Posted by Wendy on 10/17/2009, 7:27 am, in reply to "Toronto using tenants to subsidize homeowners again!"
While everybody respects Energy Probe I think there are higher priorities for us.
The big one is to get the Mayor to keep his repeated public promises that all residents including noncitizens should be able to participate in democracy by being able to vote.
I think this is paraphrasing the great stuff Dan McIntyre and the Federation have said about this, in that anybody who pays rent is paying over $200 a month in their rent to the City of Toronto, to pay politicians salaries and many other things.
If you are paying rent whether you are 60 or 16, whether you having been living here for 10 years or 1 day, you should be able to vote and say how the city is spending your money.
Call the program as Diana suggested, "I was going to suggest people use the next mayor's callin show Tuesday October 20 on CP24 416-972-2724 to bring up the issue that all rent paying residents even noncitizens should be permitted to vote, but this brings up a more immediate issue."
Also email them at themayor@cp24.com and demand that all residents should be able to vote and there should an end to discrimination against noncitizens.
This will greatly increase the influence of tenants and get our issues much higher on the city agenda.
--Previous Message--
: Lawrence Solomon: Toronto apartment renters to
: insulate single family homes
:
: October 14, 2009, 9:50 PM
:
: The City of Toronto today unveiled a clever
: new program, called HEAT, through which
: high-rise apartment dwellers get to pay for
: the home insulation of their low-rise
: neighbours.
:
: Apartment dwellers don't consume much energy
: compared to house owners, the city
: undoubtedly reasoned, making the HEAT
: program (for Home Energy Assistance Toronto)
: of little use to the renters. Plus, since
: apartment dwellers already pay much more
: than their share of property taxes, having
: renters contribute a bit more so that
: homeowners may benefit merely continues a
: well established principle.
:
: Under the new program, homeowners, who tend
: to be far more affluent than the renters who
: will be subsidizing them, will benefit by up
: to $1000. Even more important to those
: clever councillors who approved the program:
: Homeonwers vote in greater proportion than
: renters.
:
: Details on how to take advantage of tenants
: and this program are available here:
: http://energy.probeinternational.org/conservation/electricity/city-launches-new-home-renovation-grant-program
:
: Lawrence Solomon is executive director of
: Energy Probe
:
: I was going to suggest people use the next
: mayor's callin show Tuesday October 20 on
: CP24 416-972-2724 to bring up the issue that
: all rent paying residents even noncitizens
: should be permitted to vote, but this brings
: up a more immediate issue. We need to get
: the Mayor and City Council not to impose the
: charges on poor tenants for the sake of
: wealthy homeowners!
:
Also the city should be funding democracy by getting those on the frontline dealing with tenants to educate them on the value of why they need to vote and to sign them up to be able to vote because the city's election office has such a horrendous record with not putting most tenants on the city's voter's lists. They seem unwilling or incapable of doing this so the city should hire those with a proven track record to do this instead!
We all need to contact the members of the city's Tenant Defense Committee to suggest they need to have a Tenant Vote program to educate tenants before the Novemeber 2010 election. Here are their email addresses:
mayor_miller@toronto.ca; councillor_carroll@toronto.ca; councillor_davis@toronto.ca; councillor_jenkins@toronto.ca; councillor_mcconnell@toronto.ca; councillor_nunziata@toronto.ca; councillor_perruzza@toronto.ca; councillor_walker@toronto.ca
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