Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek said 2024 showed the world this city’s resilience, and she believes 2025 is shaping up to be an exceptional economic year.

LWC sat down with the mayor in mid-December to look back on the past year, examine some of the year’s wins and look at some of the hiccups along the way. 2024 offered no shortage of substantial civic issues – the water main break, citywide rezoning, the Event Centre and Green Line, and more – and 2025 brings with it a municipal election for Calgary.

Mayor Gondek said when she looks back on the year, what comes to mind is the collaborative spirit and resilience shown during the water main break. She said it took everyone by surprise, and suddenly the eyes of the world were upon Calgary.

“I did the very simple and very Canadian thing of asking people politely, could you please conserve more water? And people stepped up,” she said.

“I can’t think of any other city where people would have been so willing to pitch in for each other and help us get through a situation like that.”

The year got off to a somewhat rocky start, however, as a petition to recall Mayor Gondek was launched. While the petition was a flop, it did expose a sentiment in the city that local politicians were largely out of touch with the citizens. The mayor said when she eventually sat down with petitioner Landon Johnston, it was a good conversation.

“I think that was his effort to demonstrate that he was frustrated with how he was feeling in his life. That’s something that I absolutely considered and something that I reflect on,” she said.  

“I think with the amount of growth that we’re seeing in our city, there are people that are getting concerned that they’re going to be missing out on those opportunities they used to have.”

A growing Calgary

On the heels of an approved Calgary Housing Strategy in the fall of 2023, the city began charting the course for more houses. They took on a lot of different aspects, including the disposition of lands for affordable housing, particularly around LRT stations, along with enabling Calgary’s affordable housing providers the flexibility to provide broader opportunities.

Calgary continued along with the approval of local area plans as well, though largely with less contention than in the past. Citywide rezoning to RCG, however, was quite contentious, with a nearly two-week public hearing. It was the longest public hearing in Calgary’s history, and ultimately approved by a council vote of 9-6.

Mayor Gondek said the question can no longer be, “do you think we can meet the housing need?”  She said people have already moved to Calgary and they need a place to live. Private sector providers were coming to City of Calgary asking how they could help.

She said a recent decision around the Glenmore Landing redevelopment was a frustrating one.

“I don’t understand the councillors that voted against (Glenmore Landing). I’m not really sure what they’re seeking. When we were doing rezoning, they said, ‘Well, I don’t know if we want to do that. We should locate density next to transit.’ So, now we have density next to transit, and it still wasn’t good enough for them,” she said.  

“Even after, they said, ‘you know who should be doing this, it’s the private sector.’ Well, we brought them the private sector. It seems they didn’t want that either. I think there’s members of council who just want to exercise populism, and they see yellow shirts in the audience, and they start thinking about their chances of re-election, instead of considering why they were voted in in the first place.”

There’s been considerable suggestion that many of the city’s development decisions are foregone conclusions and that the city’s engagement on these topics is a mere formality. That concern prompted a Notice of Motion from some councillors this year to seek out a third-party review of public consultation.

“The very fact that we have a public hearing process, and we keep it open until everyone who would like to engage with us has had a chance to do so tells you that we are interested in hearing from the public,” she said.

“We don’t cut speakers off a day or a week beforehand. We let people register up to the minute if they have something that they would like to say.”

She said she believes people have more say at the development permit process, which captures more of the concerns they have with specific projects.

Big projects move ahead, one derailed

In 2024, Calgary saw the opening of the BMO Centre expansion and the groundbreaking of both the Event Centre and the Arts Commons Transformation.

Mayor Gondek said she believes the Event Centre will continue to build upon the success of investments made in the downtown and surrounding area.

“I believe it because I’ve seen what’s happened with the investment in the BMO convention center and that expansion, with that building done, there are so many people that come there for events, and frankly, just to see how beautiful it is,” she said.

“I think the Event Center is going to be one more piece of that puzzle, and it’s absolutely going to attract investment to the area.”

Calgary’s biggest-ever infrastructure project, however, took a giant leap backward in 2024. LWC asked if the change in the Green Line’s cost concern when it went from orange to red, signalled the start of a domino effect that led to the project’s demise.

Mayor Gondek said they realized that as time went by, inflationary pressure would impact both material and labour costs, driving the price up. She said that’s when the Green Line board worked on what the project could look like with the money they had, assuming they weren’t going to get any more from the province or the feds.

She said they came back with a plan, which included significantly shortening the line and focusing on the underground downtown portion, they took it to both orders of government who issued letters saying, “this sounds good.”

“So, it was a real slap in the face on September 3 when we got a letter from the province saying, ‘We don’t like this project anymore and we’re pulling our funding,’” the mayor said.

“It took a good two weeks of phone calls to (Alberta Minister of Transportation) Mr. Dreeshen and the premier saying, ‘You are going to lose this whole project is far too important for Calgary’s future. Would you please reconsider the components of it that you still agree with?’ That’s how we got them back to the table.”

Since then, the province has come back with their LRT alignment, which, as they’ve said all along, did not examine an underground option through Calgary’s downtown. City council will have to make a decision early in the new year.

Water mains, single-use items and the municipal fiscal gap

The issue that dominated the summer of 2024 was the Bearspaw water feeder main break in Bowness and Montgomery.

The City of Calgary recently received a 600-page report showing that chlorides in the soil, hydrogen embrittlement and chipping of the mortar coating led to wire snaps that compromised the line’s structural integrity.

“I would say this is absolutely an important thing for us to consider. If you can find monitoring techniques that allow you to identify issues sooner, we should be investing in those,” Mayor Gondek said.

“I would say that in the past, at the time when this pipe was created, that type of monitoring didn’t really exist.”

Single-use items was another matter, perhaps one that Mayor Gondek would like to forget. After the bylaw was enacted in January, the process to repeal it began. By May, it was taken out.

Mayor Gondek said that it was a mistake to put out that bylaw when they did. It’s not likely to come back in 2025.

“We didn’t explain what we were trying to do. We did not communicate well with Calgarians,” she said.

“There were a lot of people trying to pick up some takeout, frankly shocked by the fact that they would have to pay for a bag. So, I don’t think we got that right in any way.”

An ongoing source of frustration for the city is a Municipal Fiscal Gap the City of Calgary says is more than $400 million annually. That’s their tally of what it costs each year to deliver services that are within the jurisdiction of the provincial or federal governments but receive no compensation.

The mayor said long ago, there was a deal struck that municipalities would deliver core services to their residents. That was to be done in partnership with the provincial and federal governments.

“When you think about the fact that we had a provincial campaign called Alberta is Calling, well, they probably should have thought of the investments that would be needed if people actually took them up on it,” Mayor Gondek said.

“People that are moving here to the tune of 200 to 250 people a day. They’re not bringing roads with them. They’re not bringing pools or schools with them. These are things that we need to be providing to people who are moving here.”

Calgary in 2025 and the municipal election

Mayor Gondek was blunt in her thoughts on 2025 being a municipal election year, and how it might impact decisions made at Calgary city hall. The mayor has announced her candidacy to run for re-election in 2025.

“I would say this to any my colleagues who are considering re-election. We were elected with a four-year mandate. When people voted for us back in 2021 they said, ‘We want you to represent us for four years,’ and people need us to make good decisions. They need us to look at data. They need us to look at evidence and make some pretty tough decisions that are not rooted in populism,” she said.  

“If you are doing your job that you are elected to do, you’ll continue to make decisions that are the right ones in the interest of Calgarians, you won’t start thinking about elections.”

The mayor decided to run again at a time when she and her fellow councillors are experiencing an all-time low in trust and popularity. She said sometimes city councillors have to make difficult decisions that aren’t immediately popular. She noted former Mayor Dave Bronconnier’s push to resurrect the East Village, and former Mayor Ralph Klein’s push to have a light-rail transit system.

“If you believe in the future of the city and you believe in the vision, and you’re delivering on good things, you stand with your convictions,” she said.

2025 does bring with it some challenges: Housing and affordability remain at the top of the list, Mayor Gondek said. They’ll have to stay on top of providing the right infrastructure to service a growing number of citizens.

The mayor believes they’ll be able to continue building on the success of 2024 and bring that into 2025. She said the time and investment in growing Calgary’s economy will continue to bear fruit for the city.

Mayor Gondek said a strong tech workforce, strengthening supply chain networks and continuing to build Calgary as an inland port will provide a host of opportunities in the coming year, including a potential new rail hub.

“That means jobs. It means really good jobs for Calgarians. It also means excellent jobs in construction while we are putting all of that together, and that really helps us in terms of what we are already strong at,” she said.

“So many things are going well, and at the same time, we’ve got an affordability crunch that’s impacting a lot of Calgarians, so we’ve got to make sure that we’re looking out for folks.”