As mayoral candidates make more promises without concrete plans to pay for them, the prospect of closing the funding gap on provincial downloading could play a key role in future finances.
In its 2024 Municipal Fiscal Gap report, the City of Calgary pegged the downloading impact on city finances to be $436.9 million. This amount is comprised of increased costs or funding shortfalls resulting from adverse changes to cost-sharing or funding arrangements, expanded city roles without funds and new unfunded city responsibilities, according to the report.
“These costs did not consider the potential costs The City faced associated with future risks, such as climate change impacts and inflationary pressures,” the city document read.
Of that total, $301.7 million is attributed to capital grant cuts, and $135.2 million to operational grants, according to the report.
Among those changes noted by City of Calgary in the report are support for the Low-Income Transit Pass (shortfall of $19 million), $28 million reduction in police funding due to the removal of photo radar, and $14.6 million for the ongoing medical response of Calgary firefighters.
Recently, the Calgary Party has highlighted many of the areas where the province has meddled in civic affairs, often costing Calgary property taxpayers more.
“This is a government that seems more interested in running Calgary’s City Hall than governing the province,” said Calgary Party mayoral candidate Brian Thiessen.
“They download costs, force tax hikes, interfere in local planning — and then pretend they’re riding to the rescue.”
This week, incumbent mayoral candidate Jyoti Gondek said it’s critical that the provincial and federal governments understand the value Calgary provides when it’s funded properly.
“The ability for people to participate in the labour force, the ability for people to participate in providing the income tax that both of those two orders of government collect. We can’t do those things without strong infrastructure,” she said.
“The infrastructure that they’re investing in is actually driving our economy. So, the roads, the water networks, all of that stuff matters.”
Focus on the people: Gondek
On the mental health and addiction front, particularly the tens of thousands of medical calls attended by the Calgary Fire Department annually, Gondek said the previous council had been very loud about it.
“I mean, if, if you don’t want to fund the municipality because there’s some ideological thing you’ve got going on, then focus on the people,” she said.
“The people in the fire department are doing their very best to provide quality service to Calgarians, but their primary job shouldn’t be responding to medical calls.”
Gondek likened the fire situation to that of police. She said you can’t expect them to stay on top of disorder or violent crime with funding reduced, nor the supports for mental health and addiction that provide an alternative to enforcement.
Gondek said she’d like to see appropriate provincial and federal funding streams, that allow the city the flexibility to use it to address emerging issues. Especially when the province takes 37 per cent of Calgary property taxes, she said.
“We would need a provincial government that trusts us to allocate those funds where we need them most, and for us to be able to look at each year and understand how much of the funding that they’re providing us needs to go into which buckets, if you will,” she said.
In her news release on the topic, Gondek called for the province to restore infrastructure funding to match population and inflation. She wanted an investment in healthcare capacity, along with mental health and addictions supports, so CFD doesn’t need to respond to so many medical call. Finally, she wants to see a fair cost-sharing model for essential services, including transit.
Fellow mayoral candidate Jeromy Farkas said that his philosophy on squeezing more money from the province comes from his experience working as the CEO of the Glenbow Ranch Park Foundation and their push to steer the government away from a destructive plan that would have flooded their parkland.
“We brought forward real alternatives. We stood firm for what mattered, but we also helped the province solve their problem, which was flood mitigation and protection for Calgary,” he said.
“In the end, we won. We fought and we won. We protected the land, we saved taxpayer dollars, and we showed the collaboration doesn’t have to mean capitulation.”
Renewed partnership for the future
Farkas said that’s the approach he would bring to the relationship with the province.
“Obviously, when Calgary gets shortchanged, we have to speak up. But when we can offer real solutions, for example, to help the province do something, say better, cheaper, faster, we have an obligation to step up,” he said.
Farkas proposes formalizing the CFD medical response relationship with the province, along with better public-facing tools to measure and visualize the costs to citizens. He’d like to see two different tax bills sent annually, showing how much the province takes in revenue from Calgarians.
Ultimately, Farkas believes that a new city charter needs to be drawn up, one that reflects the costs of running a city in the 21st Century.
“It would be ideally seeing Calgary achieve a goal of indexing provincial funding to population and service delivery burden,” he said.
“Ideally, it would emphasize long-term planning, stability and collaboration with nearby municipalities.
“It’s all collective responsibilities. We cannot look to a 1960s or 1970s interpretation of the legislation. Calgarians expect us to work together. Period.”
The Jeff Davison campaign provided a comment via email.
“I believe as the next mayor, my job is to stay in my lane,” read a comment attributed to the candidate.
“We look forward to building a new, positive working relationship with both the provincial and federal governments to truly solve complex issues like social disorder and infrastructure.”
The Sharp campaign initially scheduled an interview and then cancelled. We will update our story should further information become available.
