Calgary city council is preparing to audit its own closed-session habits. The data behind that decision tells a more complicated story than expected.

According to data found in the City of Calgary’s composite minutes, the current council has had 34 closed session meetings and spent nearly 54 hours in camera. In comparison, the prior council had 53 total closed sessions and spent roughly 76 hours in private meetings.

The key driver behind the gap in time spent behind closed doors is that the prior council had two significant committees (Green Line Board and the Event Centre Committee) that accounted for 10 separate sessions as negotiations and planning were ongoing for those projects.

The data was compared as closely as possible and stretched from the councils’ respective election dates through to the current city council’s May 7 meeting.  Full data tables are at the end of the story.

The review comes as Calgary’s Executive Committee forwarded a Notice of Motion to an upcoming full meeting of city council, asking for an annual review of in-camera time spent and the reasons why.

Both councils counted 17 full city council closed sessions in that time, but the committee sessions of the prior council more than doubled that of the current council.

When just full council time was tallied (17 sessions each, 15 with time stamps), the Farkas group spent roughly two additional hours in camera compared to Gondek’s crew.

The Notice of Motion was put forward by Mayor Jeromy Farkas and co-sponsored by Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston, but each sees the problem differently.

Mayor Farkas said that it was a central commitment of this council to be open and transparent with Calgarians. If there’s a certain matter that needs to be behind closed doors, he said it should be documented, and there should be a reason why they had to do so.

“I don’t think it tells the full picture to purely just say look at the amount of time generally, because when you look at, say, the work of a city council, there’s an ebb and flow to some of the issues that are in hand,” he said.

In his prior city council term as councillor, Farkas would often deride his colleagues for their time conducting “secret meetings.”

Limiting in-camera opportunities

Under Section 197(2) of Alberta’s Municipal Government Act, municipal councils can go in camera when the subject falls under the “exceptions to disclosure.” Some of those primary reasons are: Personal privacy, business interests of a third party, public safety or law enforcement, confidential employee matters, and legal advice.

Bylaws or resolutions cannot be passed during these sessions.

Coun. Johnston has voted no to every motion for the full council group to go in-camera thus far this term.

“I’ll be honest with it right now, why I vote no is because we don’t know what we’re going in to talk about,” he said.

“How can I vote yes or no to something if I don’t know what we’re going to be talking about?”

Johnston said one of the problems with in-camera meetings is that the public doesn’t really know why councillors have to talk about things behind closed doors.

“If we can rein in on the transparency side of it, I think we’d be less likely to go in camera if more people knew about it,” he said.

“Even today, we went in camera and there was no need for it. And it gets brought up almost every time we’re in camera. Why are we in camera here? This could have been talked out in public.”

To that end, Johnston wants to see the scope narrowed down to go in-camera. He said the interpretation under the rules can be very broad.

“I’ve been working on a broader scope in-camera, we’ll call it overhaul, and a lot of it’s going to involve recording what we say in camera, having records of what we do in camera, and then reining in on the reasons we go on camera,” he said.

“You can use ‘advice from officials’ for anything you want to do in camera.”

When asked about potential privacy concerns with the information being recorded or documented, Johnston said that most of the important content ends up getting leaked to the media anyway.

“I’ve read about a news story about what we were seeing in camera as we were still in camera, so somebody in there was leaking it to the media. It’s just there’s no trust, there’s no honesty among thieves,” he said.

Johnston also claimed that the mayor is one of the biggest offenders when it comes to dragging closed sessions out.

“He also uses it to try to sway our votes, uses it as a place to argue against us talking to media about anything. He’s used it as a weapon up until this point,” he said.

Farkas said that they could reduce in-camera time if they could keep the discussion “on the rails.”

In camera is often a judgment call, says Mayor Farkas

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule surmised that one of the issues is that this current council has 10 new councillors on it. Part of the learning curve is understanding their responsibilities, particularly around what can and can’t be said in public.

There were nine new councillors in the Gondek 2021 to 2025 term.

“I don’t know that you’ll eliminate the need to go in camera, I’m hopeful you’ll see a little bit more efficiency in those meetings,” he said.

“Like, OK, this line of questioning can be brought out to council rather than being behind closed doors, and I think as we do learn, I think we’ll get better at that.”

Yule said that now that they have their feet under them, there should be some improvement in closed session time.

Mayor Farkas said that the legislation is very clear that city council must meet in the open unless there’s a legitimate reason to go into a closed session. He said that often the meeting becomes a judgment call.

“We often get into the weeds on issues that are important, but there’s not a real good reason, necessarily, to stay behind closed doors,” he said.

“For me, as chair, I’m really going to be pushing our council over this coming year to be really tight. We really need to have a very specific reason to go into closed session, and I’m going to be holding myself accountable.”

Data for the full council closed sessions

Total Council and Committee Meeting closed session tally

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