http://localhost:8888/index.php en info@ivotetoronto.org Copyright 2010 2010-08-26T11:50:10+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/extending_the_franchise_to_non-citizen_residents/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/extending_the_franchise_to_non-citizen_residents/#When:11:50:10Z I. Introduction In the summer of 2006, a non-citizen resident of the city of Mississauga – a suburb of Toronto, Canada – made a formal request to city council to allow him and other non-citizen residents the right to participate on official municipal boards and committees – a right not currently extended to non-citizen residents. The resident in question is a German citizen who, despite having lived nearly 30 years of his life in Canada, has not obtained Canadian citizenship for reasons having to do with German inheritance laws and his economic interests in Germany. 1 The request was rejected by a majority of Mississauga city councilors with many expressing disbelief that a non-citizen would even make such a request. One councilor went so far as to say that immigrants who have not yet obtained citizenship should stop treating Canada as if it is a “buffet table” of “rights and other good things” (Funston 2006; Munro 2008b). For full research: http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Non-Citizen%20Resident%20Voting%20and%20Salience%20Munro.pdf 2010-08-26T11:50:10+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/i_vote_toronto_campaign_open_letter/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/i_vote_toronto_campaign_open_letter/#When:18:32:44Z (For a PDF version, please click link below, thanks) August, 2010 OPEN LETTER Dear Toronto residents: I Vote Toronto is a campaign for this city, a campaign to make sure everyone who lives here feels they belong to Toronto, and Toronto belongs to them. Toronto benefits when everyone has the chance to contribute to building our city. I Vote Toronto means everyone who lives in the city has a say in the future of the city. Voting in municipal elections is a step toward taking responsibility for what happens where you live. We’re all Torontonians every day - why not on voting day? At any given time there are more than 200,000 permanent residents living in Toronto, paying taxes, and sending their children to school. They do not have a say in how the city is run because they cannot vote. Newcomers have a keen interest in their neighbourhoods and communities. While 90 per cent will become citizens in six to ten years (at a higher rate than ever before in Canada’s history), their participation in city council and school board elections is alarmingly low. Something has to be done to engage newcomers as early as possible in the civic life of Toronto, inviting them to develop solutions, and signaling to them that they belong. One way to do this is to permit Toronto residents to vote in local elections, before they become citizens. This is not a new idea and has been done in cities around the world. Citizenship is a journey that begins for newcomers within neighbourhoods. It starts as a Torontonian, engaging in local issues. It progresses towards becoming a Canadian, voting in provincial and national elections. Voting in local elections for council and school board would be a chance for immigrants to learn about and participate in the political system on the road to citizenship. We the undersigned support allowing municipal voting for all permanent residents who live in the City of Toronto. For a PDF version, please click here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/36360448/iVote-to-Open-Letter 2010-08-24T18:32:44+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/non-citizens_voting_rights_discussed_at_mayoral_debate/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/non-citizens_voting_rights_discussed_at_mayoral_debate/#When:18:16:48Z Mayoral candidates tusselled over whether or not to extend the vote to non-citizens during a debate under the vaulted ceilings of U of T’s Hart House last night, with Rocco Rossi and Rob Ford agreeing it’s not the way to go. Mr. Rossi said it is an issue he has been “torn on for years,” but has concluded that Canada’s requisite three years of residency to achieve citizenship makes it “not a lot to ask, relative to every other country on Earth.” Mr. Ford, a councillor for Etobicoke, said you can’t open the vote to a permanent resident before answering if that person can run for public office. Sarah Thomson said there should be a referendum on the issue — which requires provincial approval — and the other candidates came out in favour of it. Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone suggested that not extending the vote is like saying non-citizens are not good enough to participate in civic decisions. “Taxation without representation has never been an acceptable principle in democracy,” said Rocco Achampong, a 31-year-old law graduate participating in the first mayoral debate to include so-called fringe candidates. The event, organized by a group called Better Ballots that is pushing electoral reform, indeed benefited from the new voices. Online voters picked Mr. Achampong, co-founder of U of T’s Black Students Association and past president of the Students Administrative Council, and Keith Cole, a 45-year-old cabaret performer, to join the other perceived top candidates on the stage. Organizers also invited the remaining 20 candidates for the office of mayor to deliver short remarks throughout the night, some of which elicited the loudest applause. Howard Gomberg, 71, freestyled a poem about how City Hall should change; Himy Syed, who dropped out of a ward race to run for mayor said: “We’ve sent enough cowboys to City Hall. Now it’s time for an Indian.” Citing low voter turnout and rare turnover on council, the Better Ballots team has been hosting town halls across the city, hashing out ways in which “to make the system work better.” A list of 14 options, being used in such cities as Montreal, Vancouver, New York and San Francisco, include expanding the vote to permanent residents (London, Madrid, Berlin), voting on weekends (Montreal votes on Sunday), online and phone voting (currently in Markham and Peterborough) or replacing a ward system with councillors who run city-wide. Also, using a ranked/preferential ballot to elect councillors. George Smitherman said if elected he would establish a committee that explored democratic reform and expressed a desire to make decisions at community councils — that often replay at city council — “more real.” All candidates opposed establishing municipal parties at City Hall. Most were supportive of online voting, although Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti expressed trepidation over the potential for fraud, and there was debate over whether the vote should be extended to somone who is 16. “The City of Toronto’s problems are not purely structural, they’re about setting priorities,” Mr. Rossi said. In his closing remarks, Mr. Achampong said: “If you do not vote on Oct. 25, you are part of the problem.” In an earlier interview, Mr. Cole called the event a baby step toward creating a more diverse council. “The city needs radical ideas,” the cabaret performer said. Mr. Cole scoffs at suggestions that those who are not part of the slate of six candidates are at a disadvantage because of far less press coverage. “There are creative ways to get your word out there.” In his case, he uses his monthly show. “I do have a microphone in front of me often and I’m lucky that way,” he said. National Post Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/02/non-citizens%E2%80%99-voting-rights-discussed-at-mayoral-debate/#ixzz0vqrdiNoZ 2010-06-02T18:16:48+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/forum_looks_at_why_people_arent_voting/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/forum_looks_at_why_people_arent_voting/#When:18:30:05Z Online voting, the party system, term limits, lowering the voting age — everything was on the table at Better Ballots’ first town hall meeting Tuesday night. “We have to look at why people aren’t voting,” said Desmond Cole, a member of the Better Ballots’ working group. About 25 people — including three municipal candidates — took part in the group’s first of four public forums to address the issue of electoral reform in Toronto’s municipal elections. The group, which was born from the City Summit Alliance and is led by urban activist Dave Meslin, has identified four key problems with the city’s elections: extremely low voter turnout (typically less than 40 per cent); the difficulty in unseating an incumbent; council does not reflect the city’s diversity in terms of race or gender; and the current winner-take-all system produces distorted results, in which candidates can be elected with as little as 20 per cent of the votes. Meslin introduced the event by saying the key was to look outside of the city for answers, to consider what has and hasn’t worked in other cities. “Are there ideas from other cities that we could bring to Toronto?” The working group has identified 14 different reform options to explore — addressing everything from where and when votes are conducted, to how campaigns are financed. Organizers handed out surveys to all who attended, asking them to identify which reforms they would most like to see implemented. Susan Gapka, a candidate to represent Ward 27, said she checked off every option. “Because they’re all better than the system we have now.” Meslin and his team plan to take the most popular ideas from the four town halls and, throughout the summer, create advocacy campaigns for those issues. Despite the relatively low attendance, Meslin said he was happy with the first event. The point of the town halls is to “build awareness that the system isn’t working and show that there are alternatives,” he said. “If we just achieve that we’ve succeeded.” The group will host future town halls on April 20 at the Scarborough Civic Centre, April 26 at City Hall and April 27 at the Etobicoke Civic Centre. All will take place at 7 p.m. Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/794899—forum-looks-at-why-people-aren-t-voting 2010-04-13T18:30:05+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/unequal_votes_threatening_canadian_democracy_study_finds/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/unequal_votes_threatening_canadian_democracy_study_finds/#When:18:32:43Z Ontario, B.C., Alberta seriously underrepresented in the House, which is less representative than foreign legislatures The votes that Canadians cast in federal elections are more unequal than at any time in the country’s history. The House of Commons is more unrepresentative than other federations in the developed world. In the Throne Speech, the Conservative government promised legislation to address the under-representation of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta in the House of Commons. It can’t come too soon. “The situation as it now stands is seriously undermining the principle that all citizens should have an equal say in choosing their government,” concludes a report by the Mowat Centre, a think tank dedicated to issues concerning Ontario. A copy of the report, which is to be released Tuesday, was obtained by The Globe and Mail. Not only is the current makeup of the House of Commons undemocratic, the report maintains, it has “the unintended effect of undermining the voting power and equality rights of minorities and newcomers to the country.” The effort to give smaller and rural parts of the country a voice in the House of Commons – they will remain overrepresented even after the proposed rebalancing – has muffled Canada’s growing multicultural reality. Without legislative change, Parliament will increasingly speak for a Canada that no longer exists. A founding principle of the Canadian Constitution is Representation by Population, or rep-by-pop, which holds that every citizen’s vote should have equal weight. In practice, Canadians have accepted that some parts of the country should be entitled to representation above what their numbers warrant – that, for example, each of the territories should be represented by a Member of Parliament, despite their slender populations. But constitutional provisions and various promises and laws have skewed the House to the point where Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta are seriously underrepresented in the House of Commons. Quebec is appropriately represented, and all other provinces are overrepresented, some egregiously. How bad is the skew? The average riding in Alberta is now three times the size of the average riding in PEI. Comparing Canada to other first-world countries with a federal system of government reveals that Canada’s House of Commons is less representative than the U.S. House of Representatives and of the comparable legislatures in Germany, Australia or Switzerland. And the Mowat Centre’s analysis revealed that the House is more unrepresentative now than at any other time since Confederation. “The relative weight of a single vote … has never been more unequal among the provinces,” concluded Andrew Sancton, a political scientist who analyzed rep-by-pop historically for the Mowat Centre. According to the study, if Ontario was properly represented in the House, it would have 117 seats, rather than the current 106. British Columbia would increase from 36 to 40, while Alberta would have 31 rather than 28. A spokesperson for Steven Fletcher, Minister of State for Democratic Reform, could not say when the government intends to introduce legislation to rebalance the House. But in principle, the Liberals are inclined to support the bill. “We recognize there needs to be better representation of the three provinces,” said Marlene Jennings, critic for Democratic Reform. “We’ll look at it with an open mind.” NDP Leader Jack Layton would not commit his party to supporting the legislation. He said Sunday that the NDP preferred to see a package that also tackled Senate reform and electing members through proportional representation, “rather than tinkering around the edges.” Politically, rebalancing the House is a potential nightmare. Increasing the size of the House contradicts the Tory mantra of supporting smaller government. But reducing the number of seats to lessen the skew would provoke howls from provinces that lost seats. And giving Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta the seats their populations warrant would lessen the relative influence of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Atlantic Canada, whose populations are stagnant or in decline. “In some ways, Canada is becoming lopsided,” observes Henry Srebrnick, a political scientist at University of Prince Edward Island. Ideally, he says, reform of the House should be accompanied by Senate reform, making the upper house an effective voice for the regions. Still, he favours giving Ontario, B.C. and Alberta more seats, even though the relative influence of Atlantic Canada would decline, simply because “it’s the right thing to do.” Because of the rural/regional skew, the House of Commons has a disproportionate number of MPs from parts of the country where there are few visible minorities, at the expense of the growing and ever-more-diverse major cities. “No one intended that to happen, but that is the result,” says Matthew Mendelsohn, director of the Mowat Centre. “We need to confront that result and ask if it needs addressing, and I think it does.” Full rep-by-pop in the House is impossible. Because Prince Edward Island is guaranteed four seats under the Constitution, the House would have to grow to 890 members to eliminate that province’s present electoral advantage. But by lessening the distortions, our House would reflect the dynamic, diverse, urban nation that Canada has become and is still becoming. It would make our government more like us. And it would force political parties that wanted to form governments into becoming more like us, too. “The quality and nature of the debate would change,” Mr. Mendelsohn believes. “Would it improve? I think it would.” Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/unequal-votes-threatening-canadian-democracy-study-finds/article1508823/ 2010-03-23T18:32:43+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/my_city_not_so_much_if_youre_a_landed_immigrant/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/my_city_not_so_much_if_youre_a_landed_immigrant/#When:18:35:13Z The discussion of allowing landed immigrants to vote during the municipal elections is nothing new. The Star covered it. David Miller is supportive of it. The Maytree foundation has a whole campaign based on this issue. The reason I bring it up is because it is something that is close to me. A little over a month ago, I took one of the most important steps of my life: becoming a citizen of Canada. It was a powerful moment. I can now sing “O Canada” proudly as an accepted son of this great country. I can vote for all levels of the government, run as a candidate, apply for federal jobs and travel anywhere without being harassed by custom agents (most of the times). And I am grateful for all of that, among the many other things. My life as a resident of Toronto, though, is more or less the same. Except for the fact that—for the first time ever—I can participate fully in the upcoming municipal elections, my morning after the citizenship ceremony was the same as the ones of the last six years. In no specific order, here are some highlights of my life since 2003 (the year I became a Landed Immigrant): •Helped 25 youth get a unique summer employment experience in Toronto through my work •Volunteered (4), attended and supported almost all of the major festivals that took place in the city •Helped youth in the city become advocates for their health, rights and opportunities •Became a 2010 DiverseCity Fellows member •Organized and attended various rallies and actions (political, environmental, educational…) •Helped organize cleanup events last year during the city workers’ strike and in 2008’s Earth Day •Helped many newcomer immigrants, and other marginalized communities, become more included and engaged in their community •Attended almost all Canada Day celebrations and picnics hosted by local dignitaries •Helped raise funds for various charity drives and foundations •Organized a major festival in Parkdale attended by over 600 people •Enjoyed the wealth of restaurants, shops, cafes, galleries, parks … of Toronto •Paid my taxes •Etc, etc. I hope this doesn’t come across as me showing off how awesome I am. We’ll cover that in some other post. Rather, it’s to show that I was offered all kinds of opportunities to be an engaged resident of this city. Not only that, but I was also active in many areas that helped sustain Toronto and make it a better, more vibrant city. In the past six years, two municipal elections took place in which I couldn’t cast my vote. Since 2004, 7360 city bylaws were passed that affected my life as a Torontonian, all without me ever having a chance to voice my opinion in any meaningful way. This year, I am fortunate enough to have a chance to finally say my piece and follow through on my responsibility of being a citizen. My dad won’t, even though he owns a house and is as active as I am in his community in Etobicoke. Neither will my friend who’s lived in Toronto for over five years. Neither will 263,000 other people like her. And if I didn’t get my citizenship this year, neither would I. I am lucky in that my application was processed in six years. There are many who desperately want to be Canadian citizens whose papers will take much longer to get through, for various reasons, some of which that are beyond their control. For some, that letter inviting them to the citizenship ceremony will never arrive. The history of progress is marked by the high points of people achieving the right to participate in that most cherished cornerstone of all democratic societies: voting. Women were allowed to vote in Canada 92 years ago. The Civil rights movement sparked a generation whose ideas and values are still resonant and reverberating today. I don’t mean to say that the significance of those landmark moments then and this issue now is the same. But there are similarities in all three cases that are hard to ignore, namely that of exclusion and disparity of rights. In an upcoming election where the same old tired complaints of voter apathy, disconnected wards and the lack of new faces among the political elites are loud and true, I can’t help but wonder if that would be mitigated by allowing the strong and active immigrant population to vote for changes that they deserve in the Toronto that they call home. In the spirit of leadership, inclusion and a better Toronto for all, this is one step that is long overdue. [Be sure to visit http://www.ivotetoronto.org for more info about this, and what you can do to help.] Read more: http://thestar.blogs.com/yourcitymycity/2010/03/your-city-my-city-not-so-much-if-youre-just-a-landed-immigrant.html 2010-03-21T18:35:13+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/taxation_without_representation/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/taxation_without_representation/#When:18:41:29Z Interview: Myer Siemiatycki discusses why including all of a city’s residents in local affairs and elections can lead to more active and responsive urban communities. (Run-time: 9 minutes.) Listen at: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1098-taxation-without-representation 2010-03-12T18:41:29+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/torontos_lost_voters/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/torontos_lost_voters/#When:18:39:25Z One in seven Torontonians are barred from voting in the municipal election because they are not Canadian citizens. So far, the buzz around the October 2010 Toronto municipal election has focused on who is running for mayor. It’s time we paid more attention to who will be voting for those candidates. When it comes to casting ballots to select our city council, Toronto has a deep democratic deficit that severely undermines the legitimacy of our elected officials. When only a third of eligible electors turn out to vote in Toronto elections, how representative and responsive can any member of council be? And when more than one in seven of Toronto residents aren’t even permitted onto the voters’ list, how democratic is our municipal election system to begin with? Toronto’s sorry state of voter participation needs to be an issue in this year’s municipal election campaign. A fundamental starting point is voting rights for the hundreds of thousands of immigrant Torontonians currently barred from casting their ballot in municipal elections. What keeps these residents off the municipal voters’ list is that they are not Canadian citizens. Municipal voter eligibility rules in Canada are set by the provinces, and in Ontario (as in other provinces) Canadian citizenship is a pre-requisite. So, even though they pay municipal property taxes, make Toronto their home, and depend on its municipal services, immigrant non-Canadian citizens lack voting rights. The number of non-Canadian citizen residents in Toronto is huge. The 2006 Census counted 380,135 of them. This represents 15.4 per cent (more than one in seven) of the city’s 2.47 million population. This is equal to the entire population of Halifax, twice the population of Regina, and four times the population of St. John’s, to cite three other provincial capital cities in the country. What’s wrong with this picture of immigrant electoral disenfranchisement? Lots, but here’s the shortlist. No Taxation Without Representation. All the foreign-born, non-Canadian citizens kept off the voters’ list live in Toronto and pay property taxes as tenants or homeowners. Yet they have no vote in selecting their municipal representatives. Voteless Neighbourhoods. Toronto is officially classified into 140 neighbourhoods. Given newcomers residential settlement patterns in the city, Toronto has neighbourhoods where over 30 per cent of the population are non-citizens, and therefore ineligible to vote. Often these neighbourhoods have distinct needs and assets that go unrecognized because they lack a political voice. The Stakeholder Principle of Municipal Rights. Cities don’t operate under the same “membership rules” as the federal or provincial government. The best example is the fact that non-residents can vote municipally, but not federally or provincially. If you pay property taxes to a municipality on a property you own or rent, you can vote in that municipality’s election, even if you don’t live there. Immigrant non-Canadians meet this membership requirement of paying property taxes. The fact they also live in Toronto further strengthens their claim. Creating Cities of Belonging. Immigrants have demonstrated their commitment to Toronto by leaving their homeland to live here. Immigrant integration works best when newcomers feel they are recognized and valued. Over 85 per cent of eligible immigrants eventually become Canadian citizens. But it does take time - a minimum of four years given the residency, citizenship application, and testing requirements. Toronto municipal elections are held every four years. This means that, depending on their arrival date, an immigrant can wait anywhere from four to eight years to vote for their mayor, city councillor, or school trustee. Many Other Countries Give Non-Citizens Municipal Voting Rights. More than 40 countries (half of them in Europe) now extend the municipal vote to non-citizen immigrants. This includes the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden, and New Zealand. Like them, we should regard municipal voting rights as a way of signaling we want immigrants to participate in the political life of their chosen country. A grassroots movement is growing to extend municipal voting rights to non-citizen immigrants. Under the campaign banner “I Vote Toronto,” close to 70 organizations in Toronto have endorsed the call for non-citizen voting rights in the city. What exactly does Toronto (one of the world’s great immigrant cities) gain by preventing hundreds of thousands of immigrant residents from voting on municipal election day? We certainly know what is lost. A few years back, while visiting Toronto, Dublin’s Mayor Michael Conaghan was asked how immigrants there feel about being able to vote in that city’s elections before they become citizens of Ireland. He replied: “They like the idea of being asked for their vote. They feel a part of the city, and I think that’s important…I suppose they feel they’re not being dismissed.” And what do Toronto’s candidates for mayor, city councillor and school trustee say on the subject? Listen to an interview with Myer Siemiatycki here. This is one in a series of essays on the big issues in Toronto’s upcoming municipal election. Read more: http://www.themarknews.com/articles/1090-torontos-lost-voters 2010-03-12T18:39:25+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/the_agenda_-_extending_the_vote/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/the_agenda_-_extending_the_vote/#When:18:47:50Z Extending the vote—I Vote Toronto’s Desmond Cole and why non-citizens should vote in municipal elections. Go to episode page: http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=779731&ts=2010-03-08%2020:00:00.0 2010-03-08T18:47:50+00:00 http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/this_is_our_election_toronto/ http://www.ivotetoronto.org/site/this_is_our_election_toronto/#When:18:44:59Z Torontonians should take the lead in defining the issues that matter to them in the next municipal election. We’re only into the third month of a long election campaign, with eight months still to go until we go to the polls on October 25th. The top issues for debate are already emerging from the declared mayoral candidates: transit, outsourcing, bike lanes, the city’s budgetary woes, to name a few. But who is asking Torontonians what matters to them? Affordable housing, transparency at City Hall, housing for the homeless, city streets and parks … these things matter too.  If we fail to raise them, then we run the risk of letting the candidates set the agenda. The Toronto Star blog is one way to encourage this debate. Other groups, too are reaching out to their constituencies including the Toronto Board of Trade on Vote Toronto 2010 and ChangeCamp, an interesting project to re-engage citizens in the political process. Maytree is doing its bit by inviting our constituency to define, discuss and share the issues that matter to them. We will be reaching out to many individuals who are reflective of the city’s new demographics to articulate their vision of a new Toronto. Already, some have identified the need for our next Mayor to champion the right of all landed immigrants to vote in local elections (I Vote Toronto). Others have tabled their concerns that there are few opportunities for new voices at City Hall. Let’s wake up Toronto and make this our election! Read more: http://thestar.blogs.com/yourcitymycity/2010/03/this-is-our-election-toronto.html 2010-03-08T18:44:59+00:00