ISSUE 6 - Alberta election results...and more elections
Welcome to another issue of #munipoli Matters, discussing all about municipal elections and the often unreported arena of local government across Canada and beyond.
There is a lot to unpack when it comes to the Alberta municipal election that took place last week, particularly with the results in Calgary and Edmonton. Let’s take a look and see what happened when Albertans went to the polls on October 18.
Alberta’s two largest cities saw some major changes and historic firsts: Jyoti Gondek was elected as Calgary’s first female mayor. In a race many pundits predicted to be much closer than the actual result, the outgoing Ward 3 Councillor took 45% of the vote while her closest competitor, Ward 11 Councillor Jeromy Farkas, got around 30%.
Over in Edmonton, former MP and federal cabinet minister Amarjeet Sohi returns to city hall, this time as the city’s first racialized mayor. Sohi also served as a councillor from 2007 to 2015 before his election as MP for Edmonton-Mill Woods. He lost his federal seat in 2019. Sohi’s election marks the first time an Indo-Canadian, or any person of colour, assumed the mayor’s job in that city’s history.
Both cities saw major turnovers on council as well, as incumbents lost and vacant seats were filled by newcomers. Here is a brief summary of the notable winners and losers:
Councillor Joe Magliocca (Ward 2), who was first elected in 2013 but embroiled in an expense scandal that led to charges by the RCMP for breach of trust and fraud, dropped to third place as he lost his seat to returning candidate Jennifer Wyness.
Councillor Sean Chu (Ward 4) won by exactly 100 votes, despite a CBC story that broke three days before the election about allegations that he sexually assaulted a 16 year old girl during his time as a police officer in 1997. The incumbent is now facing numerous calls to resign and a judicial recount has been requested.
Former councillors Richard Pootmans and Andre Chabot are returning to council in Wards 6 and 10 respectively. Chabot served on council before mounting an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2017 and Pootmans was previously on council from 2010 to 2017.
21 year veteran Councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart (Ward 13) lost to her more conservative leaning challenger Dan McLean by a wide margin. McLean topped the polls with about 47% of the vote, while Colley-Urquhart got only 23%.
There are five women elected to this Calgary council: Gondek, Wyness, Ward 1 Councillor Sonya Sharp, Ward 3 Councillor Jasmine Mian and Ward 11 Councillor Kourtney Penner, who was known as Kourtney Branagan while running but announced she was going back to her maiden name after the finalization of a divorce.
In some good news for those who care about the health of their children’s teeth, Calgarians voted in a plebiscite by a 62-38% margin to reintroduce fluoride in the city’s water system, which city council voted to previously remove in 2011.
Out of the three council candidates outgoing Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson endorsed, two of them were elected: Ashley Salvador in Ward Metis, where there was no incumbent and Anne Stevenson running in Ward O-day’min, even though former Ward 7 incumbent Tony Caterina ran there for reelection. In the end, Caterina ended up placing fifth in a field of ten candidates.
Incumbent councillors Bev Esslinger, John Dziadyk and Moe Banga also lost their seats. If you count mayor-elect Sohi as a new entrant to council, a total of nine new candidates were elected to Edmonton City Council, which will now consist of a total of eight women.
Iveson endorsed poet Ahmed “Knowmadic” Ali in Ward tastawiyiniwak over Dziadyk, and despite the incumbent attempting to rally “anti-Iveson” sentiments, neither of them won as dental hygienist Karen Principe took this seat.
Voter turnout in the 2021 election was estimated at around 37%, which is up from 31% in 2017 during Iveson’s one reelection bid. It also outpaces the 34% in 2013, when the mayor’s seat was open and three sitting councillors, one of which was Iveson, contested the chair.
Other Alberta results
New mayors were elected in Lethbridge, Red Deer and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) as incumbents decided to retire, but in cities such as Beaumont and Medicine Hat incumbent mayors lost.
In Medicine Hat, incumbent mayor Ted Clugston was defeated by lawyer Linnsie Clark by a 66-23% margin. Clark becomes that city’s first female mayor.
In Grande Prairie Jackie Clayton, who was appointed as mayor earlier this year as the previous mayor stepped down, won a close race to secure her own four year term.
In RMWB, otherwise known as Fort McMurray and environs, outgoing mayor Don Scott was replaced by businessman and former martial arts fighter Sandy Bowman, while only two incumbents retained their seats.
Upcoming mayoral by-elections
By-elections are very rare at the municipal level, let alone a special election to fill a vacancy left by the chief magistrate. The last time I thought that would happen was in Toronto, where the late mayor Rob Ford’s devotion to his football foundation almost resulted in him being tossed out of office over a technicality.
This time, there are two mayoral by-elections that I know are happening: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Richmond Hill, Ontario. In Moose Jaw, an election for a new mayor is taking place as former mayor Fraser Tolmie stepped down to run as a Conservative in the recent federal election.
Nine candidates have put their names forward to become the next mayor of “Canada’s Most Notorious City”, including two current councillors, one former councillor, several businessmen and an engine specialist for the CAF Snowbirds. The candidate list was finalized on October 1 with the vote taking place on November 3, 2021. The City of Moose Jaw is also giving out free transit on election day.
But it’s in Richmond Hill that could have the more interesting mayoral by-election, given the acrimony that has built up since long serving mayor Dave Barrow stepped down in September after being on medical leave for most of this year.
The election will take place on January 24, 2022, with both in person voting and Internet voting options for voters. The city has also extended In-person voting to the entire weekend from Saturday January 22, Sunday January 23 as well as on election day the 24th.
To be eligible to vote for Richmond Hill’s new mayor, you have to be a Canadian citizen 18 years of age or over by voting day, a resident of Richmond Hill, an owner or tenant of land in the city, the spouse of an owner or tenant and not prohibited by law from voting. So far, the only registered mayoral candidate is current regional councillor, former deputy mayor Carmine Perrelli.
Perrelli previously ran for mayor in 2014 against Barrow, after serving a term as Ward 2 councillor. He was recently reprimanded for giving away recycling bins to residents to replace broken ones for free after running them on a deficit, which contravenes city policy that required sponsorship to cover such events.
There may be another sitting council member looking to run as well as a candidate from the outside. But if you think about it, there could be three mayors for Richmond Hill in 2022: the current acting mayor, the person that gets elected in the January by-election and the possibility that another candidate could defeat the by-election winner in the regularly scheduled October 2022 election.
Given the power of incumbency that persists at this order of government, that last possibility is not as likely as the others. But in my opinion, considering we just saw a good chunk of incumbents go down to defeat at the municipal level in Alberta, the outside chance of that happening has somewhat increased.
So you want to run for city council?
With all this talk about running for city council, I was actually hosting a virtual town hall about doing just that in my capacity as a member of the citizen engagement group Engage Peel.
Our guests were two former Mississauga candidates that didn’t win, but who both ran in the same two city wards, in one case against each other in a field with 25 other candidates during a 2015 council by-election. The third was veteran Mississauga councillor Pat Saito, first elected in 1991 but announced she wasn’t running for reelection in 2022.
It was a very candid conversation with a deep dive into the realities of running for public office, especially if your only support system was your own circle of friends, family and volunteers without a political party to support you.
If you’re thinking of running in the next municipal election in Ontario, I would suggest you give it a watch.
Small town Ontario mayor loses powers, pay over controversial comments
West Lincoln, Ontario Mayor David Bylsma, whose Niagara Region biography says he has run for eight times for the Christian Heritage Party since 1993, a minor political party that is considered even more on the right to mainstream conservatism. Since getting elected as mayor of his community in 2018, Bylsma has certainly given concrete examples about how much more of a political outlier he is.
As the Star article reports, Bylsma was reprimanded by the Niagara Integrity Commissioner for asking a woman over Facebook whether the COVID-19 vaccine affected her menstruation cycle. He has also been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine, participating in anti-lockdown protests as a guest speaker.
The local town council stripped Bylsma of most of his powers and the Regional Council has docked his pay following the IC’s report. But unless he resigns his office himself, there is nothing much else that can be done. This incident only goes to further show the limitations of the Municipal Act in terms of dealing with rogue elected officials who may be harming their community by their words or actions.
Cover photo courtesy of @ZainVelji
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