Jack Lucas is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and co-director of the Canadian Municipal Barometer.
Later this year, thousands of municipal election candidates will seek office across Ontario. These candidates will differ in countless ways: their policy priorities, their past experience, their rhetorical styles, and much more. In one respect, however, every one of these candidates will be identical: every candidate, from Chatsworth to Chatham, Kenora to Kincardine, will run not as a representative of a political party, but as an independent.
If past experience is any guide, almost no one will mention how weird this is.
In municipalities across the democratic world, political parties are the norm. Across Europe and Britain, and in parts of the U.S., leading national parties regularly field candidates in municipal elections. Indeed, earlier this month, British local election results wound up being seen as an indictment on Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Even in Canada, municipal political parties are more common than many realize. Last year’s elections in Montreal and Quebec City were open partisan battles; the same will be true later this year in many cities in British Columbia. In Alberta last year, municipal parties were permitted in Calgary and Edmonton for the first time in decades, though they were not allowed to share names or resources with existing provincial or federal parties.
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In fact, local parties were once common in provinces with non-partisan municipalities today. Municipal elections on the Prairies were partisan battles from the First World War to the 1960s. Labour candidates once ran proudly in municipal elections in Hamilton, Kitchener, and other industrial cities. Even in Toronto, Canada’s bastion of municipal non-partisanship, the late Stephen Clarkson ran (unsuccessfully) at the top of a slate of Liberal Party candidates in 1969.
So how did we arrive at this peculiar non-partisan equilibrium? Political scientists and historians still have work to do to answer this question, but the heart of the story involves two elements: political institutions and political strategy.
After the Second World War, many municipalities switched from at-large elections (selecting an entire council from a single municipality-wide district) to elections in wards. In wards, voters can more easily assess each candidate on their merits, making parties less necessary. Vancouver’s persistent at-large elections, and associated partisan politics, is the exception that illustrates the rule.
The shrinking of municipal councils over the last 50 years is another important ingredient. In smaller legislatures, coalitions can be built from one-on-one conversations and handshake deals, rather than requiring party discipline.
A third institutional ingredient is federalism. Patterns of party competition differ dramatically at the provincial and federal levels. As a consequence, Canadian political careers lack the “ladder” quality that is common in many other countries. Canada’s federal and provincial parties typically scout talent from non-partisan councils, rather than building explicit municipal farm teams.
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Political strategy is the second critical element in municipal non-partisanship. In much of Canada, voters generally hate the idea of municipal party politics, and municipal candidates are aware of (and often share) this dislike. Mr. Clarkson’s defeat in Toronto in 1969 served as a cautionary tale for a generation of municipal strategists in the late 20th century. Emerging evidence that voters punished partisan candidates in last year’s experiment in Calgary and Edmonton may serve as a similar cautionary tale for a new generation.
Through the second half of the 20th century, municipal institutional changes made political parties less necessary, and local candidates realized that they could be elected without a party label. Both candidates and voters developed a taste for non-partisanship.
However strong this preference, we should be clear-eyed about its cost. Political parties can help make governments accountable; invest time in recruiting and training candidates; clarify decisions for voters; and, dangers of excessive polarization notwithstanding, they provide voters with strong motivation to get to the polls to ensure that their team wins.
We should also be clear-eyed about just how “non-partisan” Canada’s municipal politics really is. Candidates regularly co-ordinate behind the scenes on strategy, training, and volunteer deployment. The left-right divide that animates provincial and federal partisan politics is equally strong in many municipal debates.
In Canada, municipal elections persist as a non-partisan island in a wider partisan sea. As a consequence, our municipal elections will never truly be free of partisanship. The real question is how much party politics we want. In much of Canada, the answer in recent decades has been clear: as little as possible.
It’s an equilibrium that makes Canadian municipal politics distinctive, both historically and internationally. But what might be most peculiar about non-partisan municipal politics in many Canadian provinces is that, most of the time, we no longer even recognize it as a choice.