Achi news desk-
LETHBRIDGE, Alta. –
Former Calgary mayor and current NDP leadership candidate Naheed Nenshi says the Alberta government is acting despite new legislation that would give it sweeping powers over municipalities, including the right to fire councillors, overturn bylaws and postpone elections.
The proposed law would also allow political parties to run on municipal ballots in Edmonton and Calgary as soon as next year.
“It’s so crazy. It is very clear that this government is now operating out of spite and arrogance,” Nenshi told reporters in Lethbridge on Thursday evening.
“They’re clearly doing this out of revenge on the voters of Calgary and Edmonton who didn’t vote the way they wanted them to.”
Nenshi, 52, was elected mayor of Calgary in 2010 and won three terms before deciding to bow out ahead of the 2021 municipal election.
He along with MLA Kathleen Ganley, Sarah Hoffman, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse and Alberta Federation of Labor President Gil McGowan were participating in the first NDP leadership debate.
Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver says the new powers are justified to ensure fair elections and accountability from municipal leaders, and would only be used as a last resort.
“My most fervent wish is that this authority is never used. We don’t want to interfere in civic affairs,” McIver told reporters before the bill was introduced in the legislature on Thursday.
Nenshi said that councils are democratically elected. He said current Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek probably received more votes than every UCP MLA in Calgary.
“For me, that is no way to run a government. This really highlights that this government has no fundamental interest in governing as a government, but in fact only works on their whims and needs, their self-gratification.”
Alberta Municipalities’ board of directors said political parties in local elections are a bad idea and something most Albertans don’t want.
“Local governments in Alberta have no interest in fighting with the province. They also don’t want to be caught in the middle of the Alberta-Ottawa “forever war,” the association said in a statement.
Ganley, a former justice minister, said the move was ridiculous.
“Basically they want to be in control of everything. Municipal politics is an extremely important place. It should not be the small league for provincial politics as the UCP wants to do,” he said.
Hoffman said city governments have been clear about their opposition to the idea.
“The local councilors don’t want that. We don’t want that,” he said.
“I think Danielle Smith is very keen to take more power. This is one of the reasons why she has introduced this legislation.”
The bill makes other changes. It would ban the use of electronic voting tables, forcing municipalities to count votes by hand, to better protect the integrity of the vote, McIver said.
“If we can reduce doubt in the public’s confidence about who is declared the winners, we think that rises above all other considerations.”
In the past, Smith has taken aim at the state’s two largest cities, saying in February that single-use plastic bylaws showed city councils had gone off the partisan rails.
“Because they are becoming much more political and much more ideological, we probably need more transparency about that,” he said at the time.
Two weeks ago, Smith’s United Conservative Party government also introduced a bill that would give it the power to veto any agreement between the federal government and provincial entities, including municipalities and post-secondary schools.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on April 26, 2024.
