Nenshi criticizes Alberta bill giving additional powers to municipalities

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LETHBRIDGE, Alta. – Former Calgary mayor and current NDP leadership candidate Naheed Nenshi says the Alberta government is acting in spite of new legislation that would give it sweeping powers over municipalities, including the right to fire councillors, recall statutes and postpone elections.

The proposed law would also allow political parties to run at municipal polls in Edmonton and Calgary starting next year.

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“It’s very crazy. It’s very clear that this government is now based on rancor and arrogance,” Nenshi told reporters in Lethbridge Thursday night.

“They are clearly doing this out of revenge against Calgary and Edmonton voters who didn’t vote the way they wanted.”

Nenshi, 52, was elected mayor of Calgary in 2010 and won three terms before deciding to retire before the 2021 municipal election.

He, along with Kathleen Ganley, Sarah Hoffman, Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse and Alberta Federation of Labor MLA president Gil McGowan, were participating in the NDP’s first leadership debate.

Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver says the new powers are justified to ensure fair elections and accountability for municipal leaders, and would only be used as a last resort.

“My most fervent wish is that this authority is never, ever used. We don’t want to intervene in municipal affairs,” McIver told reporters before the bill was introduced in the legislature on Thursday.

Nenshi said the councils are democratically elected. She said current Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek probably received more votes than all the UCP MLAs in Calgary.

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“For me that is no way to run a government. “This really highlights that this government is not fundamentally interested in governing as a government, but really just works according to its whims and its needs, its self-indulgence.”

The board of Alberta municipalities 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 do not want to be caught in the middle of an “forever war” between Alberta and Ottawa,” the association said in a statement.

Ganley, a former justice minister, said the move is ridiculous.

“Basically they want to be in control of everything. Municipal politics is an incredibly important place. It should not be a small league for provincial politics like the UCP wants to make it,” she said.

Hoffman said municipal governments have been clear in their opposition to the idea.

“The local councilors don’t want it. We don’t want it,” she stated.

“I think Danielle Smith is very interested in taking more power. This is one of the reasons she introduced this legislation.”

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The bill introduces other changes. It would ban the use of electronic voting tabulators, forcing municipalities to count ballots manually, to better protect the integrity of the vote, McIver said.

“If we can reduce doubts about the public’s confidence in who is declared the winner, we think that outweighs all other considerations.”

In the past, Smith has taken aim at the province’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 ideological, there probably needs to be more transparency about it,” 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 agreements between the federal government and provincial entities, including municipalities and post-secondary schools.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2024.

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