After four years as a resident on the outside looking in, former Edmonton city councillor Michael Walters wants to return to city hall.
On Monday, he officially launched his campaign to become Edmonton’s next mayor.
“I had a great eight years on council. I had a great last four years running a small business, still volunteering in my community, spending more time with my family — but now my family recognizes what the city needs,” Walters said.
“I’m prepared to do this job, having had great experience before, and vision for the next four years.”
Walters was first elected to Edmonton city council in 2013 and was re-elected in 2017. He did not seek re-election in 2021.
Prior to entering politics, he spent 20 years working as a community organizer and policy leader. He received the Queen’s Jubilee medal in 2000 for his work at Edmonton’s Bissell Centre, was chosen as one of Edmonton’s Top 40 under 40 by Avenue Magazine in 2009 and was named one of Alberta’s Next 10 Most Influential Leaders by Alberta Venture magazine in 2013.
“I have some left-of-centre perspectives, some right-of-centre perspectives. I think those perspectives are always open to being influenced by other people who bring forward smart arguments,” Walters said, adding that the role of mayor is to bring people together.
“I don’t define myself so clearly on the (political) spectrum — more as a community leader and as a unifier who believes that if you have good ideas, you deserve to be heard and we can work together to make them happen.”
Edmonton political analyst John Brennan called Walters a moderate politician.
“A very smart, thoughtful — like a real solid city councillor — but he wasn’t really ideological. He was a very moderate centrist.”
Walters said he is independent and is not running as part of a municipal political party, adding he feels party affiliation isn’t necessary in Edmonton.
“I don’t think Edmontonians were asking for it or like it particularly. I think, ultimately, it’s a party during the campaign that probably won’t even exist into the term.
“I don’t have a lot of faith in its efficacy and I’m happy to work with whoever the people of the various wards send to City Hall. That’ll be my job.”
Walters calls himself a coalition builder at a time when the city needs strong relationships.
“I think we need a leader that’s practical, that’s unifying and that’s decisive. I feel like Edmonton has drifted a bit — we need to focus and I think it’s gonna take an all-hands-on-deck approach for many of the hard issues.”
Those issues, Walters said, include the city’s tone on policing, the relationship with the provincial government, addressing homelessness, making downtown safer, and addressing construction delays and tax increases.
‘We can do big, exciting, important city building projects without quite the mess, the cost, and the timelines. I think there’s improvements we can make. We can ask more of our administration. We can ask more of community partners. And I think that’s an important tone to come from the mayor.”
How to maintain Edmonton without high tax hikes?
In order for Edmonton to be a successful city, Walters said it needs to run its basic services well.
“The things people expect from council and the mayor is snow clearing, grass cutting, road maintenance, the functioning healthy drainage waste system.”
Get daily National news
Get the day’s top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.
Walters said Edmonton needs to make room in its budget to improve or maintain those kinds of services without perpetual tax increases.
“We have council accepting this general myth that in order for services to stay the same or improve, we need to raise taxes,” Walters said. “I think part of the challenges we have with our long-term financial health is we have not really explored it as a community.”
However, not everyone sees it that way. Fellow mayoral hopeful and current city councillor Andrew Knack said one has to be realistic.
“Our city’s grown by 200,000 people over the last four years. Most of that has happened in new areas outside (Anthony Henday Drive) which means all of those new areas need new services. I think there’s this fake perspective that you can have it all without having to raise taxes,” he said.
Edmonton residents have seen high tax increases in the years following the freeze during the COVID-19 pandemic — 22 per cent over the four-year budget cycle. The city has said the increases are necessary just to maintain what it already has.
Knack acknowledged isn’t sustainable, but at the same time — nothing is free.
“Now, we can’t raise (taxes) the same way we did over this four-year budget. This was very much a reaction to the previous four-year budget where we kept them at that incredibly low amount,” Knack said.
“But we also have to know that if you wanna have your grass cut, if you want to have your snow cleared and you wanna do all of these things — it does actually cost money.”
Brennan said not being a part of those decisions helps Walters.
“I think something Michael has got going for him is, he hasn’t been part of this council for the last four years. This council is very unpopular,” he said.
Walters noted issues such a poverty, housing affordability, inflation and homelessness were simmering beforehand, but the pandemic led to an eruption that is still an ongoing concern.
So how would he guide Edmonton in addressing them? Safety is the first step.
“Council needs to do that predominantly through partnerships. Our job is strong relationships with the police, strong relationships with the province, strong relationships with the downtown business community and downtown residents.”
But it isn’t just downtown — areas across Edmonton, from the suburbs to the core, are dealing with an increase in social disorder — which affects both residents and businesses alike.
“There are pockets where people aren’t feeling as comfortable as as we used to and I think we can tackle that. So once the neighbourhoods feel safe or downtown feels safe, it becomes investable.”
While housing is a provincial responsibility, cities are often left to address the fallout that comes from homelessness — and Walters said it’s key for all levels of government to work together.
“This is our job — we can’t have people suffering among us and that we’re sort of weaving in and around them every day. There is an opportunity for us to work way more proactively with the province.”
“I have no doubt in my mind that the better the relationship is between the city and the province, the more lives we’re going to save.”
Where does Walters stand on infill?
The need for more infill, along with the challenges that it raises in mature neighbourhoods, has been a dominant topic at city hall in recent months — but Walters said it isn’t a new issue.
“Infill has been a big conversation for mature neighbourhoods for 10 years. You know, I dealt with it when I was on council the first time,” Walters said.
Walters said he is pro-density because the city does need to be more compact and sustainable — but it also can’t come at the expense of ignoring the concerns of Edmontonians who live in mature areas.
“I think where we need start is not judging that, not characterising them as NIMBY(not in my back yard) — but to really listen carefully to what they’re worried about.”
Earlier this month, hundreds of people spoke at city hall during a multi-day hearing about infill.
It was a heated debate.
Mayoral candidate and current councillor Tim Cartmell proposed a motion to reduce the maximum allowable units per infill from eight down to six, after some residents expressed concerns with property values, not enough parking, predatory developers, quality of builds and housing affordability.
The debate spilled over into several days and was extended into the scheduled summer break, leading to a vote in which Cartmell and fellow councillor Sarah Hamilton were not present.
The vote passed with a slim margin of 6 to 5, with councillors electing to maintain the current cap of eight.
Those in favour were Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, councillors Aaron Paquette, Erin Rutherford, Anne Stevenson, Karen Tang, and Jo-Anne Wright. Councillors who voted in opposition included Michael Janz, Andrew Knack, Karen Principe, Jennifer Rice and Ashley Salvador.
Walters said the vote was a missed opportunity.
“I think the motion that was made recently to kind of modify the policy, moderate it, bring it back from eight units to six was a sign of good faith — that could have turned down the temperature and created the space for a healthier conversation,” he said.
Strong mayoral race emerging: analyst
Current or former members of city council vying for the mayor’s seat are Knack, who has been on council since 2013, Cartmell, who has been on council since 2017, and Tony Caterina, who served from 2007 to 2021 when he changed wards and lost to Anne Stevenson.
“We now have a very competitive mayoral race with two sitting counsellors and two former counsellors,” said Brennan, noting the candidates are from across the political spectrum.
“The way I see the race shaping up now is, Andrew Knack is running from the centre-left. He’s the progressive candidate. He’s following very much in the tradition of, say, Don Iveson and Amarjeet Sohi: tax-and-spend, city-building mayors. And there’s a constituency for that in this city. Whereas Tim Cartmell was running for change. He was running to be the fiscal conservative candidate. You know, the small-C conservative,” Brennan said.
“They’re all experienced councillors. They could all do the job because they’ve all been on council. But the question is, how are they gonna get the messaging out to Edmontonians that, ‘This is who I am, this is what I stand for?’”
There are less than three months until election day and Brennan said this is late in the game for new candidates to emerge and gain traction.
He was surprised to see Walters join the fray and said his focus on taxes and crime aligns with topics others are also pushing.
“I really see him focusing on a lot of the issues that Tim Cartmell has already raised. So it’s gonna be interesting to see where he fits in in the campaign,” Brennan said.
So will that result in vote splitting?
“It’s hard to say at this point,” Brennan said. “I think where Michael Walters is coming from is, he’s hoping to straddle the middle for people that don’t want to go to the right or don’t wanna go to the left. ‘Here I am, I’m a moderate centrist.’ And he’s gonna try to carve out that part of the political spectrum for himself.”
Community members who have either filed their official paperwork with the city or publicly declared their intention to run for mayor include former MP Rahim Jaffer, engineer Abdul Malik Chukwudi, business consultant Vanessa Denman, dental surgeon Omar Mohammad, and Olney Tugwell.
Election day is Monday, Oct. 20.
