{"id":4701,"date":"2009-06-15T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2009-06-15T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingtoronto.ca\/?p=4701"},"modified":"2013-01-21T13:36:55","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:36:55","slug":"the-politics-of-extending-the-municipal-franchise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/06\/15\/the-politics-of-extending-the-municipal-franchise\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of extending the municipal franchise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"election signs by Bouke Salverda\" src=\"http:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/110\/284934628_2af4553703_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"316\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In The Globe and Mail&#8217;s online debate\/column Friday about voting rights for immigrants, Marcus Gee denounced David Miller&#8217;s bid to extend the franchise as a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/national\/toronto\/voting-is-a-privilege-not-a-freebie\/article1180471\/\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153thoroughly awful\u00e2\u20ac\u009d idea<\/a>, but allowed that he didn&#8217;t think the mayor was acting out of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/national\/toronto\/should-non-citizens-get-to-vote\/article1178646\/\">cynical political calculation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Gee&#8217;s getting it backwards: the proposal, subject to provincial approval, certainly smells like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalpost.com\/news\/story.html?id=1683380\">pre-election positioning<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalpost.com\/news\/story.html?id=1683380\"> on the mayor&#8217;s part<\/a>: after all, new immigrants are a natural constituency for a possibly vulnerable left-of-centre politician. Miller has gone to some lengths to cultivate suburban newcomers in his two previous campaigns and will have to do so again in order to be re-elected next year. What&#8217;s more, the province&#8217;s ultimate ruling is almost immaterial: the mayor likely scores political points with new Canadians (i.e., those who have recently obtained their citizenship) simply by waving this flag.<\/p>\n<p>Politics aside, the concept itself is a good one. Extending the franchise certainly won&#8217;t exacerbate what author Yann Martel and others immigration critics have dubbed the<a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/canada\/national\/article.jsp?content=20061225_138563_138563\"> &#8216;Hotel Canada&#8217; phenomenon<\/a>. Comparisons to Europe and the U.S., as always, are dubious because Canadians, especially those living in big cities, are less inclined to view immigration as a corrosive social problem. Nor will such changes create costly new entitlements because our local governments &#8212; unlike those in the U.S and Europe &#8212; don&#8217;t provide social services that are unavailable to non-citizens.<\/p>\n<p>On the contrary, the municipal franchise is a kind of appetizer: by allowing landed immigrants to vote in local elections, they&#8217;ll become more motivated to seek out the complete rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the problem with the city&#8217;s proposal is that it serves as a distraction from a far more tenacious failing of local democracy, which is\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.irpp.org\/newsroom\/archive\/2006\/110906e.pdf\">the chronic non-participation of tenants and low-income residents<\/a> [PDF]. Half of Torontonians rent, and the turnout rate among this segment of urban society has been dismal for years.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cityidol.to\/\">City Idol<\/a> followers tried valiantly to open up municipal politics in 2006, albeit with mixed results. We still have no term limits for councillors, meaning outsiders for the most part need not apply. The council deputation system is a sham. And politicians have a hell of a time campaigning in apartment buildings.<\/p>\n<p>The mayor could make local politics more compelling for a broader segment of urban society by pushing for some kind of mixed electoral model that combines traditional riding representation with party lists. Such measures, however, require provincial assent, which is a complex process with an uncertain endpoint.<\/p>\n<p>There are more straightforward techniques that the city could enact without running to Queen&#8217;s Park for permission. For instance, council could seek to establish a system that ensures most tenants receive a statement showing how much of their rent goes towards property taxes. Right now, only property owners receive municipal tax bills, which is a big reason why homeowners vote: they expect a say in how their money is spent and the decisions that affect their assets.<\/p>\n<p>But tenants pay property taxes, too, and at a significantly higher rate than homeowners. Yet those taxes are invisible because they&#8217;re rolled into the monthly rent payment. The city is now setting up a<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/canada\/toronto\/story\/2008\/09\/29\/landlaord-licence.html\"> licensing system for apartment owners<\/a>. Why not require landlords, as a condition of license, to report to tenants how much of their monthly rent cheque goes to pay municipal taxes?<\/p>\n<p>The city will whine that such disclosures are administratively complicated and costly, and some tenants will fall through the cracks because they sub-let informally or illegally. But those aren&#8217;t compelling reasons to not act. Indeed, if the mayor is serious about making Toronto more inclusive, he should take steps to ensure that all residents, not just homeowners, know precisely what they pay for their municipal services. Only when that happens will we see the voter turnout numbers rise.<\/p>\n<p>Or are there other approaches?<\/p>\n<p><em>photo by <a href=\"http:\/\/aidanfotos.com\">Bouke Salverda<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In The Globe and Mail&#8217;s online debate\/column Friday about voting rights for immigrants, Marcus Gee denounced David Miller&#8217;s bid to extend the franchise as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thoroughly awful\u00e2\u20ac\u009d idea, but allowed that he didn&#8217;t think the mayor was acting out of cynical political calculation. Gee&#8217;s getting it backwards: the proposal, subject to provincial approval, certainly smells<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/06\/15\/the-politics-of-extending-the-municipal-franchise\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;The politics of extending the municipal franchise&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[379,425,31,1128,12451,426,2602,12449,416,950,316,844,19,506,12450],"class_list":["post-4701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-author","tag-david-miller","tag-election","tag-europe","tag-marcus-gee","tag-mayor","tag-municipal-services","tag-online-debatecolumn","tag-pdf","tag-politician","tag-queen","tag-social-services","tag-toronto","tag-united-states","tag-yann-martel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The politics of extending the municipal franchise - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2009\/06\/15\/the-politics-of-extending-the-municipal-franchise\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The politics of extending the municipal franchise - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In The Globe and Mail&#8217;s online debate\/column Friday about voting rights for immigrants, Marcus Gee denounced David Miller&#8217;s bid to extend the franchise as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thoroughly awful\u00e2\u20ac\u009d idea, but allowed that he didn&#8217;t think the mayor was acting out of cynical political calculation. 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