Municipal Political Parties - Helpful or Harmful for Representation?
The Alberta government’s recent passing of Bill 20: Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 included substantial changes to the Local Authorities Election Act (“LAEA”). Notable amongst them was the introduction of political parties at the municipal level, an approach set to be piloted in Calgary and Edmonton in their 2025 elections. The implementation of such a substantial change begs the question: will municipal political parties help or hinder the representation of women elected to City Council?
In this commentary, we take a look at the provision in Bill 20 to implement municipal political parties in Calgary and Edmonton, assess the opportunities and challenges, and analyze the impact on future representation and gender parity in our local elected spaces.
The Bottom Line
While municipal political parties provide opportunities to access fundraising and valuable resources, they will not inherently promote gender parity unless the party’s framework commits to the representation of women.
Opportunities
Fundraising and Data Access
Candidates who are running for office can typically access more financing as a part of a political party than as an independent candidate. Due to their established frameworks and networks, political parties often have the capacity to provide financial support and fundraising resources.
Political campaigns involve a variety of associated costs including campaign managers and staff, advertising and media, fundraising and marketing events, transportation, office expenses, and research services, to name a few. Fundraising and financing these associated costs individually is a known barrier for women candidates, as financial strains can hinder their ability to access a full breadth of necessary campaign resources.
Contributions from party members, donors, and other fundraising activities organized by the party provide a buoy of financial support to accepted candidates, allowing typical strains to be largely provided for through party activities. Additionally, political parties can pool their resources and offer centralized campaign support to their members, further enhancing the capabilities of their candidates.
Beyond financial support, political party membership can provide candidates with valuable professional networks and subsequent resources to aid in a campaign. Access to voter databases and analytics from party research helps a candidate identify and target key demographics and regions to best mobilize support.
Further, access to established and credited volunteer bases and campaign resources such as voter signs, are oftentimes financially supported by a political party.
Media & Advertising
Consistent advertising and media messages are often a key component of parties to ensure congruence, enabling party members to establish a consistent message over the course of their campaign which aligns with a larger base of support. Subsequently, such efforts assist candidates in establishing name recognition quickly and more easily through the mobilization of advertising and media resources.
Such efforts assist women candidates in building an extensive support network through media outreach, connecting them with supporters, volunteers, and donors to bolster their campaigns with valuable social networks.
Challenges
The Party Nomination and Election Process
Despite the ability for candidates to access party financing and professional networks once they join a political party, notable barriers do exist for women in the nomination and election process.
Provincially, to run for a political party, an interested individual must first take part in the party’s nomination contest process. However, party nomination processes are not standardized and are set by each registered entity.
This means that each party follows a different nomination procedure, leaving the process up to the subjective interpretation of whether the candidate fits within undefined, ambiguous party standards.
On a provincial level, Alberta’s United Conservative Party’s (UCP) process involves the completion of an extensive questionnaire, an interview from local candidate nomination committees, and consent to research being done by the party. The UCP has refrained from discussing the party’s internal vetting and selection processes publicly.
Similarly, the Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) begins its process with the signing of a confidentiality and non-disclosure form, then moving to a thorough online search and an interview from the party’s provincial secretary, finishing with a decision from the candidate approvals committee.
While the basics for both parties’ nomination procedures are fairly clear and objective, the interview and committee review processes are ripe with subjectivity (and consequently, bias), which can have a major impact on the nomination of a candidate.
With the advent of municipal political parties in Calgary and Edmonton, the usage of similar nomination procedures has the potential to uphold ambiguous, subjective standards. Instilling such processes offers limitations regarding:
An ability to clearly understand a party’s expectations before time and finances are expended on the nomination process.
A potential for party gatekeeping in which interview and committee review processes control much of the proceedings.
The number of women nominated by each party in the 2023 provincial general election varied significantly. Less than a quarter of the UCP candidates were women, compared to half of the NDP’s candidates.
The NDP credits a committed decision to recruit women candidates, mindfully creating accessible spaces in formal political frameworks and organizations for women representatives. Though the party lacks a formal quota system, the commitment to specifically advocate for women’s inclusion within the party has resulted in an increase of women’s representation in the party and subsequently, in provincial politics.
With municipal political parties proceeding in Calgary and Edmonton’s 2025 elections, instilling a strategy for an informal representation mandate presents opportunities for women to be included and represented in politics while ensuring political spaces are accessible.
Municipal Appeals
The April 2019 Report of the federal Standing Committee on the Status of Women examined methods and strategies for improving the representation of women in Canadian politics. The report included interviews with women candidates and representatives in municipal politics who cited non-partisanship as a benefit of municipal elections.
Non-partisanship does not require notions of party loyalty, allowing elected officials to stand on points that reflect individual values and the values of their constituents.
The dangers of partisanship in politics can be revealed when women representatives become convenient scapegoats during party scandals. While senior leaders or influential figures may be implicated in wrongdoing, it is sometimes the women within these ranks who shoulder a disproportionate share of the consequences.
This dynamic can obscure the broader issues at play and detract from meaningful accountability, leaving women representatives to face the fallout while others avoid the full weight of responsibility. This not only undermines the women involved but also distorts public perception of the scandal’s origins and resolutions.
The introduction of a partisan framework has been seen to negatively impact the political positions of women and can further act as a deterrent and barrier for women interested in entering municipal politics, hindering women’s representation.
Avoiding toeing the party line gives women officials the power to independently make decisions, rather than having to align with party politics and largely bear the brunt of consequences for party actions. The ability to make decisions based on personal values allows accountability to be a personal affair, rather than shouldering the decisions of others within a party.
The Alberta provincial government conducted an online survey between November 7 and December 6, 2023, seeking feedback from impacted stakeholders on potential changes with the Local Authorities Elections Act, including the implementation of municipal political parties. 70% of survey respondents expressed opposition or reservation to the inclusion of political parties on local election ballots.
In the survey’s written responses, Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) expressed that elected officials have the responsibility to work together regardless of political alignment. RMA further indicated that allowing political party affiliation in municipalities would add an administrative burden to local election offices.
An additional administrative burden, as well as a potential devaluation of a collaborative environment which is often seen as an attractive quality for women in municipal politics, may pose a significant deterrent and additional barrier to women.
Centralized Decision-Making
Municipal political parties will introduce party politics as a central component of governance, leading to the potential for decisions to be made based on party ideology rather than personal representation of a community. The top-down structure of political parties reduces the autonomy of local representatives, ensuring their decisions and messages align with those of the party structure.
Such a structure mirrors the experiences of women in the corporate sphere in which top-down, hierarchical structures dominate. Such a structure presents specific challenges for women including:
The prevalence of senior positions often occupied by men, who subsequently express network and mentorship bias towards other men.
Gender stereotypes which traditionally favour men in leadership roles.
A frequent demand for long hours and high availability which can affect the social expectations of women to balance work with family and responsibilities.
Such perceptions can create an environment where taking time off for childcare is perceived as a lack of commitment, discouraging women from seeking the flexibility they need to avoid harming their career progression.
A concentration of decision-making power at the top, often with men, limiting women's influence.
If an individual at the top of the hierarchy is setting the expectation in a party, there is less flexibility and opportunity for individual decision-making, compared to an independent candidate.
Such barriers can limit the ability of women to openly voice their own autonomy and decision-making ability, instead expecting them to fall in line with the hierarchical structure which oftentimes favours men.
A reduction of individual autonomy and decision-making independence for candidates through a political party, can hinder the appeal of municipal elections for women, potentially pushing qualified and passionate women out of politics, where their voices are needed.
Quebec: A Case Study
Local political parties are a notable feature of Quebec municipal elections. Similar to the legislation passed in Bill 20, municipal political parties in Quebec are independent from political parties at the provincial and federal level, differing from one city to the other.
Currently, 35 out of Montreal’s 65 elected representatives are women, including the mayor, Valérie Plante, 8 borough mayors, and 26 city councillors, all of whom belong to political parties.
While women make up the majority of representatives in City Council, Montreal’s political parties do not have legally mandated gender quotas, rather expressing a slated goal for most parties to run more women candidates since 2018.
In Quebec City, 12 out of 21 elected representatives on City Council are women, also all of which belong to political parties. Similarly, the city’s parties lack a legally mandated gender quota system, instead relying on a commitment to select women candidates.
While quotas aren’t mandated in the political parties of Quebec’s major cities, achievement of gender equality in Quebec has been a recent focus in politics, including in the formation of the Government’s Strategy for Gender Equality (2022-2027). The provincial government’s policy framework includes a focus on Gender-Based Analysis (GBA) and investment in the program, “Decision-making: A Matter of Equality,” which supports projects to prepare women looking to run for political office.
The province also has a tradition of implementing favourable social and economic policies towards gender equality. Programs to support women’s participation in the workforce were instilled in the 1990s and included generous parental leave, subsidized childcare, and the legalization of pay equity, a commitment which has bled into the sphere of political representation.
The government and parties’ commitments to increase the number of women representatives have seen successes. The 2013 municipal elections saw 32% of municipal councillors as women, a number that increased to nearly 40% in the 2021 elections.
Further, a study of the 2005 Montreal and Montérégie municipal elections in Quebec examined the impact of political parties on the success of women and men candidates in Quebec’s two most populous regions, compared with the success of independent candidates.
The study found that political parties gave candidates greater tools and power to raise money compared to individual candidates, largely due to the organizational structure and networks of the parties established over time.
However, parties did possess a significant influence on who ran for office due to their nomination proceedings. Similarly, parties were able to decide which candidates would run as councillors and who would run as mayor. In this instance, parties were found to hold substantial authority in selecting candidates who coincide with their political lines, limiting party-aligned candidates’ autonomy compared to independent candidates.
The study also pointed to Tremblay (2014), which found that for Quebec’s 2013 municipal elections, the success rate of women candidates running with political party affiliation was 50%, compared to 67% for women running as independents. The results suggest that municipal parties were not the determinant factor in the amount of women representatives in Quebec’s municipal elections.
Through Quebec’s policy framework, it can be seen that the presence of political parties at the municipal level was not key in instilling gender equality, but rather commitments and specific directives within the political environment for formal political organizations to prioritize choosing women representatives. Instilling a prioritization of gender parity within a broader context has impacted the number of women representatives, rather than the presence of municipal political parties.
Conclusion
Political parties could potentially assist with the representation of women, but only if the parties make it a priority to support women candidates in tangible ways.
As seen in Quebec, the impact of gender policy and an emphasis on including women can be seen in the number of women representatives selected by parties and subsequently elected.
The installation of political parties at the municipal level presents other opportunities for accepted candidates to access party resources, providing key financial support for campaigns and associated coordination activities. Parties further provide access to valuable networks and polling resources, assisting candidates in effectively campaigning.
However, significant barriers exist in the party nomination and selection process. Ambiguity and subjective selection procedures present opportunities encouraging party gatekeeping, while lacking formal policies and practices specifically supporting the nomination of women candidates in the process.
Non-partisanship has also been found to be a key attractive benefit for women interested in municipal public office, allowing for decision-making independence and autonomy. With the introduction of party loyalties and partisanship, women may be deterred from entering the municipal political arena.
Barriers posed by the introduction of municipal political parties through Bill 20 can curb the representation of women in municipal politics, particularly if parties lack a commitment and regulations for creating accessible spaces for women candidates.