This fall, Toronto City Council will debate a motion that could allow approximately 261,000 previously ineligible people to vote in Toronto municipal elections for the first time. (This number, which is based on the 2006 census, has likely risen, but is difficult to estimate due to the loss of the mandatory long-form census, which contained data on citizenship.) These people are not Canadian citizens. They are non-citizen residents—skilled workers, refugees and other permanent residents—who make Toronto their home. Regardless of the outcome, they will still not be able to vote provincially or federally. They would, however, be given a voice in the selection of the political representatives whose decisions shape their daily lives. And, as a group, they would be enfranchised for the first time in Canadian history. Should they be?
We think so. Yet support for municipal enfranchisement has, until very recently, been relatively weak. Non-citizen residents make up...
Graeme Cook is a human rights researcher and policy analyst based in Toronto.
Patti Tamara Lenard is a professor of ethics at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Her most recent book is Trust, Democracy, and Multicultural Challenges (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).
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