Calgary’s next city council will be a patchwork of members from various political parties, independents, and a crop of rookies that will make it the least experienced — politically speaking — in more than a century.
Voters ousted a pair of sitting councillors, Terry Wong (Ward 7) and Kourtney Penner (Ward 11), and elected 10 first-timers in every quadrant, from the inner city to the far suburbs.
“People wanted change, and they wanted to try something different,” Penner told CBC News.
Several of her sitting council colleagues chose not to run rather than test the waters with a public nursing frustrations with the council led by now former mayor Jyoti Gondek, who finished in third place.
The new faces of council emerged Tuesday as election crews finished counting ward-level results from Monday’s civic election.
They range from a constituency aide and a vintage furniture store owner to a lawyer and junior oil company CEO.
It also includes Landon Johnston, the heating contractor who led the unsuccessful petition drive to recall Gondek last year, then decided to try making change himself as the councillor for Ward 14.
Alongside former councillor Jeromy Farkas as incoming mayor and four incumbents, this means that two-thirds of Calgary’s council will be newcomers.
There hasn’t been this much turnover in Calgary civic politics since 1915, when then-mayor Michael Copps Costello and three fellow returning council members were joined by nine new faces in the middle of a world war.
“Initially it’s going to be challenging, going through the learning curve,” said Andre Chabot, re-elected to a sixth term as Ward 10’s representative.
With more than 16 years on council, he’s more tenured than the rest of council combined.
The other returnees will all start their second term: Jennifer Wyness (Ward 2), Raj Dhaliwal (Ward 5), and Dan McLean (Ward 13); in addition to Farkas, who sat on council between 2017 and his losing 2021 mayoral bid against Gondek.
Chabot and McLean both ran for the Communities First party along with first-time winners Kim Tyers (Ward 1) and Rob Ward (Ward 11) and mayoral hopeful Sonya Sharp, who finished less than 0.2 per cent behind Farkas and has said she’ll demand a recount.
One member from the progressive The Calgary Party slate won: D.J. Kelly in Ward 4.
And in Ward 12, A Better Calgary’s candidate Mike Jamieson emerged with a mere 29-vote lead to become that conservative party’s lone winner, potentially setting up another recount.
But the majority of victors, including the mayor, ran as independents. Some of them, like Myke Atkinson (Ward 7) and Harrison Clark (Ward 9) advertised their no-party status on their campaign signs.
“It was a bonus for a lot of people,” said Andrew Yule, the winner in Ward 3, of not being associated with a party.
“A lot of people just didn’t like the idea of parties. When it comes to councillor, you want it to be non-partisan — you just need to get the job done.”
Chabot said he and his fellow Communities First councillors have many common core principles and will try to find like-minded colleagues, but he won’t feel bound to vote as part of a party bloc if it’s not in the best interest of his ward or the city as a whole.
Chabot said he expects to do a lot of mentoring, and will encourage newcomers bursting with ideas to realize that creating change at city hall will take patience and compromise.
Is he expecting a rough ride as this new council begins?
“It just depends on how much power will have gone to people’s heads,” Chabot said.
Yule, meanwhile, said newcomers can break through some of the outgoing group’s stalemates and bring fresh perspectives and optimism around the council table.
In his victory speech on Tuesday afternoon, Farkas compared starting out on council to “drinking out of a fire hose” and promised to support the new crop.
“I’m going to see a lot of my job as making their jobs easier.”
Jeromy Farkas vows to work with all political stripes as Calgary’s new mayor
City council is scheduled to be sworn in on Oct. 29. A month later, they face one of their first big challenges: deliberating over the city budget and setting next year’s property tax rate increases.
They’ll also have to tackle the idea of repealing the blanket rezoning that allows row houses and multiplexes in all neighbourhoods, which Farkas and several other candidates championed.
Calgary’s new council:
