Explainer: The role of parties and slates in the 2025 election
Municipal elections in Edmonton and Calgary have often featured candidates for council and mayor who lean somewhat toward existing provincial or federal parties, even though those parties have not been formally allowed. As one scholar points out, it's impossible to stop candidates from working together as they would in a formal party. But what's shifting for the 2025 election in October, now that the United Conservative Party government has changed the Local Authorities Election Act, is that parties are allowed this time around.
As part of Taproot's ongoing election analysis and coverage, today we examine parties and slates in the coming election and what that might mean for voters.
New rules allow parties
"You can't prevent people from coordinating with each other in the way that parties do," Jack Lucas, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a co-director of the Canadian Municipal Barometer research partnership, told Taproot in an interview. He added that the UCP government's bills 20 and 50 have changed policies around parties, and these changes also affect fundraising rules and what a ballot looks like.
Why did the province make these changes? Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams told Taproot via email that partisan politics are already happening at the municipal level, so these changes just make it clearer. "Local political parties and slates will make municipal candidate affiliations transparent and accountable, helping Albertans make informed decisions on election day," Williams said.
Under the new rules, parties are allowed to fundraise collectively, and their candidates can also fundraise individually. The pooled funds can support the campaigns of any candidate in addition to their solo funds. Coun. Andrew Knack, who, like the majority of Edmonton's mayoral candidates, is running as an independent for mayor, previously told Taproot that parties have an unfair financial advantage compared to independents and that party discipline raises questions about whether party candidates are loyal to the voter or the party.
Alberta's history with municipal parties
Lucas said there is a history of parties in municipal politics in Alberta. Party-like campaigning was common in Edmonton and Calgary roughly between the First World War and the early 1970s, he said. "In Edmonton and Calgary, in the past, organizations would take out a newspaper advertisement and say, 'Labour endorses these candidates, and this is your Labour slate for 1937."
Lucas has studied voter attitudes on municipal political parties in Canada and said the decline of parties at the municipal level is due to multiple factors. Those factors, Lucas said, included voter concerns that elected officials be loyal to their parties instead of their wards, and candidates, who preferred to govern without party oversight.
Today the municipal structures in Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey, Montreal, and Quebec City all use a party system for their elections. Lucas said there's a logic behind the system in Vancouver, especially. There, the city has no electoral wards. Vancouver voters, therefore, want a greater understanding of who's on their ballot. "It's just really hard to imagine a totally non-partisan system in (Vancouver), where there might be 80 candidates," Lucas said. "How do you keep track of which of these 80 candidates you want to cast your 10 votes for? It's very confusing."
In Edmonton, as of Aug. 7, only two parties have registered for the 2025 election. One is the Better Edmonton party, which includes mayoral candidate and current councillor Tim Cartmell. The party has a total of 13 candidates. Among its roster are Cartmell's fellow councillor, Karen Principe, as well as Reed Clarke, who is leaving his post as the CEO of Sport Edmonton, a city-affiliated nonprofit, to run. The other party is the Principled Accountable Coalition for Edmonton, or PACE, which has eight councillor candidates but no candidate for mayor.
