in Canada we shouldn’t forget. We’ve just gone through a major redistribution of federal constituencies. We’ve gone from 338 to 343. Those boundaries were redrawn by independent commissions, and nobody’s challenging the legitimacy of those constituencies. We’re not having an argument about gerrymandering the way they do in most American states, and we’ve never had a case provincially or federally, where anybody has questioned that Elections Canada delivered an accurate count of a free and fair election. The actual electoral process has never been in question and is unlikely to be. Next year, we’ve got an interesting issue about foreign interference and dark money, and whether that’s going to mean in a very, very narrow election that you can tip with 200,000 votes. Then you know foreign interference in dark money will become an issue. LORI TURNBULL: Yeah. And just thinking about your comments that we 16 / Canadian Government Executive // SPRING 2024 CGE LEADERSHIP SERIES don’t have people questioning whether ballots were appropriately counted. We do not have the same thing that happened in the U.S., where people are questioning whether the administration of the election was fair. MICHAEL WERNICK: What we have had, though, and again triggering memories, is we’ve had a round of discussions about non-citizens voting. There was a wave that you’ll recall well about the Fair Elections Act, which Mr. Poilievre took the leadership on, and it was very much a concern about whether there was a margin of non-citizens voting during Canadian elections. What kind of identification and verification was appropriate? They made a few changes which the Trudeau government then repealed in another Fair Elections Act, and so on. We could have a bit of an argument about non-citizen voting in Canada, especially given the surge in immigration numbers, but I don’t expect that to be a big part of the fabric of the next election. “I think Canadians will learn a fair bit about the arithmetic of potential combinations. But I think it’s the job of the media and others to draw out our political parties on this.” — Michael Wernick
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