Short, high body mass index and letting people talk over each other.
Still, a pretty cool show, on CTVNewsnet at 5 pm eastern. Tom Kennedy is more aggressive than Mike Duffy was and the show is a nice change of pace.
Today's opening topic, doh, "Should Landed Immigrants be given the right to vote?"
This is an initiative of Mayor David Miller of Toronto who Wednesday night threw his support behind a movement to extend the right to vote in Toronto municipal elections to non-citizens.
Uh, no.
I am so pro immigrant, we need more, not less but let's not get ahead of ourselves, the waiting period between showing up in our country, become Landed and becoming a full Citizen is fair. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.
Capeche?
WFDS
1. It's now called CTV News Channel.
ReplyDelete2. Isn't the 5pm Eastern show on CTV News Channel Tom Clark's, "PowerPlay?"
3. Isn't Tom Kennedy the London bureau chief for CTV News?
His name is Tom Clark....
ReplyDeleteSo much for the bookkeeping. Like the Dutch five years should be the residence requirement for a municipal vote. I lived in the Netherlands for four years. At the end I could speak reasonable Dutch. Also I had taken the state sponsored citizenship program so I understood both the political and social systems. I started with a university level education , a Dutch wife and a Dutch network. All the advantages. Imagine poorly educated immigrants who also have to learn English! No, the immigrant mayor of Toronto sees only the ethnic votes it would guarantee him. He learned that reality from the Liberals. Let everyone in and the social problems be damned. Witness the violent ethnic gangs in Toronto and other Canadians cities. Miller cannot suppress the violent gangs nor solve the social problems that are the breeding ground. Now he would encourage the gang bangers to form their own political party and seek office or perhaps carry a 'Miller time' flag at election time?
ReplyDeleteThe question is, what does national cizitenship have do to with local voting? In the past, you couldn't be a member of a law society without being a citizen. We changed that because it had no merit. In the past, Torontonians who weren't citizens couldn't apply to sit on the city's agencies, boards and commissions. Once again, the policy was reviewed and changed, because citizenship has no bearing on a person's ability to serve one of those positions.
ReplyDeleteThe Dutch let you run as a municipal candidate without being a citizen. In Ireland you can vote municipally after 6 months. In New Zealand, you can vote in national elections after one year of residency. Non-citizen voting happens all over the world. I know people will take any opportunity to bash Miller, and that's fine, but this isn't about him.
If I send my kidsd to a local school and pay taxes to that school, my status as a citizen has nothing to do with my ability to choose a school trustee. How long I've lived in the neighbourhood does matter, but we give voting rights to property owners who don't live in the city. If a property owner who doesn't live here is deemed to have enough of a stake to vote, then someone who lives in the city deserves an equal stake.