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Jack Knox: Canada’s Americans play key role in U.S. election

Patrick Leahy was definitely joking when he spoke about moving to Canada. The Vermont senator, addressing a Democrats Abroad luncheon in Philadelphia on Tuesday, was just trying to get a rise out of the delegates.
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Victoria’s Giles Hogya, right, and fellow Democrats Abroad Canada delegate Ken Sherman of Hamilton, Ont., on the the floor of the Democratic National convention floor in Philadelphia on Tuesday.

Jack Knox mugshot genericPatrick Leahy was definitely joking when he spoke about moving to Canada. The Vermont senator, addressing a Democrats Abroad luncheon in Philadelphia on Tuesday, was just trying to get a rise out of the delegates.

On the other hand, the strangers who queried Victoria’s Giles Hogya on his way to the Democratic national convention sounded more serious. What are real estate prices like in Canada, they wanted to know.

The new 15 per cent tax on foreign buyers in Vancouver notwithstanding, some Americans really are pondering a Trexit — a flight to the Great White — should Donald Trump triumph in November.

But that’s not going to happen, Hogya vows. “I believe in my heart of hearts that Hillary Clinton will be the next president,” he said, on the phone from Philadelphia. He didn’t even sound as though he were whistling past the graveyard.

Hogya, the retired dean of fine arts at UVic, is one of four Canadians — or, rather, Canadian-Americans — with standing at this week’s convention.

They’re among 17 delegates representing Democrats Abroad, the official wing of the Democratic Party outside the U.S. Unlike Canada, which now bars its citizens from voting in federal elections once they have been out of the country for five years, Uncle Sam encourages the six million Americans who live outside the U.S. to take part.

That includes — at something of a guess — one million in Canada. The U.S. consulate in Vancouver estimates 165,000 reside in B.C.

Like Hogya, an Ohio native who has lived in Canada for 45 years, most hold two passports.

History shows they could make a difference in November. Canadian-based absentee voters are said to have provided Al Franken with his margin of victory when the former Saturday Night Live performer was elected senator for Minnesota by just 312 votes in 2008. “In tight races, Democrats Abroad Canada is important,” says Hogya, who chairs both the Victoria branch — one of nine across the country — and the Canada-wide organization.

Of course, the tight race everyone cares about is the presidential contest, which is why Hogya et al. are working hard to get out the vote, holding registration parties and driving traffic to votefromabroad.org.

The assumption is that a big voter turnout north of the border would benefit Clinton. Canadians traditionally tilt Democrat, and they particularly tilt against Trump, whom they tend to see as the political equivalent of a drunk driver in a school zone.

A Pew Research survey released in late June showed 80 per cent of Canadians have no confidence in Trump’s ability to handle world affairs, which is actually better than his approval rating in Europe, Australia or Japan.

The presidential campaign has been bizarre, to say the least. Forget questions of left and right, conservative and liberal, the Trump candidacy defies common decency. He’s vain, bellicose, mean, ill-informed, racist and a truth-twister with the integrity of a $4 umbrella (not that I mean that in a negative way) who treats women as though they're inflatable.

Worse, he has emboldened others to ape his act. (Lapel buttons sold outside the Republican convention advertised the “KFC Clinton Special: two fat thighs, two small breasts … left wing.” That’s appalling. Can you imagine John McCain or Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford tolerating behaviour like that?) When Trump declared “I am your voice,” the scary thing was that for many, he was right.

For Canadians, the campaign is like living across the street from a house fire: We’re horrified for the neighbours, though glad it’s not us.

But watching the infighting at the Democrats’ convention in Philadelphia — the Bernie or Bust chanters, the Clinton email scandal du jour — has been like watching the firefighters arrive, only to turn the hoses on each other instead of the house.

Never mind, Hogya says. The rifts are already being healed, helped along by the likes of Michelle Obama’s turn at the microphone Monday. “It was an overpowering moment, a great speech, one of the best I’ve ever heard,” Hogya said. But will it really make a difference? And will Canada’s Americans?