they are eligible for Canadian political office.
Canadian law, of course, used to be even more specific about who couldn’t vote. At the country’s 1867 founding, voting was allowed only to “male British subjects” — a category that excluded dogs as well as a majority of Canada’s human population.
While dogs and cats are pretty well sealed off from legislatures and city councils, there remain select Canadian elections in which it is technically possible for an animal to win.
The University of Alberta Students Union, for one, has no provision in its electoral bylaw to limit candidature to humans.
As a result, a March 2017, election saw Donut the Cat win 21 per cent of the presidential vote, while Banana the Hamster scored 33 per cent of the vote for a vicepresidential position.
Alarmed, the students union passed a bylaw disqualifying “joke candidates” from obtaining first place. Previously, if a joke candidate won, the position was simply left vacant.
“The constitution is clear that the right to run is for citizens. Animals are not citizens,” said Ryerson University public administration professor Patrice Dutil.
Failing all that, there’s the simple fact that an animal cannot swear an oath.
Even if elected, Finn the Australian cattle dog lacks the verbal capabilities to say “I will faithfully, to the best of my ability, perform the duties and responsibilities of my office.”