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What can Vancouver teach Calgary about municipal political parties · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: Calgary's election looks a little different this year with municipal
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  Speaker 1: political parties on the ballot. So that got me thinking,
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  Speaker 1: what do voters and reporters like me need to know.
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  Speaker 2: If the mayor wins in their conservative but their party
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  Speaker 2: doesn't win, what happens there, like, how does that government form.
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  Speaker 1: How that values piece plays into parties, or if it's
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  Speaker 1: more topic specific. To answer these sorts of questions, I'm
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  Speaker 1: gonna need a phone, a friend or in this case
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  Speaker 1: a colleague. Hey, Helen Justin McIlroy is CBC Vancouver's municipal
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  Speaker 1: affairs reporter.
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  Speaker 2: In Vancouver, we've had political parties for almost one hundred
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  Speaker 2: years at this point.
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  Speaker 1: What are the key differences between Calgary and Vancouver's municipal governments?
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  Speaker 1: How would that change what we might see from this
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  Speaker 1: party system.
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  Speaker 2: Number One, Calgary is mega city. It is one place
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  Speaker 2: for all the different areas of the You know about
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  Speaker 2: two milion people in the metro region. Metro Vancouver is
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  Speaker 2: broken up into twenty one different municipal and our two
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  Speaker 2: and a half billion people Vancouver is only seven hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand of that. The other part of it is we
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  Speaker 2: don't have ward systems. You don't elect a counselor to
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  Speaker 2: your neighborhood. We elect all ten councilors at the same
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  Speaker 2: time at large, so you have a ballot of like
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  Speaker 2: seventy different councilors and the top ten you get to
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  Speaker 2: vote for.
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  Speaker 3: Ten of them.
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  Speaker 2: The top ten on the list with the most votes
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  Speaker 2: all get elected.
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  Speaker 1: What do you notice about the pros and cons for
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  Speaker 1: having it or not having it?
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  Speaker 2: I mean it's interesting and it varies from the election
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  Speaker 2: cycle to election cycle, and depending on the personality of
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  Speaker 2: the Marrison councilors. You have more predictability in some ways
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  Speaker 2: because when a party, if they hold a majority, say
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  Speaker 2: this is what we're going to do, you know how
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  Speaker 2: it's going to work out. On the other hand, it
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  Speaker 2: means that you have maybe less flexibility of you know,
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  Speaker 2: councilors moving and changing their opinion as time goes on,
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  Speaker 2: or having interesting coalitions on a case by case basis,
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  Speaker 2: you have a mayor and a council with majority, they
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  Speaker 2: know what they're going to do. They can implement a
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  Speaker 2: strategic plan. You don't have as many no votes where
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  Speaker 2: the marason the outside. Assuming that the mayor and council
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  Speaker 2: parties elected are sympatico, which we'll talk about a little
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  Speaker 2: bit later, and so people see the appeal.
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  Speaker 3: Of that if they're different from federal and provincial politics
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  Speaker 3: where partisanship is I guess, weren't on a sleeve or
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  Speaker 3: in the brand. What kind of issues do they focus on?
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  Speaker 2: Then, in terms of the issues, you know, the dividing
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  Speaker 2: lines in Vancouver are about crime and safety, they're about housing,
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  Speaker 2: they're about the role of a local government, and that
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  Speaker 2: forces political parties to come up with what sort of
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  Speaker 2: their philosophy is going to be and how they want
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  Speaker 2: to create an agenda and a set of policies or
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  Speaker 2: by laws or official community plans to move that forward.
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  Speaker 2: And in that interim period it can be a little
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  Speaker 2: bit messy and unpredictable because people are trying to figure
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  Speaker 2: out how exactly to work within these systems. And again
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  Speaker 2: you'll see more counselors speak out independently then you would
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  Speaker 2: at a provincial or federal level, where it's like, well,
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  Speaker 2: you wait for the premier prime minister to say what
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  Speaker 2: the law of the land is. But once those things
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  Speaker 2: are established, over the course of those four years, you
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  Speaker 2: tend to see pretty predictable debates and breakdowns along party
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  Speaker 2: lines on these hot Putton issues.
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  Speaker 3: If a party's mayor winds but their word candidates don't,
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  Speaker 3: how does that dynamic play out?
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  Speaker 2: Uh? Oh, messily, let's put it that way. You know,
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  Speaker 2: we have seen and there's not a clear cut example,
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  Speaker 2: but there's been a number of situations where you have
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  Speaker 2: counselors that are clearly oppositional from the mayor. And of
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  Speaker 2: course we have a weak mare system throughout most of Canada.
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  Speaker 2: There's only so much that the mayor can do to
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  Speaker 2: pass his agenda if he doesn't have a majority. And
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  Speaker 2: unlike provincial or federal politics, if there's a de facto
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  Speaker 2: non confidence voting and some marria, that doesn't mean that
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  Speaker 2: there's a new election. There's that lack of mechanisms that
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  Speaker 2: we have at the provincial and federal level where people
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  Speaker 2: think about you know, whip votes, they think about parties
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  Speaker 2: booting out their leader. You think about non confidence votes
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  Speaker 2: and snap elections, all these things that can release the
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  Speaker 2: tension if things are no longer working within the party system.
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  Speaker 2: That doesn't happen to the same extent uniciplate.
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  Speaker 3: With all of that in mind, this is just a
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  Speaker 3: pilot here. We're not sure, if it's just this election,
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  Speaker 3: if there's another election that will use this party model,
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  Speaker 3: or if it just kind of disappears. What do you
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  Speaker 3: think voters should take away from.
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  Speaker 2: This, Well, I mean I think they should take away
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  Speaker 2: how the system works when people are governing. Right. Maybe
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  Speaker 2: things are so efficient, but there's still a free exchange
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  Speaker 2: of dissent and ideas that people go, oh, this is
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  Speaker 2: really good for our community, and in fact, more people
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  Speaker 2: are motivated to create political parties in the future. Maybe
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  Speaker 2: it creates more of a gong show and there's more
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  Speaker 2: to behind the scenes skulldugree happening, and voters say, you
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  Speaker 2: know what, this is fine on a provincial on federal level,
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  Speaker 2: but in my community, I really don't like this level
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  Speaker 2: of partisanship. That'll play out in an organic way over
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  Speaker 2: the next four years. But it's going to be fascinating
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  Speaker 2: to see how people react and what exact breakdown happens
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  Speaker 2: on the council and mayor seat as a result of
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  Speaker 2: these parties this time around.
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  Speaker 3: I think it's definitely one to watch. Thanks so much.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks