Calgary Minute: Issue 383

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

📅 This Week In Calgary: 📅

• Council meets tomorrow at 9:30 am, and one of the items on the agenda is the choice of a downtown route for the Green Line LRT. Administration has shortlisted three options: keeping the current elevated alignment along 10 Avenue and 2 Street SW, an elevated alignment shifted to 1 Street SE, or a surface alignment along 10 Avenue and 2 Street SW. A cost validation review found the current elevated baseline would run $300 million to $400 million above the 2024 estimate of roughly $1.3 billion, putting it at $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion and leaving a funding gap of about $1 billion against the approved budget. The 1 Street SE option is estimated at $1.371 billion, about $500 million over budget, while the surface option is estimated at $850 million and is the only one Administration says fits inside the existing funding envelope. The trade-off is ridership, with the elevated baseline modelled at roughly 51,200 daily riders compared with 43,000 for the 1 Street SE option and 41,000 for the surface option. The Executive Committee backed the surface option 12-1 on September 8th, with Councillor Jennifer Wyness opposed. Phase 1 of the Green Line has committed $2.24 billion so far, of which about $1.83 billion had been spent as of July 31st.
  
  
• Ward 10 Councillor Andre Chabot is asking Council to end routine remote participation in its own meetings. His motion, forwarded from the Executive Committee, would direct Administration to amend the Procedure Bylaw so that members must attend all regular and special meetings of Council and the Standing Policy Committees in person. Remote attendance would be permitted only in listed exceptions, including a declared state of emergency, serious illness or medical necessity, parental or compassionate leave, and travel required by outside bodies Council appoints members to, such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and Alberta Municipalities. Where remote participation is allowed, the reason would have to be recorded in the official minutes. Chabot argues that remote meeting technology was expanded during the pandemic to keep governance running under extraordinary circumstances that have since passed, and notes that the City brought its own employees back to the workplace on a standardized basis in March 2023.
  
  
• The City is asking the Government of Alberta for $418.1 million toward critical infrastructure and up to $448 million in capital for transit, in a pre-budget submission Council is being asked to endorse tomorrow. The remaining asks are $320 million for the first wave of GamePLAN, the City's recreation facility program, including $150 million for the Foothills Multisport Fieldhouse, $25 million over 2027-2028 for the low-income transit pass, $23.9 million for emergency services, and a one-third provincial contribution toward the Prairie Economic Gateway inland logistics port. The submission puts the City's infrastructure deficit at $56 billion over its latest 10-year capital plan, with almost half of that in critical assets or assets in very poor condition, and the highest risks in drinking water and wastewater. The infrastructure request itself breaks down into five water and wastewater projects, led by $177.6 million toward a new 22-kilometer feeder main for north Calgary and $118.6 million toward a south Calgary feeder main. On those projects the City is seeking one-third funding from each order of government. The Intergovernmental Affairs Committee recommended endorsement on September 2nd, and Mayor Jeromy Farkas would sign and submit the letter on Council's behalf.
  
  
• City Auditor Liz Ormsby has found the City's oversight of its homelessness initiatives only partially effective. The audit, which tested the Day Space Program, the Extreme Weather Response, and the Downtown Ambassador Program across 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, reported that no formal risk registers, issue tracking, or escalation thresholds were in place across the initiatives sampled, so risks could not be traced consistently from identification through to resolution. It also found no decision logs or standard process for recording key oversight decisions, leaving the rationale, the alternatives considered, and the approving authority scattered across agreements, meeting records, and correspondence. Because much of the work is delivered by third parties, the auditors flagged that service continuity and dependency risks were not consistently documented, warning that continuity problems may be dealt with only after a disruption occurs. The report makes three recommendations, and the Community Strategies business unit has agreed to act on them by October 31st. The most recent point-in-time count identified 3,314 people experiencing homelessness in Calgary in 2025.
  
  
• Premier Danielle Smith has criticized Calgary City Council's use of closed-door meetings, calling it bad practice on her radio show. Her comments follow Ward 14 Councillor Landon Johnston's release of confidential budget documents, which he defends as being in the public's best interest, and his request that the province review the City's use of in-camera sessions. Smith argued that the real debate is now happening behind closed doors, where members can, as she put it, "get their stories straight" before the public part of a meeting, and contrasted that with the Legislature, where she said members rarely go in camera with the full body present. She suggested councils instead hold pre-briefing sessions with Administration and keep their official meetings open. Mayor Jeromy Farkas had called a special meeting of Council to seek legal advice on how to respond to Johnston's disclosure. Council briefly discussed whether Johnston could be barred from future in-camera sessions involving confidential material, but City Solicitor Jill Floen told members the province has repealed or prohibited Council's authority to control the conduct of its members.

🚨 This Week’s Action Item: 🚨

We’ve got two great Pints & Politics events coming up this fall: October 1st with Ward 7 Councillor Myke Atkinson, and October 28th with Mayor Jeromy Farkas.

Join us for a pint, ask the questions that matter to you, and hear directly from the people making decisions at City Hall.

Check out the details and be sure to RSVP today:

🪙 This Week’s Sponsor: 🪙

This week's sponsor is you! We don't have big corporate backers, so if you like what you're reading, please consider making a donation or signing up as a monthly member.

Having said that, if you are a local business and are interested in being a sponsor, send us an email and we'll talk!