Calgary Minute: Issue 347

Calgary Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Calgary politics

📅 This Week In Calgary: 📅

• The Executive Committee will meet on Tuesday at 9:30 am. Councillor Landon Johnston will bring forward a motion to close the Sheldon M. Chumir supervised consumption site and replace it with an in‑person “Treatment On Demand” opioid dependency program modelled on the Virtual Opioid Dependency Program. The new program would provide ongoing support such as prescription management, medical follow-up, urine testing, counselling, and treatment planning, along with health and risk‑reduction education. It would also serve as a resource for community stakeholders, offer connections to pharmacists and other addictions treatment services, and provide links to broader social and health supports, including hepatitis and HIV screening. Access to these services would be available both onsite and through referrals to the Calgary Navigation and Support Centre.
  
  
• After a second break in the Bearspaw feeder main, Council reviewed an independent panel report reviewing the 2024 failure in the same feeder main. The report found that the City first identified serious risks to the water system in 2004 but repeatedly delayed inspections, monitoring, and upgrades over the next two decades. It also noted that successive councils and management teams lacked the expert support needed to fully understand and oversee the system, contributing to persistent governance gaps. Key recommendations include twinning the Bearspaw main, maintaining the existing line for redundancy, creating a dedicated water utility department, and establishing an independent expert oversight board. Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that the City must spare no expense and treat the project as a long-term investment to secure safe, reliable water. After more than eight hours of debate, Council unanimously agreed that City staff should prepare a plan and cost estimate for moving forward with the recommendations, to be presented at the February 3rd meeting of Executive Committees. If passed, the reforms are expected to be largely implemented within a year, with transition to a distinct City-owned water corporation within three years.
  
  
• Calgary officials say work to restore the feeder main will continue into next week, even though the replacement pipe has now been installed. Crews are backfilling the site and preparing to repave 16th Avenue NW, which could reopen to traffic by midweek. Before water restrictions can be lifted, the pipe must be slowly refilled, tested for safety, and the system pressure stabilized, a process that could take several more days and carries risk of setbacks. City staff cautioned it is still too early to give a firm timeline for ending conservation measures. In the meantime, Calgary is taking steps to reduce flood risk, including temporarily removing sections of a Bow River flood barrier and clearing drainage infrastructure. Officials continue urging residents to cut daily water use by about 30 litres, warning current consumption levels are still straining the system.
  
  
• Calgary is preparing to conduct its first municipal census since 2019 and has begun hiring a program co-ordinator to manage the process ahead of next year’s count. The role would oversee planning, budgeting, staffing, privacy compliance, and public reporting for the census, with a salary range between roughly $113,000 and $143,000. The City stopped running its own annual census in 2020 and has relied on federal data since then, meaning current population estimates are based on information that is several years old. Calgary’s population is now believed to exceed 1.6 million, creating challenges for planning services using outdated figures. In 2024, Council approved a return to a municipally run census every two years starting in 2027 to improve local data. City officials say that frequent, locally collected information will help better align services and infrastructure with changing community needs.
  
  
• Construction has begun on the first of three new hotels at Calgary’s Stampede Park to support the revitalized BMO Centre’s growing event schedule. The 13-storey, 320-room Autograph Collection hotel, a $330 million project developed by Truman in partnership with Marriott, the Calgary Stampede, and CMLC, is slated to open in 2028. Site preparations, including demolition and utility work, began in July 2025, with full foundational work now underway. Two additional hotels, the W Calgary and JW Marriott Calgary, are in the regulatory approval process. Once all three are complete, the Stampede Park area will offer over 700 hotel rooms within a five-minute walk of the BMO Centre.

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