Ward system vote defeated in Lethbridge City Council

They, along with councillor Al Beeber, said that they had heard from several residents during the 2025 municipal election campaign that the city should revisit the idea of dividing the city into smaller areas and having each councillor represent the people and businesses in that area.

These residents, according to Crowson, felt disconnected from city council and that some sections of the city were underrepresented in local governance.

Ryan Parker was among those on council who voted against the motion, believing that a ward system would actually exacerbate these issues.

He says it would create even worse divisions than Lethbridge already has, as representatives would only listen to those in their ward and only advocate for issues that affect their ward.

“If I represented just certain areas of the west side, what do I care about the north side? What do I care about Uplands? What do I care about Hardieville? But right now, I do care because I’m accountable to the whole community, all 120,000 people,” says Parker.

Councillor Rajko Dodic adds that elections would be decided solely on hyper-localized issues, rather than ones that impact the entire city.

For example, he believes that wards would ensure that the third bridge across the coulees would never be built, as those in the south and north wards would not support an expensive project that would increase their taxes, even if they never use the bridge.

Dodic also took issue with the potential loss of representation for voters.

Rather than having residents vote for eight members of council, they might only be able to select one or two in their wards, as well as mayor.

In the 2021 municipal election, 55.69 per cent of voters said yes to a non-binding referendum question that asked, “Do you support using a Ward System to elect City Councilors (other than the Mayor) starting with the 2025 municipal election?”

During the 2021-25 council term, members considered establishing an Electoral Ward Boundary Commission to further evaluate such a system, including associated costs, number of wards, and number of councillors.

The matter did not receive majority support, and a motion to instead pursue a “precinct model” was also voted down in 2022.

Crowson voted in support of this week’s motion, saying that they owe it to the public to, at the very least, look more into the matter and have discussions.

“It’s rather ironic that we just gave ourselves permission to have this conversation, but not the public, and that’s what we just did,” says Crowson. “We just had the conversation, we ignored our own five-minute rule about how long we talk so we could all say what we wanted, but we’re not willing to listen to the public have the same opportunity to speak towards it.”

Beeber echoed Crowson’s sentiments, saying that even if he did not support a ward system, council should be listening to the public’s concerns.

As a former journalist, Beeber says he always wants to hear from all sides.

Crowson said much of the background work has already been done, including creating a bylaw and receiving reports from experts in political science, so at this point, it is just a matter of listening.

Regardless, the motion was defeated, meaning that it will likely not come up again during this council term.

You can watch the full council discussion on the City of Lethbridge’s YouTube live stream.

Yes votes: Al Beeber, Belinda Crowson, Jenn Schmidt-Rempel

No votes: Blaine Hyggen, Rufa Doria, Ryan Parker, Ryan Wolfe, Mark Campbell, Rajko Dodic

by David Opinko

Ward system vote defeated in Lethbridge City Council

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