Calgary city councillors once again have sent back a motion on the Sheldon Chumir Supervised Consumption site closure, largely because proper advance work wasn’t done by the supporting councillor.

The Notice of Motion, already pitched once by Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston, and subsequently pulled from an agenda to discuss the Bearspaw Independent Review Panel report, came before councillors once again at the Feb. 3 Executive Committee meeting.

The prior motion, which lacked substantive detail, asked for council to support the province’s planned closure of the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre. The province has already said that they would be closing the site sometime in 2026.

Coun. Johnston told reporters outside city council chambers that it was important to bring the issue back as the previous council took a neutral position on its support. Councillors at the time said that it was a provincial issue.

“I think this is a very serious issue that’s been plaguing all of North America right now, and I just think the current frameworks that we’ve been using for the safe injection site, it hasn’t worked,” Johnston said.  

“We’re not healthcare professionals, the city. That’s not our priority. It’s not our mandate, but it is the province’s mandate. So, whether it’s the UCP or the NDP, it doesn’t matter. It should be the health care professionals in charge of it. I just want our municipal government to be in collaboration with the province and to be there if they need us. That’s all this is. It’s just a letter of cooperation

A revised Notice of Motion was delivered to city clerks before the meeting, though councillors hadn’t seen it. In council chambers, Coun. Johnston admitted it was “performative.”

Lacking in detail

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said that he was voting against it because he had to make a determination of how the item would be placed on the floor of council.

To that end, he said that there were many questions unanswered by the proposed motion, including what was even being asked of council.

“I think the merits, like there’s good discussion here to be had in terms of how the city leans in through community partners in supporting that transition,” Farkas said.

“But that’s not what this motion says, at least in this current version. I would have loved the opportunity to be able to express that to the mover, but again, at the last minute, we only had about five seconds before the item came, to actually have this consideration.”

Mayor Farkas reminded councillors that they all have roughly a week of lead time before publishing agendas to make sure that they’ve done the proper work to prepare a Notice of Motion for council.

Coun. DJ Kelly echoed the mayor’s concerns. Other councillors weren’t sure if the request was for a letter, financial support, or otherwise.

“I’m actually not really sure what this notice of motion is seeking to accomplish; offering our support is very vague,” Kelly said.

“I’m not sure what we’re committing to here.”

Ward 2 Coun. Kim Tyers said they all knew the motion was coming forward

“We knew what the wording was, so to say that we didn’t know what was coming, and now we’re suddenly reading it, and we’re so surprised,” she said.  

“I know I’m not surprised. I know it’s been coming. I do support it.”

Mayor Farkas said the latest revised text came just before the item was introduced at council and wasn’t distributed to council.

The motion failed 7-8 and won’t be moved on to a future meeting of Calgary city council for debate in its current form.