Action Canada: Barriers to Belonging Report and Municipal Voting

2016/02/06 Leave a comment

Attended the presentation of the Action Canada report 5 Feb (I had been one of the people consulted in its preparation)Citizenship and Selection).

Well attended, including the Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Arif Virani, who signalled the change and tone of the new government.

The one part of the report that I have a friendly disagreement with is the push for municipal voting.

The main arguments used – Permanent Residents use municipal services, pay taxes, live in the communities – apply also to provincial services (e.g., healthcare and education) and federal services (e.g., Service Canada and related employment programs). Comparisons with Europe are largely irrelevant given the barriers to or length to obtain citizenship in most European countries.

And I have never seen – readers to correct me – any convincing data or evidence on whether extending municipal voting to non-citizens will make a marked difference in voting participation or overall integration.

Recommendations as follows:

  1. Recognize and facilitate permanent immigration and citizenship acquisition as critical to nation building in selection, citizenship, settlement and integration policies. Avoid policies that risk leading to long-term residence without permanent status or citizenship.
  2. Factor the settlement and integration needs of immigrants into selection policy, alongside the long-term social and economic needs of the country.

Designing smarter services:

  1. Engage stakeholders to identify information gaps, design usable data formats, and create platforms for consolidating evidence on what works. Include, at a minimum, settlement service providers, and provincial and municipal governments.
  2. Create a $10M pay-for-success fund – about 1% of the total settlement and integration budget – focused on immigrant inclusion outcomes. This could be modeled on the UK DWP Innovation Fund.
  3. Expand eligibility criteria for settlement services.

Building Bridges to Employment

  1. Engage employers to develop demand-driven employment solutions.
  2. Work with small and medium-sized enterprise business support programs, accelerators, incubators and innovation hubs to create entrepreneurship training, mentorship, loan and venture capital programs targeted to recent immigrants.

Strengthening Political Engagement

TARGET AUDIENCE: PROVINCIAL AND TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENTS

  1. Amend provincial and territorial legislation to remove barriers to non-citizens voting in municipal elections, including school board elections.

TARGET AUDIENCE: PROVINCIAL, TERRITORIAL AND MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS

  1. Remove barriers to non-citizens becoming members of municipal governance bodies.
  2. Publish an annual report card on the extent to which municipal governance bodies reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities should spearhead this initiative, alongside leading municipalities.

View Report

 

Filed under Integration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Unknown's avatarAbout Andrew
Andrew blogs and tweets public policy issues, particularly the relationship between the political and bureaucratic levels, citizenship and multiculturalism. His latest book, Policy Arrogance or Innocent Bias, recounts his experience as a senior public servant in this area.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.