Keren Tang says YES
City of Edmonton Karhiio Ward Councillor
Who should have the right to vote in a democratic society? The last time Alberta’s Local Authorities Election Act was open for amendment, back in 2018, some of us made a key recommendation: let’s give permanent residents (PRs) the right to vote in local elections. Now Calgary city council has brought this idea forward anew, with a resolution at last fall’s Alberta Municipalities convention.
We should give PRs the right to vote in municipal elections. Provincial and federal governments have much broader responsibilities, including foreign policy. But municipal issues such as waste collection, snow removal and parks and recreation are much more relevant to people who live in the community. In fact, more than 45 countries and a number of US states and cities have given PRs some form of local election enfranchisement. Giving PRs the right to participate in local democracy underscores the principle that local decisions should be determined by those who live locally.
A permanent resident is someone who has immigrated to Canada with the intention of permanently residing in the country. They pay taxes, contribute to their communities, follow local rules and laws, learn about local history and stories, send their children to local schools and fully embrace what it’s like to be part of Canadian society. Many of them can live, work and study for years as a PR, while building towards citizenship, a process that can take four to five years. In my case, I waited eight years before becoming a Canadian citizen and voting for the first time in my life.
Provincial and federal governments know our economic future relies on people choosing to call Alberta and Canada home. To ensure our economy is strong, the “Alberta is Calling” campaign has been ramping up to attract waves of newcomers. PRs are an integral part of our communities, such that several orders of government have opened up new career pathways to retain them. Nationally, PRs can (as of 2022) join our armed forces and fight for Canada. Provincially, PRs can now (as of 2024) join our police services and protect our communities.
Ironically PRs have a large say in who Canada’s federal and provincial leaders are even though they can’t vote in elections. Political parties are membership-based organizations that grant PRs the right to vote for party leaders. PRs can help choose who everyone gets to vote for—except themselves.
The more we include people in our civic processes, the more likely we are to build a healthy democracy and engaged citizenry. Each time we extend the right to vote to more people, from women in the 1940s, to Asian Canadians in the 1950s, to Indigenous peoples in the 1960s, our country and democracy have grown and strengthened. As social values continue to evolve in the 21st century, we need to go further and include PRs in our democratic processes. It’s a common-sense step we can take to improve our democracy.
Avigail Eisenberg says no
University of Victoria professor of political science
There are good, pragmatic reasons to link voting rights to citizenship, and only weak reasons to extend the vote to permanent residents.
First, note that being a citizen is a necessary but not sufficient condition for voting. Many Canadian citizens aren’t entitled to vote, including those under 18 years old. Until 2002, prisoners couldn’t vote. Before 1993, people with mental disabilities couldn’t vote. But citizenship matters. Having or acquiring citizenship is a way of signalling a special commitment to a community, which is reciprocated when the community grants citizen benefits. Every political community must make pragmatic decisions about who has a valid claim to vote. Privileging citizenship is practical and non-discriminatory.
Like children, permanent residents are temporarily ineligible to vote. They can apply for citizenship within three to five years of gaining permanent residency status and, once a citizen, get the right to vote and hold a Canadian passport. For many the process is longer, and a surprising number (15 per cent) never apply for citizenship. Some don’t because they hold citizenship in a country that prohibits dual citizenship and, if their original citizenship is rescinded, risk losing access to family or retaining property or a business in that country. It’s understandable that people weigh the benefits of pursuing Canadian citizenship differently. But the question is whether permanent residents have a fair chance to acquire the right to vote. And whatever one thinks of laws prohibiting dual citizenship, Canada shouldn’t be compensating for the poor decisions of other countries.
Without a doubt many permanent residents are active members of our municipalities. They own homes and pay taxes here. But the same is true for other groups who don’t have the right to vote. Foreign property owners pay taxes here but don’t have the right to vote. Canada’s snowbirds can’t vote in American or Mexican elections despite paying taxes there. Temporary workers have interests in the way our municipalities are governed, but they can’t vote here either.
Requiring permanent residents to become citizens before they can vote reflects a pragmatic need to draw the line somewhere. Restricting the vote on the bases of race, gender or class would be bad reasons. In 2002 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the law prohibiting prisoners from voting was meant to punish them by denying them full membership in the community while in prison. That’s another bad reason. But no one seriously thinks that the vote is being withheld from permanent residents to punish them. Nor is the restriction animated by discrimination based on race, gender or class.
Permanent residents can still participate in elections. They can lobby for what matters to them and help their favoured party. But citizenship reasonably brings with it certain benefits. One of them is a right to vote. If permanent residents seek this benefit, they can pursue the pathway to citizenship.
keren tang responds to avigail eisenberg
The right to vote is not a simplistic yes or no issue—and never has been. In Canada and across the world, laws regarding this right are diverse. Over time the right to vote has evolved, as requirements related to land ownership, gender, race and age have all changed.
It is certain, however, that democracy is healthier when more experiences are brought to the table.
Consider people who are permanent residents. Despite the practical reasons to extend the right to vote in local elections to PRs, some people remain nervous about the prospect. They’re worried about a slippery slope that might erode the value of citizenship. But the result of extending the right to vote to PRs will be a stronger local democracy where more people contribute more fully in our communities.
Professor Eisenberg suggests that “privileging citizen-
ship is practical and non-discriminatory.” This stems from seeing citizenship solely as a status affiliated with a country, and from an assumption that “citizenship” is a narrow status. This rigid per-spective means that the lack of legal citizenship should prevent people from contributing to a better future for all of us. And examples such as denying the vote to 10-year-olds or people with temporary student, visitor or work visas are irrelevant in relation to whether PRs should vote in municipal elections.
Citizenship is a dynamic life process, continually evolving through learning by doing. Voting and other democratic processes, such as running for office or participating in jury duty, are experiential learning processes in citizenship. Extending the right to vote in local elections to PRs invites them to begin this citizenship journey sooner by becoming more engaged members of the community. These people have already demonstrated a substantial commitment to Canada and its communities by their persistence in the challenging process to immigrate.
Professor Eisenberg suggests we need to draw the line somewhere. Indeed, the line should be drawn where it is relevant to the social and political context of today’s Alberta. PRs have often already invested a lot of work and money and gone through a highly rigorous vetting process. Most of them will, within a few months or years, become legal citizens.
Whenever we’ve changed the law to extend the right to vote, we’ve cultivated a stronger democracy.
The history of citizenship, as a status affiliated with a nation, is “animated by discrimination based on race, gender, and class.” Women, Asian Canadians and Indigenous peoples did not receive their right to vote in Canada until the 1940s–1960s. Professor Eisenberg names groups such as people who were incarcerated or who have developmental disabilities, who gained their right to vote in the 1990s and early 2000s, who were similarly discriminated against because of social status. Whenever we’ve changed the law to extend the right to vote, instead of difficulties we’ve cultivated a stronger democracy.
PRs generally come from two types of places: where democracy is denied and they are craving participation; or where democracy is well established and they can bring refreshed energy to our democratic system. Both groups of people are positive resources offering us an opportunity to improve our current system. Voting eligibility shouldn’t be universal across Canada and at all levels of government. But it should be universal at the order of government closest to the people: the local.
Even without the right to vote, PRs can already participate in democracy, including by joining a political party, making a decision on a party’s leader (who might become a premier or prime minister) and holding office in a party. These facts don’t support a case against extending the right to vote. Quite the opposite; they demonstrate a recognition of the valuable contributions already made by PRs and strengthen the case to extend their opportunities. Moreover, isn’t it a double standard when PRs can participate in such ways yet have no say over snow removal, sidewalk maintenance or parks and recreation?
PRs who became involved in local democracy—by voting municipally—could go on to make progressively more significant contributions. Then, when they receive their official citizenship, they’ll be ready to participate more deeply in their democracy. None of this will diminish the value of citizenship for those of us with a Canadian passport. And there will still be provincial and federal elections, as well as activities such as jury duty, that only legal citizens can participate in. We’re not giving anything away. Instead, we’re strengthening the bond between PRs and their communities, benefiting all of us with a more inclusive democracy.
Co-authored with Jim Gurnett, contributor to Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees (Athabasca University Press, 2024) and MLA for Spirit River-Fairview (1985–86).
avigail eisenberg responds to keren tang
Extending the vote to permanent residents will not make Canada more democratic. Nor should such a move be viewed as part of a historical trajectory towards a better and more ethical democracy. Historically, Canada has unjustly excluded citizens through a patchwork of legislation that extended the franchise to some groups but not others and, in the case of Asian Canadians (1885) and Inuit (1934), extended the franchise but then later denied it.
It’s worth briefly considering this history. Canadian women were prohibited from voting until 1918, when propertied white women gained the right to vote. Until 1920, only property-owning citizens could vote, thereby excluding the poor, the working class and any group prohibited from owning property. Soon after that and until 1949, the federal government extended the right to vote to Canadian citizens only if they were enfranchised in their province of residence. This denied the vote to Chinese, South Asian and Japanese-Canadians living in British Columbia, but not to those living in Ontario or Alberta. The history of First Nations voting rights is also both exclusionary and sometimes random, with the right to vote being offered only to those who gave up their status under the Indian Act and moved off reserves. “Non-status Indians” didn’t gain the right to vote until the postwar period, and not until as late as 1969 in Quebec.
These exclusions ended in 1960, when the federal government removed all barriers to voting based on sex, race and class. But the hangover from this history lingered and served as one impetus to entrench the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, which guaranteed rights nationally and included the right to vote for all Canadian citizens.
The lesson from Canada’s patchwork history on voting rights is that a strong connection ultimately exists between voting and citizenship. Ours is a history of denying citizens the vote based on sex, race, class and Indigenous status, all of which are protected by human rights guarantees. Permanent residency does not belong on this list. It is a temporary status, subject to a legally protected process, and is partly under the control of the permanent resident themself. It is not part of a historical trajectory towards greater democracy in Canada.
A strong connection exists between voting and citizenship. But permanent residency is a temporary status.
Our democracy suffers from two major democratic deficits today, neither of which is addressed by extending to permanent residents the right to vote. First, Canada has witnessed a steady decline in voter turnout over the last 60 years. Federally, voter turnout declined from a high of 79 per cent in the 1960s to 62 per cent in 2021. The turnout for provincial elections is slightly better in some provinces but worse in Alberta, averaging 54 per cent since 1993. But municipally across the country it is far worse still, with sometimes less than 40 per cent of eligible voters electing the people who control our school boards, water supply, infrastructure, parks, zoning, development bylaws and other matters that make the largest impacts on our day-to-day lives. The problem of turnout decline is not solved by including more people on the voters’ list. There is no reason to believe that permanent residents won’t simply follow Canadian citizens into electoral apathy. Instead we have to ask: Why aren’t eligible voters voting?
This leads to the second major problem, which is that our electoral system of “first past the post” does not fairly reflect our voting patterns. Large majority governments can be won by parties with as low as 35–40 per cent of the popular vote. And yet, despite political promises by several leaders—including prime ministers and premiers—to change the system to one that better reflects voter preferences and diversity, very few changes have been adopted.
It would be nice to think that extending the vote to permanent residents would improve Canadian democracy. But it won’t. To the contrary, extending the vote to permanent residents is a distraction from more pressing problems that threaten the quality of our democracy. To suggest that this practice ought to be recognized as a requirement of democratic governance, similar to extending the vote to women, ethnic minorities or Indigenous peoples, confuses what ought to count as a human rights requirement with respect to voting. Canada, like other western countries, suffers from serious democratic deficits. It has a history of unjust exclusion. But the decision not to extend the right to vote to permanent residents is not one of these deficits or part of that unhappy history. Our “near-citizens” are, as Keren Tang correctly points out, exemplary participants in our communities and institutions. They are part of Canada’s future. And once they become citizens, they will be able to vote.
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