By Anna Nicolle
Bryan Harris isn’t going to vote on Nov. 27.
“Why the hell should I vote? What have politicians done for me . . . I’m a Canadian and they don’t do anything for me!” the Centretown residents yells.
Harris, “just like Mike Harris,” has been living on the streets of Centretown for the past two years. During the day, the 54-year-old sits with his dog on the pavement at the corner of Bank and Slater streets looking for change from passers-by.
At night, he goes back to his home — a dark corner of pavement behind the old Ottawa Technical high school on Albert Street. His bed is a pile of tattered blankets tucked in between a cement wall covered with graffiti and a partly rusted metal railing.
Harris has no documentation that says this is his home but says he returns to it every evening — even on winter’s coldest nights. He won’t go to a shelter.
Harris was unaware that a new interpretation of the Canada Elections Act makes him eligible to vote, even though he doesn’t have what most people would consider a permanent residence.
According to Hal Doran, a media relations officer for Elections Canada, chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley is interpreting a section of the act that allows neighbours to vouch for the identity of voters to mean that shelter operators may now vouch for the identity of homeless people who spend the night in a shelter. Doran says over the next few weeks, Elections Canada will provide homeless shelters with posters explaining how people can vote.
Another section of the act allows someone, like Harris, who doesn’t live in a shelter to register to vote.
“Basically if you show up and you can’t fulfil the identification requirements, then the returning officer or person in authority at the poll can have you swear an oath that yes, you are eligible to be an elector,” Doran says.
But this new interpretation of the act doesn’t seem to make a difference to Harris and others who live on the streets of Centretown.
Mark Jones panhandles at the corner of Bank and Somerset streets. He says he lives in parking garages and alleyways in Centretown year-round and says he has no intention of voting, even though he is now considered a resident of Ottawa Centre.
“The government’s not interested in me so I’m not interested in voting . . . they just don’t care,” he says.
Ottawa Centre Liberal MP Mac Harb says the homeless people in Centretown aren’t his constituents because there are no shelters in Centretown.
“If they don’t have an address, they won’t be able to vote. So even if they are homeless in Ottawa Centre they would be voting in Ottawa-Vanier if they live in a shelter in Ottawa-Vanier . . . the shelters are not in my riding,” he says.
Harb says he won’t be seeking votes among the homeless in this election.
“My colleague for Ottawa-Vanier would have to determine
. . . if he wanted to make a concerted effort to go to shelters and make sure everyone in the shelters is registered,” he says.
Harb also questions whether there are people sleeping year-round on the streets of his riding.
“I mean, I can’t see a lot of people in Ottawa Centre at -40 degrees or -50 degrees without having a place to go and sleep because they would not be able to survive outside,” he says.
But Jones says Harb doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
“I never heard of the guy, but that’s bullshit. There are people like me sleeping out on the street all winter,” he says.
Last February, the body of Robert Coté, a homeless Centretown resident, was found frozen to death under a bench near the lower locks of the Rideau Canal in Centretown.
Coté’s memorial service was held on Elgin Street.
Harris also says he knows of many other people who sleep on the streets of Centretown during the winter. He says he plans to continue to live behind the old Ottawa Technical high school this winter and hopes that someone might give him an electric heater he can plug into an outside outlet.
“It might keep me and her,” he points to his dog, “warm enough to make it.”
Harris says Harb’s comments prove to him that politicians don’t know what’s going on in the streets.
“I voted twice in my life and I’m never going to vote again. What’s the point? The politicians don’t even know I’m out here,” he says.