Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said she doesn’t want to see political parties at the municipal level, and according to a recent Canadian study, she’s likely on side with the general public.

There’s increasing talk of political parties making their way into municipal governance, with the Alberta government considering the idea – at least in larger cities. In her weekly Saturday morning radio Q&A on QR Calgary’s Your Province. Your Premier., Premier Danielle Smith said she was in favour of political parties in cities.

She said there are 355 municipalities in the province, and you don’t need a party system in all of them, especially the smaller ones.  

“I don’t know that they’re as partisan but when you get into a city the size of Calgary or Edmonton, you better believe it’s partisan,” Premier Smith said.

“I think because we are now at a point where Calgary and Edmonton decision-makers are moving beyond the things that cities normally do – cities normally do things like infrastructure, they make sure that your lights stay on if you’re with Enmax or Epcor, they make sure that you can get your garbage picked up to make sure that you get water. They make sure that the parks and the streets are cleared. So, I would say that because they are now getting far more political, and far more ideological, there probably needs to be a little more transparency about that.”

On Friday, speaking with reporters after the graduation ceremony for 22 new transit and community safety officers, Mayor Gondek said that she appreciates not having a party telling her which way to vote.

“I think it’s really important for us who are locally elected officials to work with whoever happens to form government either provincially or federally and I think if we fall into this quagmire of becoming partisan at the local level, it hinders your ability to work across orders of government,” she said.

“We have 15 members that were elected to think clearly and look at the empirical evidence and make strong decisions for citizens.”

Preference for independent candidates: Study

Nearly four in 10 people surveyed in Ontario said they preferred municipal candidates to stay as independents, according to a study published in January 2024 by Michael McGregor and Chris Erl from Toronto Metropolitan University, Cameron D. Anderson from the University of Western Ontario and UCalgary political scientist Jack Lucas.

Lucas said though the survey done with the study was from Ontario, he said there’s no reason to believe the results would be different in Alberta.

“The best guess would be that there’s widespread opposition to the idea of introducing political parties into our non-partisan cities in Alberta,” Lucas told LWC.

The response split didn’t change between three groups – a control group, one asked about parties if they were tied to federal party names or one where the names were just municipally based.   Less than one-quarter of people were in favour of political parties in municipal government.

Lucas said one factor to consider is the large number of people (~30 per cent) that had no opinion. So, there could be some movement in those figures, he said.  

Previously, other Calgary city councillors have said that they’d balk at the idea of municipal political parties. Some councillors that have spoken to LWC since November have said they’d consider not running in the 2025 municipal election if parties were involved.

Many even said they didn’t feel right assisting provincial political party candidates in the 2023 provincial election, specifically because city politics is supposed to be non-partisan.

Some of the reasons why the survey respondents in the study preferred independent candidates included being able to have their own ideas and policies outside of political party interference, running on their own record, representing the needs of the community with political leaning, and representing everyone regardless of political affiliation.

“Less partisanship,” and “Most parties are corrupt and self-serving,” were also responses to the survey.

Reasons for municipal parties included being easier to identify ideology, the ability to work together as a group, competing platforms are less effective, and that candidates follow party ideology anyway.

Party lines drawn at Calgary city council

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean, who said last November that the idea of political parties in municipal government had some merit, also noted that you can see the party lines already on council.

“Everybody says that they’re not affiliated with a party. Everybody knows on city council, what party lines you’re affiliated with,” McLean said at the time.

Lucas said there’s no question you can see characteristics of political parties at the municipal level.

“What’s missing is explicit branding, like in elections, or explicit, coordinated branding of ‘We are Team A,’ and, ‘we’re the team red and your team orange,’ and that kind of thing,” Lucas said.

Lucas also referenced a 2020 paper he wrote on the representation, that showed different wards largely – though not exactly – represent the views of voters.

“We look in our municipal politics today, we get a lot of the benefits of ideological representation; like the more left-wing parts of the city tend to be represented by more left-wing councillors and the more right-wing parts of the city tend to be represented by more right-wing councillors,” he said.

“We get that already without all of the hassle of political parties.”

Depending on your perspective, Lucas said you could see the issue both ways.

“You could say, well, this just shows that we’re getting some of the benefits of a quasi-partisan system without having to have parties and others might look at the same data or the same findings and say, well that’s just sort of shows we should admit what’s going on and just be totally explicit and forthcoming.”

Efficiency of council and citizen ability to recognize ideology

If there’s a party that’s in the majority, they can more easily lay out and execute a policy, Lucas said. He said the outcome of events is usually more predictable.  To that extent, a formal political party system can be effective.

It’s a double-edged sword, however.

“We’re also going to be accountable for this. People are going to know who’s responsible for this at the next election,” he said.  

“That’s one of the well-known advantages of political parties at any level, including the municipal level.”

Though some may believe that political parties are an important tool to determine which side of the political spectrum a candidate is on, Lucas said further research he, McGregor and Aengus Bridgman from McGill University conducted, using data from the 2021 Calgary municipal election, shows that Calgarians are quite adept at matching candidates with their ideology – without the need for party identity.

“We were quite surprised by how clearly the evidence suggested that voters are actually quite able to identify the candidates for mayoral elections who align with their own policy preferences and vote for those candidates,” Lucas said.

Whether the province moves ahead with municipal political parties remains to be seen.

Lucas said regardless of the outcome, it’s fostered more conversation about the role of the municipal government. It’s forced municipal governments and politicians to examine and question the system itself to ensure it’s serving citizens well.

Premier Smith said that the Minister of Municipal Affairs would likely be tabling some sort of new legislation on this for the spring session. The province had online public engagement on local elections and councillor accountability through November and December 2023, but data on those responses hasn’t been released.