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But we might be more concerned about the Canadian government’s connection to the rest of the world than with Canadian expats’ connections to Canada. Maybe out of ignorance, maybe out of bad faith, the government argued that a five-year limit on voting rights for expats is in line with international norms. In other words, the government grudgingly acknowledged that Canada’s relationship to the world matters in the same moment that it broadcasted a spectacular ignorance of the world.

Germany allows even Germans who’ve never lived in Germany to vote; they need only spend a few months eating bratwurst sometime between their 14th birthday and the last 25 years to have some stake in Germany’s affairs. France now allows overseas French citizens to elect representatives in one of the Assemblée Nationale’s 11 roughly continent-sized overseas districts; expats, this approach implies, aren’t “affected less” by French laws, but affected in particular ways that deserve a voice. Italy’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate takes a similar approach. As does Portugal’s Assembly of the Republic. The United Kingdom did implement its own five-year limit in 1985, but computers looked like microwaves then and overseas calls cost money instead of bandwidth; the UK’s limit is now 15 years, and even that will be abolished if voting rights groups have their way.

Beyond Europe, the United States never puts American expats’ voting rights on the clock; this, after all, is the country that won’t tolerate taxation without representation. Australia asks that citizens return to Australia once within their first six years abroad, and after that period to annually declare that “at some point” they’ll return to Australia; it’s an annoying bureaucratic charade, but many disenfranchised Canadian expats would make that declaration in exchange for a ballot. New Zealand has its own silly limit, but you can get around that remarkably easily too: you never have to move back — just stop in and say hi once every three years. Even that gaping loophole is too restrictive for the one million New Zealander expats, and they’ve formed The Expatriate Party of New Zealand.