OTTAWA — The Liberal government is preparing to expand the voting rights of non-resident Canadians, The Huffington Post Canada has learned. Canadians who have lived abroad for more than five years are essentially banned from casting a ballot right now. They cannot receive a special mail-in ballot, and although they can technically come to Canada vote in person, they have a near impossible task of proving residency here. Two sources told HuffPost that Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef is looking at tabling legislation that would give expatriate Canadians the right to vote by special ballot no matter how long they have been away. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a case in February involving two Canadians who live in the United States and want to vote. Jamie Duong and Gillian Frank first challenged the law in an Ontario court and won in 2014, placing an estimated 1.4 million Canadians back on the voter rolls, but the Conservative government successfully appealed the ruling before last year’s election.

Maryam Monsef Minister of Democratic Institutions responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 2, 2016. In a statement last month, Monsef announced that the federal government had filed a memorandum of argument defending the current restrictions on non-resident Canadian citizens — a move that angered many expats who felt the Liberals were betraying their campaign commitment. During the 2015 election, the party told the Canadian Expat Association: “We believe that all Canadians should have a right to vote, no matter where they live, and we are committed to ensuring this is the case.” In her October statement, Monsef signalled that legislation would be introduced before the end of the year that would “meet the needs of highly mobile Canadian citizens who live in today’s increasingly interconnected world” but she did not elaborate. 'I don't see how you can take off our rights' Greg Clark, a retired drama teacher from Alberta who recently moved to Arizona with his wife, a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, praised the news. His wife spent 40 years living in Canada and was always allowed to cast a ballot in U.S. elections, Clark told HuffPost. “I don’t see how you can take off our rights,” he said. The only justification he could understand, he said, was that he wasn’t paying taxes and therefore he couldn’t vote. “I’m 68 years old. It just sounds really unfair…. The United States doesn’t do that, if you’re a citizen you can vote, no matter where you live. But not Canada. It just sounds so un-Canadian,” Clark said. The United States allows expats to vote, but their worldwide income is also subject to U.S. income tax. “It shouldn’t be up to the government to give or take away our right to vote." In an interview, Frank, one of the two men who initiated the case, called the impending changes “fantastic.” But he urged the federal government to stop fighting his court case so that the rights of expats could be made permanent and not subject to the whims of future governments. “It shouldn’t be up to the government to give or take away our right to vote. I think it should be a permanent feature … guaranteed by the court,” he said.