canadians are heading to the polls on september 20th and i'm joined by pierre pilon of elections canada for the lowdown on what citizens need to know ahead of casting their ballot thank you so much for joining us pierre thank you now i just received this in the mail as i'm sure most other canadians did a guide to the federal election so now what would you say are the first things that people need to know about it especially given the ongoing pandemic i think the first thing is to make sure that you're registered on the electoral
list you know and uh one way to find out is that you probably did receive or you will receive uh in the next couple of days what we call uh the voters information card you have on that card all the information as to where to vote for advance poll where to vote on the day of the 20th what time what's the address of the poll and so on so that's basically uh is probably the most priority to have in order to make sure that you can vote in peeps if you want tell us about advanced
voting when that begins and i guess where people can find their advanced polling stations absolutely well voting advanced voting will take place as of this friday so from the 10th of september to the next monday the the 13th of september uh from nine o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night in order to get the information that's supposed to be on your voter information card if you don't have it just go on the website it's pretty easy on elections with an s dot ca just click on that and there'll be a white box where
you can enter your postal code and then you'll get all the information on where to vote what time what's the right address and even your candidates so how does it work if somebody wants to vote by mail vote by mail is another thing but it's quite simple as well you go on the website again you will be asked to fill out a form a registration form asking some very straightforward question to make sure that you're a canadian citizen you're allowed to vote and so on they will ask you to validate with some id uh and
as soon as this is done they will forward you a voting kit composed of a couple of envelopes in which you have your voting certificate as well you receive that at home you fill it out and then either you mail it back on the address shown on the envelope or if you're too close to the the limit uh you will uh you can drop it at your elections canada office in your writing but you got to make sure to do that your registration or ask for vote by mail before september the 14th so that would
be before next tuesday at six o'clock local time okay and one thing to make sure is that if you decide to vote by mail of course you won't be able to vote in person your name will be right off from the the official list thank you for joining us pierre thank you for inviting me you