At a Calgary council committee meeting in early February, a pair of members from the same party found themselves on opposite sides on back-to-back votes.<\/p>\n
Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean, who ran under the Communities First banner in last fall’s municipal election, advocated for a motion calling on council to support the province\u2019s decision to close Calgary\u2019s lone supervised consumption site.<\/p>\n
Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot, also a Communities First candidate, opposed it. The proposal was shot down in an 8-7 decision.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, McLean voted against Chabot’s motion to explore creating a municipal bylaw offence for low-value shoplifting.<\/p>\n
McLean said he’s not working with Communities First councillors behind the scenes on policy ideas at all. Rather, he talks to every councillor on their initiatives before they come to a vote, and makes his own decisions on whether to support them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that happens to be a councillor from a different party or an independent, that doesn\u2019t matter to me,” said McLean.<\/p>\n
It was one of the signs emerging that five months after the first Calgary municipal election in decades to feature political parties, votes are not being whipped along party lines.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, most parties that ran in last fall’s election face an uncertain future.<\/p>\n
Blurred party lines<\/p>\n
In October’s election, six out of 15<\/a> city council seats were won by candidates from one of the city\u2019s three new parties. Communities First elected four candidates, while the Calgary Party and A Better Calgary each elected one.<\/p>\n Some Calgarians may have wondered if elected party members would vote as one bloc.<\/p>\n The four Communities First councillors have been united on one of city hall\u2019s most discussed issues, as they all support repealing blanket rezoning and ran on doing so.<\/p>\n But they’ve been divided on other debates like raising national flags<\/a> or hiking transit fares<\/a>.<\/p>\n The result is consistent with what Communities First promised on the campaign trail, Chabot said.<\/p>\n He points out that, as the name states, the party’s candidates always promised to put their constituents’ needs first, even if it meant opposing their party colleagues.<\/p>\n \u201cThat should give some confidence to the electorate that we are not only aligned from a philosophical perspective, but that our intent is to continue to represent the interests of our constituents,\u201d said Chabot.<\/p>\n The veteran politician, who’s sat on city council longer than any other member of council, argued Calgary’s system isn’t designed for party politics, and that he’s never been a fan of the party system.<\/p>\n But he said he thinks it\u2019s been valuable to communicate to voters what kind of candidates they\u2019re choosing.<\/p>\n McLean said he always believed that while Communities First ran on some platform points collectively, like blanket rezoning, they wouldn\u2019t always vote together on council.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Ward 13 issues may differ from Ward 1 or Ward 10, so I\u2019m not going to vote as a bloc,\u201d the second-term member said.<\/p>\n Calgary and Edmonton are both piloting municipal parties due to provincial legislation<\/a> enabling them on ballots for the 2025 election. Shortly after last year’s election, Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams said he wanted political parties to remain<\/a>, to see how the system evolved over multiple election cycles.<\/p>\n Both cities’ mayors ran as independent candidates last year, and most council seats were won by unaffiliated contenders as well.<\/p>\n Since then, Ward 4 Coun. DJ Kelly, the only Calgary Party candidate elected to council, said the party system has had little impact on how council governs.<\/p>\n Because of its lack of relevance in council’s daily operations, Kelly said he thinks the experiment is “DOA,” with each party now questioning its purpose moving forward.<\/p>\n \u201cThe leaders of these parties were the mayoral candidates, none of them were elected,” Kelly said. “As a result, you can\u2019t really even have a caucus in terms of what you\u2019re doing and how you\u2019re going to work together. Nobody has a majority.\u201d<\/p>\n A Better Calgary looks to 2029<\/p>\n Since last fall, both of the city’s self-proclaimed centrist parties, Communities First and the Calgary Party, have taken down their websites. Neither one is active on social media.<\/p>\n But the city’s right-wing party, A Better Calgary (ABC), has continued to organize.<\/p>\n The party elected just one candidate to council, Mike Jamieson in Ward 12.<\/p>\n ABC is the only party acting like a true political party, said Marilyn Elliott, its president. She criticized Communities First and the Calgary Party for not taking policy ideas from party members or introducing their own internal bylaws.<\/p>\n Elliott said ABC plans to be in the public eye more often this year.<\/p>\n It wants to organize more ward associations to nominate candidates, and hold a policy conference to ask members what they want the party to push for at the municipal level, she said.<\/p>\n The party’s main purpose, Elliott said, is to reduce vote-splitting between right-wing candidates.<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically, in Calgary municipal politics, the right side of things have had many many people run in particular for mayor, and the vote-splitting has just been ridiculous, so left-leaning people have been elected far too often for my liking,” said Elliott.<\/p>\n Elliott said she wants her party to treat elections like a marathon rather than a 100-yard dash, ensuring candidates are selected a year ahead of a the next election in 2029, and meeting with more constituents before the vote.<\/p>\n Independents rare in Vancouver<\/p>\n In Edmonton’s introduction to political parties last year, just three council seats went to a party candidate. Less than a month later, two of those councillors walked away<\/a> from their party.<\/p>\n It’s different farther west in Vancouver, where parties have been part of city hall for decades.<\/p>\n