While municipalities all over the world allow at least some non-citizen residents to vote in local elections, Ontario’s politicians have long seemed afraid to follow suit. Premier Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals should acknowledge this and extend the municipal franchise to all non-citizen residents. We need to acknowledge that non-citizen residents would derive the same benefits from voting as anyone else and they need and deserve these benefits in a democratic society, writest Desmond Cole. You had to reside or hold property in the municipality where you planned to vote; Nova Scotia allowed non-citizen British subjects to vote in local elections until 2007. During the era of former premier Dalton McGuinty, I served as project coordinator of “I Vote Toronto,” a campaign to convince Queen’s Park to extend voting rights to non-citizen permanent residents of Canada.

Source: thestar May 12, 2016 04:26 UTC