UK voting rights extended to all expats in Canada

An estimated 600,000 Canadians hold British citizenship with a large majority having lived in this country for more than those 15 years . . .

More than half a million Canadians have been given the vote, but they won’t be casting those ballots on home soil.

The U.K. government is extending the franchise to include all of the 3.5 million British citizens living abroad in time for the country’s upcoming general election later this year.

Before this change, only those who had left the U.K. within the previous 15 years had the privilege.

An estimated 600,000 Canadians hold British citizenship with a large majority having lived in this country for more than those 15 years, which had therefore previously ruled them ineligible to cast a vote in the U.K. Now everyone has the same right.

They can register online at www.gov.uk/register-tovote using their passport and a U.K. National Insurance number, making them eligible to cast a ballot in the constituency where they lived before emigrating. This can be done through the mail or by allowing someone in that constituency to vote by proxy on their behalf.

Craig Westwood, director of communications at the U.K.’S Electoral Commission, applauded the change, saying it would immediately result in “eligible new voters in every corner of the world.”

For one group of British expats living in Canada, this ruling is being celebrated as a major step forward in their decades-long fight to end discrimination over U.K. old age security payments.

The Canadian Alliance of British Pensioners is urging all its members to register to vote so it can increase the pressure on British MPS to finally index link their pensions.

Retired Brits in the U.S. and most European countries see their U.K. pensions topped up every year. Yet in Canada, Australia and New Zealand — the three countries with the largest cohorts of former U.K. citizens — those pension amounts are frozen at the initial level of the first payment. As the years pass, inflation takes a bigger toll on what they receive.