Calgary city council’s Executive Committee has moved ahead on a plan to study what a lobbyist registry could look like at city hall.

The vote, which passed almost unanimously on July 14, directs city administration to report back on the scope and cost of a system that would track lobbyist activity at city hall. It still needs final debate and approval at an upcoming city council meeting.

There is no current mechanism in place to log this information. City councillors are required to log who they are meeting with at their councillor offices, but it’s not restricted to lobbyists.

Mayor Jeromy Farkas had been working on this motion, which was co-sponsored by Couns. Harrison Clark, Nathaniel Schmidt and Myke Atkinson, for some time. He said on Tuesday that a lobbyist registry is about catching up to larger jurisdictions, and that it’s a low-impact way to do it.

“Having Calgary catch up to other municipalities like Toronto and other places across North America is really important to me, and I think really important to Calgarians because it provides more line of sight in terms of who’s influencing decisions,” he said.

“So, if there’s public money on the line and a private business entity is looking to influence city council or even city administration decision, I believe that Calgarians have a right to know that information.”

Farkas had previously said that given an ongoing RCMP investigation into members of the prior city council and its potential vote on a land use, it was appropriate to pursue this course of action. He wouldn’t comment on whether a lobbyist registry would have raised a red flag on that file.

“Why I campaigned on a lobbyist registry in the 2021 election was to better include Calgarians in the decisions that are being made,” Farkas said.

“There are legitimate reasons for private business interests to want to influence decisions at city council, and that’s the decision-making process that we undertake every single day: is to balance the public good with private benefit.”

The Government of Alberta has said that Calgary is free to develop its own lobbyist registry.

No current code of conduct for councillors

This motion comes more than a year after Calgary repealed its Code of Conduct for Elected Officials bylaw in May of 2025.  The province had already moved ahead with its plans for a province-wide version that all municipal councillors would adhere to.  That work is still ongoing.

Ward 8 Coun. Nathaniel Schmidt said that anything that can provide more insight into how their respective decisions are derived is critical for public trust.

“We often talk about scrutinizing administration and other areas, but especially without a code of conduct right now — which is an entirely related, but still adjacent — it’s more transparency, the better,” Schmidt said.  

“Right now, the expectation is on us to hold ourselves to a high standard. But having that level of accountability will only improve that.”

Schmidt said that over the past decade, trust in government has tanked, only recently starting to show positive signs. This reinforces that trajectory.

“It’s done in a way that serves a purpose of just being able to see who we meet with, why we meet with them, where we meet with them, perhaps then that is again beneficial because shedding light onto those decisions in a constructive way helps everybody better understand how the sausage is made, so to speak,” Schmidt said.

If approved at a full meeting of council in late July, the motion calls for a report back to the Executive Committee by Q4 2026 with a review of the different models and potential models that Calgary city council could choose.