Engaging Vancouver's
New Canadians

Context

According to general data trends, new Canadian citizens face barriers to electoral participation. Figure A1. shows that newly naturalized immigrants displayed lower voter turnout in the four previous federal elections compared to other citizen sub-categories (Statistics Canada, 2022b). Naturalized citizens who voted in the 2018 municipal elections tend to be people who have been citizens for at least 20 years (CoV, 2019). This low turnout trend is explained by barriers related to a lack of political and election information. Surveys indicate that newly naturalized citizens are more likely to find issues with electoral processes than other types of citizens:

While everyday life reasons like work and health are the most significant explanations for non-voting (47%), lack of political interest and inadequate information are the next highest indicators of low voter turnout among new Canadians (Statistics Canada, 2022c). Elections Canada also reports that new Canadians are less familiar with political processes and face difficulties in registering, voting and understanding electoral processes (Phoenix Strategic Perspectives, 2020). These findings indicate that a lack of information and awareness on political and electoral issues disproportionately deter new Canadians from voting.

Literature suggests that familiarization with a new political system influences immigrants’ propensity to politically participate Political socialization, the process of forming political beliefs and values while residing in a specific context, can influence immigrants’ understanding of new social and political processes and systems (White et al, 2008; Andersson, 2022; Galandini & Fieldhouse, 2019). Socialization or learning from a previous setting affects their familiarity with new political systems (White, 2017; White et al., 2008; Bilodeau et al., 2010). For example, Chinese new Canadians may have difficulty navigating the variety of municipal political parties during Vancouver’s elections, coming from a non-democratic context. Immigrants’ period of exposure to a new political context also helps explain their participation within it (White, 2017). Tossuti (2007) notes that newcomer status rather than immigrant status is correlated to lower voter turnout, suggesting that time spent in a new country and exposure to new political contexts are predictors of participatiAon tendencies among naturalized citizens. It is thus essential for the City to create initiatives where immigrant voters, especially recently naturalized citizens, can build knowledge about political processes, government functions and the significance of participation. It is also very important that initiatives understand said issues affect new citizens disproportionately, compared to other voter groups due to discrepancies in experiences and awareness.

Policy Alternatives

The Current Policy Approach

The City’s current approach is on its website and accessed by following different links. Vancouver Immigration Partnership (VIP) facilitates collaboration between community groups and organizations that help immigrants settle in Vancouver (CoV, 2016, 2022d). The Growing Roots and the First Peoples newcomer guides explain getting involved, services and resources, and information on First Nations in Vancouver, but are both over 80 pages and only available in English (CoV, 2014, 2022b).

The Engaged City Task Force, created in 2012, addressed the lack of resident-to-resident engagement (CoV, 2022a). The Taskforce was mobile, being potentially more accessible to immigrant demographics, however, there is no information about it being delivered in languages besides English (CoV, 2022a). Other forms of engagement include consultation and involvement through open houses and advisory committees (CoV, 2022a). For example, Shape Your City allows people to share their opinions and “help shape projects, policies and initiatives” (CoV, 2020). Talk Vancouver is an online community connecting people to the City’s projects and initiatives (CoV, 2020). Before the 2014 municipal election, the City made a video outlining its role and services; it is available in English, Mandarin, Punjabi, and Cantonese (CoV, 2022c). While these catch-all initiatives have outlined the significance of municipal-level engagement and government, they are not specifically tailored toward newcomers or new Canadians.

Alternative #1: Implementing New Effective Media Strategies

The City has posted voting reminders on social media but co-production with community-level actors, such as established community associations and community-based organizers, has not been undertaken. Studies have found a substantial increase in voter turnout when using social media status to disseminate political information within individual networks. The research explains that compliance with voting norms is affected by social pressure on online platforms and interactions (Haenschen, 2016; Schmitt-Beck & Mackenrodt, 2010). With 93% of British Columbians ‘online’, the City could collaborate with external community actors on social media to disseminate knowledge on social media (Statistics Canada, 2019). This includes posting information about the City’s roles, voting processes, important dates and places and other salient political information on online platforms run by community-level actors. Engaging so would expand the reach of political learning and bridge informational gaps on a broad scale. Yet, it does not specifically address the gap in experiences and awareness discrepancies faced by immigrant voters.

The City would share operational costs with peripheral organizers to focus on local reach and converting community-based social media interactions into electoral interest and turnout. It would also involve costs to maintain a City social media or marketing team that designs accessible and digestible online posts and coordinates with peripheral organizers. This option would simultaneously improve engagement between firstly the City and voters and secondly community platforms and respective communities.

Alternative #2: Educational Workshops

One policy option to address information gaps is introducing educational workshops. Workshops may contain activities and provide accessible and comprehensible information that will familiarize immigrant voters with municipal politics, democratic processes, and different forms of engagement, like voting. They address gaps in information among new Canadians and ensure they apprehend the meaningful change they can bring to the City and its communities as participatory citizens.

Workshops could be held at community centres, cultural centres, and civic organizations to establish interpersonal connections. Hosting face-to-face workshops for immigrant voters by collaborating with established community organizations will reduce barriers regarding participant turnout and trust since they have pre-existing connections to the communities they serve. The City would create the workshop content in consultation with the relevant community organization to ensure the information is culturally appropriate. Additionally, the workshop should be accessible to new Canadians as early as possible, since studies show that building new experiences early on is foundational to fostering long-term political integration and participation (White, 2017).

This option raises the operational costs of the City and requires effective and active collaboration with external community organizations. Training is also needed to ensure educator staff comprehend participatory barriers faced by new Canadians and are familiar with the workshop’s deliverables. It also requires effective outreach strategies to make workshops more visible to immigrant communities. As such, creating and sustaining educational workshops requires high operational capacity.

Alternative #3: Enhancing Data Collection

The final policy alternative is comprehensive data collection. Neither the City nor Statistics Canada publish data that breaks down voting by immigrant class. The City does, however, have an OpenData portal that allows public access to aggregated census data segmented by local area boundary and municipal election data.

The City would aggregate individual-level voter and demographic data in a reproducible and consistent format. Additionally, host-nation identification should be included in surveys to explain group differences in voter mobilization. It is evident that there are difficulties in analyzing and evaluating differences in immigrant voter turnout at the municipal level. This alternative would ensure that the City has quantifiable data to monitor policy effects on voter turnout in new Canadians.

This alternative proposes only a slight increase in operational cost as there are existing data collection methods for voter turnout and demographics at the individual level. This alternative seeks to append a few variables to publicly available municipal election datasets. However, publishing comprehensive individual-level data may lead to identity exposure of respondents. Privacy concerns would outweigh political capacity for widespread implementation. Sufficiently anonymizing the data would then require significantly increasing labour expenses which may affect operational feasibility at the city scale. Instead, responses would be aggregated to minimize expense over accuracy and fulfill privacy obligations.

Policy Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Educational Workshop

This report recommends creating educational workshops because past engagement initiatives do not weigh the importance of nurturing long-term social processes focusing on new Canadians. While previous programs have provided informational resources, they do not focus on political awareness and knowledge gaps that disproportionately affect new Canadians, nor do they actively engage this group (see 1.2.2.). Accordingly, the City’s approach needs to incorporate considerations for said gaps and create accessible workshops that are tailored toward immigrant voters, specifically new Canadians.

This report recommends conducting educational workshops with Chinese new Canadians as the pilot group because they are the largest immigrant population in Vancouver. The impact of the educational workshops can be measured in voting turnout among Chinese new Canadians, and may therefore be expanded and tailored to target other immigrant groups in Vancouver.

Implementation

The workshop should be led by an educator who knows the municipal electoral system. For the pilot program, the educator should know Chinese Canadian history and speak a Chinese dialect (e.g., Mandarin, Cantonese).

• The workshops will teach new Canadians about the municipal political system and processes, and serve as a place for them to create informational and social connections.
• To run the workshop, this proposal suggests partnering with well-established organizations that specialize in serving newcomers to Canada or ethnocultural organizations. For the pilot:
• Some suggestions for organizations include the Chinese Cultural Centre, S.U.C.C.E.S.S, Hua Foundation, and Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice.
• While S.U.C.C.E.S.S. has an existing program, the Immigrant Settlement and Integration Program (ISIP), it is online, 15 minutes, and only available in English (S.U.C.C.E.S.S.). We suggest creating a hybrid, multilingual program that teaches political topics and ways to participate in politics. This could provide a potential starting point or preparatory resource for the workshops.

Recommendation 2: Enhancing Data Collection

The report also recommends the City publish demographic data, along with voter turnout by local area in municipal election datasets. Census data, including population makeup and changes, on naturalized individuals should be presented in a way that will inform future engagement strategies for new citizens. Adapting the current data publication approach will minimally affect current operational capacity and create a strong foundation for evidence-based policymaking. By relying solely on federal and provincial immigration and citizenship data, the ethnocultural composition of Vancouver constituencies cannot be accurately reflected in engagement policies.

Implementation

• The City of Vancouver would work with Statistics Canada to obtain individual-level demographic data on Vancouver residents collected from the Canadian census.
• Identifiable categories such as ethnic identity, age and immigrant status would then be aggregated with local voting data and segregated by local area boundaries defined by the City of Vancouver.