A handful of Calgary city councillors are hoping to repeal the City of Calgary’s climate declaration, and along with it, have an audit done on climate-related spending.

Communities First members, all of whom are campaigning in the upcoming Calgary municipal election, have submitted a Notice of Motion for technical review at the Sept. 8 Executive Committee meeting. The motion lists Couns. Sonya Sharp, Dan McLean, Andre Chabot and Terry Wong as sponsoring members.

In the motion, the group is calling for the city to rescind the climate emergency declaration and conduct a “comprehensive value for money audit” of all City climate-related spending, including operation and capital expenditures tied to the declaration and other climate policy.

They want the accounting of it to go back to November 2021, when the climate emergency declaration was passed by Calgary city council. That declaration has been subject to derision from both city councillors and the public for a poorly communicated message that it could cost $87 billion to reach the intended targets.

That number, despite being corrected multiple times, has been regularly deliberately used as misinformation by councillors and opponents of the climate plan.

According to the councillors’ upcoming motion, the Climate and Environment business unit has a $26 million base operating budget, $22 million in one-time programs, and $22.7 million in capital spending. They said there’s an additional $214 million in climate-related capital spending planned for 2026.

Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean said that while it might seem like a politically opportune time for this to come forward, it’s been in the works for a couple of years.

“This is something I know I’ve been working on with Councilor Sharp, my office,  the Ward 13 office, on digging into through administration, and it’s taken a couple of years to get the numbers of what has gone into each department,” McLean told LWC.

Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek told reporters on Thursday that she was just in a room with global energy leaders who were talking about the impact of climate and why reducing emissions was so important. She said the people who fled Jasper last summer know climate change is real, as do those impacted by the 2013 Calgary floods and the numerous hailstorms in Calgary over the past several years.

“I find it fascinating that a councillor who voted for this Notice of Motion has waited until an election to say that she really didn’t agree with it sounds a bit like posturing and populism,” the mayor said.

Couns. Sharp, Chabot and Wong all voted in favour of the climate declaration. Coun. McLean did not.

Whose responsibility is the climate anyway?

The motion also asks for an assessment of spending outcomes are aligned with council jurisdiction and priorities. It also asks for recommendations on how climate-related spending can be better aligned with core municipal responsibilities.

“The Climate Emergency declaration was never about delivering better services to Calgarians; it was about political symbolism,” said Coun. Sharp, who is running for mayor this October.

“Meanwhile, it’s tied our city to hundreds of millions of dollars in spending with very little transparency and questionable benefit. This audit is about accountability, clarity, and getting back to core responsibilities.”

McLean said it’s not that this group doesn’t want to see environmentally friendly policies.

“We care about pollution. We care about clean air and clean water efficiencies that we can find,” he said.

“So, I think the goal here is to identify how much money is being spent, what could be trimmed and put into other places, and … not gut at all, but find out places that maybe we don’t need.”

Ward 9 Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra, who isn’t running for re-election, called the motion “churlish.” He acknowledged that the whole climate declaration was not well communicated.

“It was not a net new spend. It was about all the things we’d need to do to get our city’s feet underneath it for the future that’s coming at us,” he told LWC.

He said that it’s a shame on council for not really following through on the climate emergency with clearer action. He was equally critical of those now wanting to play politics with the issue.

“We have a political class that wants to play political games, and, I think, prey upon people’s anger, fear and division, rather than address the very real governance challenges and the very real, physical challenges that confront our city as we move into a future that will be shaped by climate change,” he said.

Ward 11 Coun. Kourtney Penner, who is running for re-election, said that the money being spent on climate-related items is for things like climate-adaptive road paving and retrofitting city buildings to account for things like air quality with more days of poor outdoor air quality.

“This is simply a group of people who are basically saying, let’s pretend that the last four years didn’t happen. Let’s scrap it all and start all over again.

“That is not how cities move forward.”

If the item is approved on technical merit, it will be discussed at an upcoming full meeting of Calgary city council.