More candidates than ever are running as part of slates in Saanich and Victoria, raising fears that party politics could drown out independent voices in local government.
“We’ve been dancing through this each election cycle since I first started,” said Victoria Coun. Chris Coleman, who is retiring this year after two decades in municipal politics.
Councillors are “supposed to bring individual perspectives to issues around the council table,” said Coleman.
“The more you get to civic parties, then you have a diminishment of those different perspectives,” he said. “I recognize it as a trend line and I think it’s sad.”
In Victoria, there are two new civic political parties fielding candidates: the left-leaning Together Victoria with three council candidates and NewCouncil.ca, which has endorsed five candidates and can trace its roots to the Mad as Hell neighbourhood group formed in response to the tent city that dug in behind the Victoria courthouse in 2015-16.
In Saanich, five candidates, including incumbent Mayor Richard Atwell, are running under the banner of United for Saanich.
While slates are nothing new in local civic elections, traditionally they’ve been done with more of a wink and a nudge — with candidates professing independence while undertaking bulk mail-outs, only, they said, to cut costs on big-dollar campaign expenses such as printing and postage.
All three of the new civic political parties are formal elector organizations as defined in the Local Government Act.
The party names will appear on the ballot with the candidates’ names.
For voters, the twist to watch for will come after the election, said Coleman and former Saanich mayor Frank Leonard.
As formal electoral organizations, Leonard said, one would expect the members, if elected, to gather as a caucus prior to council meetings and make decisions.
That differs from the informal slates of the past, he said
“Certainly, I ran slates but there was no party and there was no caucus, that’s for sure. So this is interesting territory,” Leonard said.
But none of the party candidates contacted by the Times Colonist say they have plans to do that should they be elected. In fact, all professed independence.
“Our desire is not to be a political party. We just knew there was strength in running together,” said Stephen Hammond, Victoria mayoral candidate for NewCouncil.ca.
That being said, NewCouncil.ca does have a policy committee for the campaign.
“The candidates get together and talk about those things. We find ones that we have in common and we’ll be putting them on the website,” Hammond said.
Likewise, Together Victoria candidate Laurel Collins said that if elected, the Together Victoria candidates will not caucus and will vote independently.
“We want to pool resources and we want to be part of a team because it’s much harder as a non-incumbent to get elected,” Collins said.
“We share values, but it’s important to all three of us that once we’re elected that we are on council as independents. We have independent voices.”
Atwell said there is no plan for United for Saanich members to caucus, noting that part of what he sees as dysfunction with the current Saanich council arises from some councillors meeting behind the scenes.
“[It’s] there somewhere behind the scenes. You can’t quite see it. It’s not very transparent but it does manifest itself and operate in a certain way,” Atwell said.
He said with United for Saanich he’s trying “in a very transparent fashion” to say “here’s a group of people who are willing to co-operate with each other, to go in that direction.”
Saanich Coun. Fred Haynes, who is challenging Atwell, said it would seem logical the slate would vote as a bloc post-election as the mayor seems to feel stymied by the current council.
“In the face of other evidence, that would be my concern. That would be my worry. Councils, in general, and Saanich, in particular, is best served when the residents elect independent councillors and a mayor that can work with anybody,” he said.
Saanich Coun. Dean Murdock, who is not seeking re-election after serving three terms, said the new slate is more formal than Saanich has seen in the past. He expressed concern about the message it sends.
“My sense of it is that a slate says, ‘These are the people I can work with,’ and it implies that you can’t work with the other folks,” he said. “And I think that’s troubling.”
He said municipal politics is about coming together and representing different perspectives, but finding common priorities.
“A slate really says: ‘We have some fixed priorities. We know we’re going to agree on these things. Maybe we’re not able to do that with other people.’
“I don’t know if that’s the message they intend to send. But I think that’s the unintended message that gets received,” Murdock said.
Another problem with party politics at the civic level that they produce an “us versus them” mentality, Coleman said.
There’s no denying that undercurrent spilled into the open at the first Victoria all-candidates meeting, held last weekend at the Victoria Curling Club.
At that meeting, Victoria Coun. Ben Isitt, who is a member of Together Victoria but who is running as an independent, warned the audience a vote for any NewCouncil.ca candidate was a vote to “roll back the clock” on progressive council initiatives.
“I see it as a battle of ideas and a battle over whether progressive values will continue to inform the work of city council over whether more conservative values will prevail” in areas such as housing rights and homelessness, Isitt said in a later interview.
“I don’t think it’s an ‘us versus them’ in terms of individuals, but there is definitely, I think, polarization in terms of what kind of ideas and values should inform municipal decision making.”
