We hear a lot about US-style politics and many of the scummy tactics employed that are par for the course. It can bleed into our opinions of Canadian politics, both municipally and federally. And sure, during question period many of our MPs behave like monkeys, but what about in our local Edmonton government?

I'm a huge fan of The West Wing, one of my favourite episodes is The Stackhouse Filibuster and after a recent rewatch, it got me wondering if similar styles of politics occur on our local council, or if they even could occur.

The first place to look is Bylaw 12300, Procedures and Committees Bylaw which sets out the rules for Council meetings, and if filibustering is going to take place, it'll need to be permitted here.

Firstly, the very concept of a filibuster is quite quickly struck down in section 125, Time Limits. A councillor may only speak for five minutes, unless two-thirds of Council votes to give more time. So the longest filibuster, without the consent of council, could only be five minutes. The rest of council could just go on Twitter for that amount of time.

One example of a Filibustering tactic comes from Ontario, in which over 11,000 amendments were added to a bill, each naming a different street. This successful filibuster lasted from April 2 to April 11th. This type of filibuster could only work in Edmonton, if the majority of Council supported the filibuster. While it is possible to get the motions onto the Agenda - notice must be provided of each motion seven days in advance, either in writing or by dictating directly to the City Manager, and these may only be removed from the agenda by unanimous vote - Section 100 allows objection to the consideration of a motion before debate with a two-thirds vote. Section 104 prohibits motions that would have the same, or similar result as business previously considered by Council. What that means, is that the Councillor attempting to filibuster this way would have to, in-advance, create many distinct motions which must have different results, all of which that can be defeated with an objection to consideration in a matter of seconds.

Low return on investment there.

Another filibuster tactic is the method of infinite amendments. We almost had something like this in the latest Vehicle For Hire Discussion in which several motions were put forward, just incrementally different discussing the percentage of fare difference between PTPs and Taxis. After a vote-down and discussion, however, these amendments were withdrawn. The idea is solid, however, simply keep proposing amendments that are incrementally different so as to achieve a different result (eg. amend the maximum height of a building to be 20m, then 21m, then 22m, etc.). But this as well is dispatched by the powerful Bylaw 12300! Section 73 permits a Motion for Previous Question which is a fancy way of saying that Council will immediately require a motion to be voted on, without further debate. This only requires a two-thirds vote, so again, two thirds can quite quickly stop a filibuster.

So, is that it? Is there truly no way for Councillors to waste the time of their peers effectively? Well, there is one way. Council requires that for all three readings of a bill to take place in a single meeting. So, a councillor who is in the minority that disagrees with a bylaw, could vote against the consideration for the third reading, enforcing that the bylaw need another meeting and set of debate in order to pass. Does this happen? Not really. It's only happened once in our current Council term.

Several examples exist of councillors putting aside their differences and letting a bill they know is going to pass, pass immediately. Even our new Councillor Moe Banga did it on his very first Council meeting

Some other examples are:

The only example of consideration for Third Reading failing, when a minority of Council voted against the Bylaw is Bylaw 17004

While five councilors voted against the Bylaw, only E. Gibbons voted against the third reading, ultimately holding up the process just under a month from the original February 10th meeting until March 3rd, 2015, when it eventually passed, with the same councillors plus the then-absent Henderson opposed. However, in fairness to Councillor Gibbons, since both Henderson and Walters were absent from the initial meeting, if both of them had voted no, the Bylaw would have failed. Perhaps Councillor Gibbons was the only one who didn't know about Walters' support for the bylaw.

So, with all that considered, the answer to the question is Edmonton City Council friendly to filibuster-style politics? is a solid and firm

No, they're not interested in wasting our time.