Canadian expats currently living in Britain said they are unsure what the Brexit vote will mean for their future in Europe. Canadians either living in the U.K. or with ties to the country expressed a range of emotions Friday, after Britons voted to leave the European Union:
Carmody Wilson Hallamore, originally from Sask., voted to stay
Carmody Wilson Hallamore, who is currently based in London, told CTV Saskatoon that she and her fellow Londoners, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of staying in the EU, are still trying to digest the information.
“I voted to stay in, so I’m a little unhappy, but everything’s been happening so fast that it’s hard to keep track of all the changes,” Hallamore said, adding there is currently “massive uncertainty” in the U.K. over Thursday’s referendum.
“The markets completely went into free fall nobody knows what that means, what it’ll be like tomorrow, three months, we don’t know,” Hallamore said.
As a Canadian living in the U.K., Hallamore said she is unsure how the vote to leave the EU will affect her visa restrictions.
“There was some noise from the ‘leave’ campaign to say that they would favour Commonwealth applicants like myself over EU applicants if we were to leave the EU,” she said. “But … it depends on what agreement they make subsequent to a new government being formed. So again that’s all up in the air.”
Graeme Bennett, of St. Mary’s Ont., voted to leave EU
Bennett, who is a dual citizen who was born in Northern Ireland before moving to Canada, said he voted to leave the EU because the union has become too political in recent years, rather than focusing solely on trade.
“More and more powers have been consolidated in Brussels rather than London,” he told The Canadian Press. “This is going to give the power back to the local politicians where it should be.”
He added he’s not “against free trade,” and noted that countries don’t need to be in a “political union” in order to do trade with them.
Cynthia Kennedy, originally from Que., voted to stay
Cynthia Kennedy, a Canadian who holds dual citizenship and lives in the U.K., said she was deeply “saddened” by the outcome, and thinks a lot of voters were “naïve.”
She fears for sustained economic instability as the Brexit vote rocked world markets and sent the British pound plunging to its lowest level since 1985.
“I’m very pleased for my Canadian friends and family who may be planning a holiday on this side of the Atlantic because the exchange rate is very much in their favour in the moment, but I think we’re going to be hurting a lot more before things get better,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy said that things are “raw at the moment, and it’s going to take a little while for things to calm down.” She added that even as a dual citizen who holds British citizenship, she feels “unwelcome in this country at the moment, and that is unspeakably sad.”
While some with ties to Canada criticized the vote, others said they were supportive of Britain’s break from the EU.
David Whitford, of Norwich, Ont., supported ‘leave’ campaign
David Whitford, who came to Canada from England nearly half a century ago, says he would have voted to leave the EU if he was back in the U.K.
“The idea of the EU was very good, but it got out of hand,” he said. “It became too political with somebody in Brussels telling everybody what to do.”
Debora Rexho, supported ‘stay’ campaign
Rexho has long dreamed of becoming a permanent resident of the U.K. Part of that dream centred around having the ability to work in other European countries with a U.K. passport.
Rexho believes Thursday’s vote will disproportionately effect younger demographics, which overwhelmingly supported the “stay” campaign while older voters were more inclined to support the “leave” camp.
"Obviously the younger people are the people who are going to have to live with this decision for much longer," she told The Canadian Press.
"It is a bit of a shame, especially because the voter turnout, I think, was higher for the older generation."
With files from The Canadian Press
