The A Better Calgary Party has not yet announced candidates for mayor or council positions in the 2025 municipal election
With political parties soon to be allowed in municipal elections, Calgary’s first-ever party has entered the ring.
The A Better Calgary Party held its founding convention, which saw around 150 people gather at the Thorncliffe Greenview Community Association on Saturday.
Mike LaValley, the newly elected president for the party’s board of directors, said the event had an “excellent turnout” and was to sort of ratify all the hard work done by the party’s founding members.
“It’s hundreds, if not thousands of hours of going through and setting principles and bylaws,” LaValley told Postmedia on Sunday.
There was a lot of enthusiasm in the room on Saturday, he said. “The words ‘historic moment’ actually got used a couple of times,” he said, in reference to being the first municipal party in Calgary.
A Better Calgary named its board of directors on Saturday, but hasn’t yet come out with candidates for mayor or council.
“What we did is form the party first, and the candidates are going to come from the wards and the ward committees,” LaValley said.
There are conversations with potential candidates to be had and some have already shown interest in running, but he said putting any names out there at this time would be premature.
“It’s a little bit of more of a grassroots sort of thing from the bottom up, more than the top down,” he explained. “We wanted it to be grown from the bottom up, and have members select their candidates.”
Their membership is citywide, with representation in every ward. LaValley said the goal is to have three or four candidates in every ward who are interested in running for a councillor position.
A Better Calgary Party members in each ward will then go through a candidate selection process and decide who is the best person to represent the board and principles of the party, he said.
“(Then) we’re going to all gather around that one person and provide as much support as possible in the next election,” LaValley said.
Already multiple players for 2025 election
Having run previously in 2021, Davison came third against now-Mayor Jyoti Gondek and another former councillor, Jeromy Farkas.
This time around, Davison said his platform will focus on affordability, public safety and infrastructure, with the centrepiece being a promise to freeze municipal property taxes at 2025 levels for four years.
“Our party is about people who are centrists, maybe leaning a little bit more to the right side or the conservative side of the spectrum, especially when it comes to things like fiscal responsibility, ethics,” he said.
What is Bill 20?
The Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act 2024, which the provincial legislature passed in the spring as Bill 20, will amend both the Municipal Government Act (MGA) and Local Authorities Election Act (LAEA).
McIver said previously that the intention of the changes is “to increase accountability, transparency and public trust in local elections.”
Parties are prohibited from being affiliated with any provincial or federal parties, and their abbreviations or acronyms must not resemble any of those parties.
A party must sign up at least 1,000 eligible voters as members with their names, addresses and signatures before being registered through the local returning officer.
LaValley said they don’t anticipate the 1,000-member threshold to be a problem for them, noting that because the regulations were just released on Friday they’ve been busy going through everything.
More than one-third of Albertans oppose municipal political parties: poll
Thirty-eight per cent were opposed to the idea.
The poll was conducted among 1,009 Albertans from May 22 to 25, 2024. Its data was weighted according to the Canadian census figures for age, gender and region within the province.
In total, 27 per cent were unsure about municipal political parties, 23 per cent were strongly opposed and 15 per cent were somewhat opposed, while 26 per cent somewhat supported and nine per cent strongly supported the idea.
Leger noted that no margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample — but for comparative purposes, a probability sample of 1,009 respondents would have a margin of error of ±3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
LaValley said it’s not lost on them that there are still many people hesitant about parties at the municipal level.
“A lot of it is, ‘geez, I need local representation in my ward, and I don’t like the way that provincial and federal parties work’ . . . where they kind of get dictated policy from the top down.”
LaValley explained that they have a set of “principles or guidelines,” but insisted they want candidates to come up with policy and not be dictated by the party.
“Albertans have repeatedly said they want less money, not more, in local politics,” the statement read. “They have also said they do not want political parties in local elections.”
— With files from Scott Strasser, Dean Pilling and Gavin Young