Former mayor sees problems with municipal parties
By Lethbridge Herald on May 3, 2025.
Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald
David Carpenter says changes to the provincial legislation that governs municipal elections have the potential for some serious consequences in upcoming municipal elections.
The longtime Lethbridge mayor, who has been an outspoken critic of the Danielle Smith government, took issue with the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act passed late last year. One of the changes to the Act enables regulation-making authorities to define local political parties, which was highlighted this week when Edmonton city councillor Tim Cartmell announced he would be running for mayor as a representative of the Better Edmonton party.
Even though registration of local political parties will be limited to Calgary and Edmonton for the 2025 municipal election, it could potentially change for future elections, including here in Lethbridge.
“It’s hard to believe that will not, within very short order, be affiliated with a provincial political party,” says Carpenter. “It will be a subsidiary of a provincial political party.”
He adds that even if it isn’t, there is no benefit to creating municipal political parties. He believes people should be looking at the candidates and what they offer, as opposed to a party and what promises they’ll be bringing to the table.
“It takes all of the candidate’s issues off the table, to the point where you essentially are electing a political party again and it doesn’t matter who your representative is,” says Carpenter.
He adds there’s no benefit to any level of government, but specially not for local government in any cities across the province.
“Simply put, local government should be people who are known in the community, doing their best for the community in which they live,” says Carpenter. “And it should not be an offshoot or decision made by a political party in private, but rather by normal citizens operating in a public environment.”
Another change allows union and corporate donations to local candidates, with the same donation limits as individual donors of $5,000 per municipality per year.
“I don’t think that corporate donations will be beneficial to the system,” says Carpenter. “Corporations have a goal to maximize the value for their shareholders, and they make a donation for a specific purpose.”
He adds that the overriding goal is the continuation of their corporation and the profitability of their corporation, so they do it for a reason.
“With corporate donations, you have to ask yourself why they are doing it.”
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Think it is perfect. Can’t pretend to be conservative to get elected and then govern like you were NDP all along and had everyone fooled. No more bs to get elected as you will get called on it. Actually have to walk the talk. Refreshing.
Very clearly, the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act is an ideologically driven Americanization of politics in this province.
I do respect the retired Mayor David Carpenter for his dedication to this city but I often disagree on some of his thoughts presented in letters to the editor.
In this letter, I completely agree that political parties do not belong in municipal politics! There are already enough issues in local politics to deal with and from what I see, the concerns regarding ones’ political party beliefs are not going to be changed much by this move, since it is the administration, the bureacrats who appear to make decisions that are partisan . . . the people who research, present or decide who look through their partisan lenses when making those decisions.
This became completely clear during the supervised consumption site idea, then implementation, then defense of . . . and then that bias filtered through city administratio as many of the administrators who lost their jobs were embedded into various city departments!
It goes beyond just the elected officials and I do not see it being a benefit to vote by party in a municipal election!
We should be voting for who has the best interests of the city, the people as a whole . . . has the experience to do so and will not lead us down a pathway which goes into a rabbit hole, such as the SCS did!
You could vote for your preferred party, but end up with poor leadership!
I respect the current Mayor and know he has tried hard to bring this city back from the devastation caused by making the wrong decisions with the SCS and also know he has hit walls by some of the administration who are still pro-SCS or still believe that harm reduction works and want to pour millions into this failed policy . . . even though BC, after 22 years of attempting to make harm reduction work, still will not admit it is a complete failure!
We do not need municipal political parties to create even more issues!