The Main — April 5
The outlines of slates have started forming in 2021 municipal races. Should you care?
In 2017, five candidates for the Calgary Board of Education ran as a slate, or group with a shared agenda. They were known as Students Count. They advocated for curriculum reform, and for banning union and corporate money from trustee campaigns.
Rumours about the slate’s connections reverberated yet nothing much stuck. “We’re not a Jason Kenney slate. Whoever started that rumour — it’s laughable,” Althea Adams, one of the candidates, told The Sprawl.
In the end, three of the five candidates on the Students Count slate were elected.
Albertans should prepare themselves for variations of the same in 2021. Thanks in part to changes to the Local Authorities Election Act by the United Conservative Party government, municipal slates appear to be a near certainty this October, at least in Calgary and possibly Edmonton.
What might it all mean?
FIRST, WHAT’S A SLATE?
A slate is a group of candidates that openly run on a shared platform. Slates are rare in Canada (British Columbia and Quebec are the exceptions) but are powerful in our municipal politics nonetheless. The reason is structural. Canada’s mayors have but one vote as part of council and are therefore considered weak. This stands in contrast to ‘strong-mayor’ systems, which exist in several cities in the United States. In these systems, a mayor acts as type of executive branch and the council as the legislative. (A good synopsis is here.)
Slates numerically bolster Canada’s weak-mayor picture to look a lot like a majority in a legislature. This is potentially good, as platforms can equal mandates, and mandates provide elected officials with leverage on a vision. But it’s also potentially bad. Slates can open the door to partisan division, money, and rigidity when it comes to council collaboration, which is the secret ingredient of municipal success.
As Don Braid has written, slates in municipal politics in Alberta “tend to be ideological wedges for parties.” And voters tend to dislike them. Sure, many like knowing where a candidate stands on the political spectrum, but many also dislike the potential for a candidate to become beholden to a party’s views rather than their own concerns.
And what good’s a slate if only a small number of its candidates win?
Love them or hate them, though, slates are nothing new in Alberta. Back in 2016, those on the right were agitating for slates in the 2017 election. Even further back in 2004, former Edmonton Mayor Bill Smith actively attempted to link himself with the dynastic Progressive Conservative Party, only to be beaten by Stephen Mandel. And even further back, slates were near standard fare from the 1920s to 1970s — see examples like the Urban Reform Group Edmonton and the Civic Government Taxpayers’ Association in Calgary.
Slates are far less common than they may have once been. And many want to keep it that way.
Indeed, when the UCP last year loosened contribution limits and reduced transparency for municipal elections, it ignored changes proposed by the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association — changes that sought to keep third-party advertisers and big money out. Result? “[T]here is now the strong potential to introduce big money and partisan politics to influence the upcoming 2021 municipal elections,” the AUMA said, in a release.
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson echoed this concern. “I think the notion of divisive or partisan politics coming into the local level is sort of the last straw for a lot of us,” he told Global News.
SLATES AND PACS
Thanks to rules that further enable political advertising and disable transparency (which we wrote about here), the spectre of third-party advertisers, or PACs, being a route for money to find its way back into races is firmly on many’s radar.
But what’s the connection between slates and PACs? That’s unclear — though as one city councillor in Edmonton puts it, “slates are PACs by another name.”
In B.C., the province has seen an increase in slates in municipal elections. Result? The B.C. provincial government is now working to force more transparency into municipal elections, not less.
Alberta, well, no.
POTENTIAL SLATES EMERGING
Many candidates have yet to announce if they’re running. So, until they’re all in place, most potential slates have yet to come into focus.
Still, here’s what we’ve got our eyes on.
GROUP: Calgary’s Future
WHO: Alex Shevalier (read more here)
FUNDING: The group has spent $68,616 on Facebook ads (link here)
CONNECTIONS: Calgary and District Labour Council (Shevalier is the group’s president)
IN ITS OWN WORDS: “Calgary’s Future wants to build a new city council. We can’t do it without your help.”
CANDIDATES: In Calgary’s Future’s own words:
“Let’s fill city hall with folks you can trust. We’ll endorse honest, hardworking candidates who fight for your needs and your neighbourhood.”
At the moment, there are no declared candidates.
OUR TAKE: Does endorsement equal a slate of candidates? Given the money, we say there’s definite potential for a slate — but it’s also not clear if it will amount to one. Watching.
GROUP: Take Back City Hall (Calgary)
WHO: Craig Chandler (read more here and here, and YIKES, here)
FUNDING: Unclear. $0 spent on Facebook ads (link here)
CONNECTIONS: Progressive Group for Independent Business (Chandler is the group’s CEO)
IN ITS OWN WORDS: “We will be encouraging conservative and business friendly individuals to run for City Council in the 2021 Municipal Election and helping them get organized for success.”
And from 2017:
“Chandler said Monday that candidates backed by PGIB won’t be members of an actual party or whipped on votes like a party would be; instead, they’ll simply be vetted by the group before being endorsed as candidates. Chandler also said he will be running in Ward 12 in the next election since he believes Coun. Shane Keating won’t be running again.”
CANDIDATES:
The following people appear on the Take Back City Hall Facebook page. It would be extremely easy for them to become a slate:
Gaz Qamar, Ward 1
Brent Trenholm, Ward 3
Sanjeev Kad, Ward 6
Philip Mitchell, Ward 8
Mike Jamieson, Ward 11
Craig Chandler, Ward 12
OUR TAKE: While Chandler has told reporters the group has the backing of developers, given its advertising spend on Facebook is currently zero, it isn’t clear if any money is actually flowing.
We’re digging and watching. Send us tips if you’ve got them.
GROUP TO WATCH: Mike Nickel and Progress Alberta
Don’t read this wrong — Progress Alberta is not affiliated with mayoral candidate Mike Nickel in Edmonton. Instead, Progress Alberta, which is registered as third-party advertiser (see disclosures here), has itself reported that Mike Nickel’s allies are “interested” in creating a PAC.
The Progress Alberta content suggest that Nickel supporters Thomas Hochhausen and Julian Martin are linked to this PAC, but also that it has been inactive due to COVID-19.
Our look at Nickel’s public disclosures (fancy speak for looking at his Facebook page, as it’s what’s available at this point at least) suggest he’s endorsing specific candidates in a few wards but hasn’t discussed this as a slate as of yet.
OUR TAKE: Progress Alberta is a PAC, so we consume its content on other PACs in that light. Still, Nickel is unpredictable. We’re watching.
GROUP TO WATCH: ACT for Edmonton
We reached out to Act For Edmonton and asked: Who are your financial backers and are you going to run a slate in Edmonton in 2021?
Their answer (our emphasis):
“We're made up of community members and activists from all over Edmonton, and proudly supported by local labour organizations that rep thousands of Edmonton workers. No, we will not be running a slate of candidates.”
A look at the group’s Facebook ad spend reveals it has spent $21,308 since 2019, and $5,270 in the last seven days, on ads about “social issues, elections or politics.” None of these ads endorse specific candidates, though. Instead they advocate on issues — free transit, a call for an end to COVID-19 relief to “rich developers”, and a call to ban evictions.
OUR TAKE: Watching.