While the province is convening a minister’s council aimed at finding new ways to fund infrastructure, Calgary’s mayor said there’s a much simpler way to help.

Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, Dan Williams, made the announcement June 23, 2026, in Jasper, Alberta, and said that bringing together municipalities from across the province opens the door to innovative funding mechanisms.

Williams said that across Canada, and particularly in Alberta, communities are growing at rates not seen in decades.

“However, our infrastructure has not always kept pace. New businesses, new families, new opportunities are putting pressure on the same core services and infrastructure that have been built decades earlier that citizens rely upon every single day,” he said.

“These are roads, water systems, housing, and community spaces. Growth is a sign of strength. This is one of the good problems to have, and Alberta has it in spades, but it also means we need to build smarter, build faster, and look at new and alternate ways of trying to fund that growth.”

According to information from CanInfra, a group dedicated to furthering conversations about Canada’s infrastructure, the core services gap is between $110 billion to $270 billion on average. With some estimating it at more than $570 billion.

Williams said that tax revenue and off-site levies can’t be the sole provider of infrastructure dollars, as it won’t be enough to meet future infrastructure demands.

“It’s not about replacing what we already have for tools for municipality in the province, but it’s about building new tools to have new infrastructure,” he said.

“It’s about repairing and maintaining at the same time that we look at flexibly growing the tools that we have to finance infrastructure growth in the future.”

To do that, Minister Williams wants to convene a council of municipal and industry leaders to determine innovative ways to fund these projects. He said that it’s expanding work already being done by BILD Alberta and the University of Alberta’s Cities Institute.

“The infrastructure grab gap will continue to grow unless we find new and innovative ways that aren’t raising taxes to see that growth into the future,” Williams said.

Some of the ways Williams suggested included P3s, municipal bonds, regional group financing for smaller urban centres and tax incremental financing (using tax uplift to repay loans).

Release the provincial property tax, Mayor Farkas says

Calgary’s current poor-to-very-poor infrastructure gap currently sits at an estimated $18 billion, according to information provided at a February Infrastructure and Planning Committee meeting.

Calgary city councillors have also taken action to address the infrastructure gap, with billions in added capital spending to deal with aging municipal services.

The easiest way for the province to help with infrastructure funding is to release the provincial education portion of the property tax, according to Mayor Jeromy Farkas.

Farkas has railed against the substantial provincial property tax increases since he took office, often calling it the largest provincial tax increase in the city’s history.

The Government of Alberta will take roughly $1.2 billion in the 2026 education property tax requisition, according to the City of Calgary. That’s a little more than $200 more than in 2025.

Farkas said that he wouldn’t support any new taxation measures without some measure of accountability. He said there’s a relatively straightforward fix that could be done with some ease.

“I think that we have an opportunity to really be bold at this point in Alberta, and I think that we should get the province out of the game of property tax,” he told LWC.

“Discontinue all of the transfers that the province makes piecemeal, one off through grants, low-income transit pass, and all the rest, and in exchange allow municipalities to collect the totality of property taxes that are collected in each of those respective jurisdictions. I think that this solves the accountability and transparency piece. It makes the line of sight for local residents much more clear.”

When asked if he’d be willing to forgo other grants, like the Local Government Fiscal Framework (LGFF), Farkas said “what grants?” He noted again that the province takes $1.2 billion from Calgary taxpayers and doesn’t get that much in return.

“That $1.2 billion would be a dedicated capital stream that would match the province’s contribution to the Green Line,” he said.

“This is a level of funding that would be a game changer at the municipal level, not just here in Calgary, but also Red Deer in Edmonton, and all those other major municipalities that have been ground zero for the population growth that we’re experiencing.”