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Tom Monto

Socialist MLA applauded vote to renters 1910

News report of 1910: "Edmonton at last has tenant's franchise. Amendment to city charter passed by Legislature"


Edmonton now has the tenant's franchise as originally proposed by Hon. C.W. Cross and without any of the conditions that the city council would like to have imposed. Cross had postponed passage of bill awaiting input from city council.


It provided votes in city elections for any resident living in Edmonton four months before election. Strathcona MLA and Premier A.C. Rutherford said he preferred a requirement of six months residency.


Hon. C.W. Cross (Minister of Municipal Affairs) (and Edmonton MLA) said tenants in Edmonton were governed by regulations passed by the city council and he thought they should have an opportunity of assisting to elect that council. As well, he said that Edmonton was a public ownership city and for that very reason tenants who paid rates on public utilities should be allowed to vote.


Councillor John A. McDougall (an arch-capitalist) had pushed for tenants franchise bill to require residents to have residency for almost a full year and to pay rent of at least $10 per month. (thus only those who rent better than average accommodation to have the vote and only renters themselves and not their wives or grown offspring to have the vote) (Edmonton Capital, Dec. 16, 1910)


Tenants would not have vote on money bylaws. [Taxpayers at time voted in referendum on expensive projects put forward by city council.]


Tenants had already had the vote for provincial elections. (There was a residency requirement for voters in provincial elections. But as it was seldom invoked and difficult to enforce, Rachel Notley's government removed it.)


MLA Charles O'Brien, speaking to the amendment in the Legislature, applauded the extension of franchise to allow tenants to vote in city elections but said required residency should only be 10 days. (However, despite tenants getting the vote, the city elected its councillors at-large, with voters casting multiple votes so the most politically-active single group (the business community and their followers) were able to un-proportionally take almost all the seats on council. Within a few years city workers did manage to elect farmer activist and all-around reformer Rice Sheppard, labourite and monetary reformer James East, and other leftist and labour councillors. The city's brief use of pro-rep Single Transferable Voting (1923-191927) did little to address the situation, the ressons for this are presented in another blog. With heightened political consciousness among city workers, leftist candidates took almost half the council seats by 1919, eventually rising to a majority position in the depths of the Depression. (See my book Protest and Progress for information on Rice Sheppard, Harry Ainlay and Margaret Crang.)


O'Brien, elected under the banner of the Socialist Party of Canada for the Rocky Mountain district (Crowsnest Pass), said a tenant of the city had more right to a vote than a property holder who lived in Hong Kong and voted by proxy. Working people had always been referred to as the backbone of the country, but of the 5000 people who cast votes in the city election, 1000 of them were non-resident property-owners, he said.


He said he held little regard for McDougall's statements since learning that as mayor McDougall had taken much of the profit of the city's electric power operation and put it into general revenue, to lower taxes (mostly paid by the rich), instead of using the money to lower the utility bills put on working families. (Edmonton Capital, Dec. 16, 1910)

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