New Alberta mayors, councillors bring diversity to provincial councils

Calgary’s next mayor says the diversity of the city’s incoming council will bring “strength to decision-making” at a time when a significant number of women and people of colour were elected to municipal offices across Alberta.

Jyoti Gondek, the first woman to hold Calgary’s top job, will lead a council filled with rookies after only three incumbents held on to their seats in Monday’s municipal vote.

The unofficial results show one-third of the city’s 15 seats will be held by women and up to six will be held by people of colour.

“I think that’s so important for newcomers to be able to see that it’s not just lip service that Calgary and Alberta are definitely places where the sky is really the limit,” said Anila Lee Yuen, the president of the Centre For Newcomers.

Edmonton also elected a diverse council with eight of 13 seats to be filled by women and four by people of colour.

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Mayor-elect Amarjeet Sohi, a Sikh immigrant from India, will be the first person of colour to lead Edmonton.

“It creates an atmosphere in a city and a province that really showcases that it is welcoming of newcomers and newcomer perspectives and also that there are opportunities,” said Yuen.

Calgary has the countries third-highest visible minority population, and according to an Economic Profile Series done by the Government of Canada in 2019, immigrant population growth has increased from less than 10,000 per year in the early 2000s, to more than 20,000 annually since 2013.

“We know that by 2036, which is not very far away, we’re going to have one in every two Canadians, so 50 per cent of our population, is either going to be an immigrant or a child of an immigrant.”

Medicine Hat and Grande Prairie will also swear in their first female mayors after Linnsie Clark and Jackie Clayton won on Monday.

Voting results will be official on Friday.