Over the last week he\u2019s shared short posts describing a movement to reimagine the city. Hundreds of people have engaged with the posts, and more than 100 signed up for a newsletter that doesn\u2019t yet exist, for a campaign that hasn\u2019t yet been announced, for a candidate that didn\u2019t even have a website.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the kind of response that comes when a well-known connector puts an idea into the world.<\/p>\n
In an exclusive interview with Digital Journal, Bakhmut explained what an innovation-driven candidacy could look like and outlined his plans for \u201cThe New Edmonton\u201d which he says is both a campaign and a broader movement to reimagine how the city works.<\/p>\n
Bakhmut and I have spoken several times, including back in January when Digital Journal brought a team to Edmonton<\/a> to get connected and learn more about the region\u2019s innovation ecosystem as part of our Western Canada expansion.<\/p>\n That work set the stage for what feels like a larger moment now, with leadership, innovation and civic direction converging. It was in that context that he decided to share his plans with me in our meeting.<\/p>\n His three themes for the campaign are open, smart, and fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ideas may sound simple, but they carry a pointed message. Bakhmut says Edmonton needs more transparency, modernized services, and a culture that makes people want to live, work, and build in the city.<\/p>\n He describes \u201cThe New Edmonton\u201d as a way to position the city for growth by making entrepreneurship mainstream, delivering public services that match the ease of commercial apps, and actively marketing the city\u2019s assets to attract new business.<\/p>\n For him, leadership is about opening doors and removing barriers, and he frames the role of mayor as the city\u2019s chief business development officer.<\/p>\n From provincial halls to local politics<\/p>\n Bakhmut isn\u2019t new to city politics. In 2019, he worked at City Hall for a councillor, supporting everything from constituent feedback to policy research. That experience, he says, gave him an appreciation for how council works and how difficult it is to engage directly with citizens.<\/p>\n \u201cThe city really lacks a proper citizen engagement platform,\u201d he says. \u201cFor councillors and the mayor, there\u2019s no easy way to talk to the people they represent. Discovering the issues that people care about is not done efficiently. I hope to use this campaign to run some experiments and use the latest technology to really understand what people care about at a deeper level and incorporate it in the platform as we go.\u201d<\/p>\n Bakhmut moved to Edmonton in 2010 as a student and has spent more than a decade in the city, with a short stint in Calgary.<\/p>\n In 2023, he founded Edmonton Tech Wednesdays<\/a>, a weekly informal gathering that became a fixture in the city\u2019s innovation calendar.<\/p>\n In 2024, the startup community recognized him<\/a> with its Connector of the Year award. His presence in grassroots events, provincial policymaking and the networks that tie Alberta\u2019s tech community together has made him a familiar and well-regarded figure across the province.<\/p>\n Building a city that\u2019s open, smart, and fun<\/p>\n Bakhmut\u2019s platform is based around being open, smart, and fun and those elements are missing ingredients in the way the city runs, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cOpen\u201d begins with transparency and Bakhmut wants Edmontonians to be able to track every dollar of the city\u2019s $3.5 billion budget. He supports adopting open contracting standards already used in other jurisdictions that require governments to publish contract and tender data in a consistent, accessible format so anyone can see how public money is being spent.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes it easier for businesses to sell to government, easier for journalists to hold government accountable, and easier for citizens to trust government,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cSmart\u201d is about modernizing how the city operates. Edmonton\u2019s transit system, for example, still requires riders to buy and reload plastic cards instead of tapping a phone or credit card. Permit approvals can stretch for months. Even parking enforcement still relies on officers writing tickets by hand in the middle of winter, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI live in the city, and I use these services,\u201d Bakhmut says. \u201cEvery time I use them, I can\u2019t help but think they can be a lot better. If someone wants to use a program, they have to download forms, fill them out, sign them by hand, scan them, email them. Why can\u2019t this be as easy as posting a photo on Instagram? Why can\u2019t I do it in three taps? Why do I have to go somewhere in person?\u201d<\/p>\n The third pillar, \u201cfun,\u201d might sound light, but for Bakhmut it is a serious part of economic growth. He points out that arts, culture, nightlife, and even architecture are central to attracting both businesses and people.<\/p>\n \u201cIf there\u2019s nothing happening, or if there are no events, people won\u2019t move here,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you have a great city that people can enjoy, they will want to move here. Having those components will help with business attraction, with revenue generation for the city, better services, and lower taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n Bakhmut says he also hopes to change views around entrepreneurship. He notes that Edmonton is often seen as a government town, but it has a growing and underused base of tech talent and he wants to build a stronger culture of starting businesses \u2014 an approach also championed by Edmonton Unlimited<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have unicorns in Edmonton yet,\u201d Bakhmut says, referring to tech companies that are valued at more than $1 billion. \u201cI would really like to change the tone and the narrative on entrepreneurship to make it more mainstream, to make it seen as a viable avenue for people of all ages and backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n That vision comes at a time when startup ecosystems around the world have seen their valuations decline, and Edmonton was no exception.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Startup Genome report<\/a> found the city\u2019s ecosystem shrank by 11% in value over the past year, even as strengths in areas like AI and life sciences continue to emerge. For Bakhmut, that\u2019s a reminder that turning entrepreneurship into a mainstream path will require both cultural and policy change.<\/p>\n Lessons from provincial politics<\/p>\n Bakhmut has been part of teams that have driven an innovation agenda before.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the last three years he served as a senior policy advisor in Alberta\u2019s Ministry of Technology and Innovation, a role that put him at the centre of efforts to modernize how services are delivered and how emerging technologies like artificial intelligence can be adopted responsibly.<\/p>\n He says the experience taught him both the potential and the challenges of digital transformation.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the reasons we were able to make a lot of progress in the province was strong support from the top,\u201d he explains. You need buy-in from the bottom and support from the top, and you have to work on it frequently, keep focused, and be consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as important, he adds, was learning how to work with the public service itself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes a lot of people to introduce change and you have to get them on board,\u201d he says. \u201cTransforming government is not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n For Bakhmut, those lessons translate directly to the municipal level. Edmonton\u2019s challenges with outdated systems and slow processes, he argues, are not so different from what he saw at the provincial level. The difference is scale, and the mayor needs to set the tone and collaborate with city council as a team sport.<\/p>\n Rethinking opportunity in the city of champions<\/p>\n As our conversation turned to Edmonton\u2019s future, Bakhmut pointed to opportunities the city has overlooked.<\/p>\n He describes a recent visit to the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park<\/a>, a 49-square-kilometre parcel of land on the city\u2019s edge<\/a> that was conceived in 2008 as a hub for industry and research. More than 15 years later, the site remains largely undeveloped.<\/p>\n \u201cI went there to see it firsthand. I saw fields. I saw some cows. I saw transmission lines. But there\u2019s nothing there. There\u2019s nothing there.\u201d<\/p>\n For Bakhmut, that land is a metaphor for Edmonton. He says the city has strengths and assets, but it isn\u2019t building on them or telling the story needed to attract investment. The site is a reminder of how the city has struggled to turn strategy into results, and he argues that stronger leadership is needed to close the gap between planning and delivery.<\/p>\n Bakhmut believes that some areas of focus for Edmonton to lead include advanced manufacturing, life sciences, semiconductors, and commercializing ideas from the deep research that happens in the city\u2019s academic institutions.<\/p>\n The city\u2019s future, he says, depends on leadership that is willing to modernize services, support entrepreneurship and position the city to compete globally.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a citizen\u2019s perspective, people sometimes don\u2019t have a clear line between which level of government provides which services,\u201d he says. \u201cThey just want a great experience and they want services that are useful and usable regardless of which level of government or which department inside the government provides them.\u201d<\/p>\n For Bakhmut, that means Edmonton\u2019s next mayor will have to focus less on jurisdictional battles and more on making the city open, responsive, and attractive to new ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy of \u00a9 Paul Bakhmut Paul Bakhmut leans into the camera and smiles.\u00a0 The word \u201cEDMONTON\u201d appears…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[3793,64,63,99,14689,198,952,1474],"class_list":{"0":"post-84665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-edmonton","13":"tag-entrepreneurship","14":"tag-featured","15":"tag-innovation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"edmonton\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Edmonton-1200x675.png\")
Photo by Lisa Marie, Getty Images \/ Canva Pro<\/p>\n![\"edmonton\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/IMG_0531-1200x675.jpeg\")
Photo courtesy of Paul Bakhmut<\/p>\n