‘Not about whipped votes’: Edmonton mayoral candidate sees benefits in party politics at municipal level

Edmonton Mayoral Candidate Tim Cartmell discusses his campaign and the launch of the Better Edmonton party with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: Why go the party route?

Tim Cartmell: A couple of reasons. First and foremost, we’re trying to take the opportunity to offer voters a degree of comfort about what’s going to happen after the election. So we’re running as a team, we’re running as a party, and we are conducting ourselves as kind of the council in waiting.

We want to demonstrate to those that are thinking about who they’re going to support the next election that this group of people have met, they’ve talked, they have strong feelings about what governance looks like at city council, the direction that the city is going to go, and so some confidence that you’ll actually get what you’re voting for the day after the election.

MH: Two of the key candidates you’ll face off against on the mayoral side, Andrew Knack and Tony Caterina, come at this with experience but they’re also coming at it as independents.

How does Better Edmonton define you as a mayoral candidate?

TC: In terms of being able to build a team, to build consensus, I think there’s a measure of that. I think, frankly, by running as a group it’s bringing a high level of sophistication to this campaign by demonstrating that we can actually operate as a government. You know that this is a team of people, a team with a captain.

MH: That’s how you look at it? Running this as a government?

TC: I really do, speaking in terms of the opportunity to operate as a team, to offer a team approach, and again, a team with a captain.

A team with people that have particular expertise and experience, that come from a cross section of personal experiences, a cross section of a little bit of political experience, and are going to bring that to City Hall.

I would hasten to add that this is not about whipped votes. This is not about caucuses. This is not about a leader and minions. This is very much a team. A collaborative, cooperative group of people so that 13 people are making the decisions that people want.

MH: Of those 13, how did you pick your candidates? How did you vet them?

TC: They’ve all been vetted to some degree in terms of their past activities. We’re looking for a cross section of people, a cross section of gender, a cross section of different communities that make up the city of Edmonton.

We are looking for people that have had some success in their personal lives, in terms of their personal pursuits, some that have business experience, some that have community experience, trying to make sure we have a cross section of experiences.

We were approached by a lot of people and we approached some people.

MH: Where does Better Edmonton land on the political spectrum?

Is there a political entity, be it a party provincially or federally, that you would align with?

TC: No, we don’t align with a provincial or a federal party. We are, in terms of ideology, effectively a centrist party, if we’re going to be pinned on a political spectrum but frankly, we’re a non-political, political party.

We understand the role of city governance. We know that it is not this, us versus them. There’s not a government in opposition. There is very much a collaborative underpinning to how City Councils work and that is where we’re headed with this.

MH: When you launched your mayoral run, “Fix what’s broken’ is how you launched into it.

How does Better Edmonton approach policy, approach priorities, and where do you draw the line on what your previous council did?

TC: I think that what we’re first and foremost trying to do is understand what the electorate is looking for. From the work that we’ve done at the party level, and with my campaign, we see that there is a disconnect between what city council is doing and what the people of the city with the residents of the city want.

There’s a lack of narrative around economic development and around employment and opportunity in the City of Edmonton. There is a lack of conversation around safety in the public realm. There is an ongoing frustration with uncoordinated construction and uncoordinated spending. There is a lack of priority in terms of what people want to see their dollars spent on versus what the dollars were actually being spent on.

So there’s a number of things there where there’s a lack of alignment.

MH: Is there a list where you could see cuts being made, decisions being drawn like lines in the sand?

TC: We are going to go through a reallocation process of our budget, and we’re going to do that between now and the election. So there is certainly operational services that people want to see more dollars put into. There is a maintenance and renewal imperative that is not being attended to at the City of Edmonton, and that’s going to mean allocation from other things that that might currently be funded that that where those dollars need to migrate to what people actually want.

MH: What does a renewed relationship with the provincial government look like under this next city council?

TC: This is the opportunity, with a substantial change and then people at city council, is an opportunity to renew that relationship. It’s not a great relationship right now.

I think we need to have conversations that are, quite frankly, less media focused, less performance focused, and much more built upon having those very real conversations with our colleagues at the provincial level and the federal level.