Two familiar Calgary city council combatants locked horns once again, with one councillor admitting he leaked confidential city documents on the budget to local media.

On Wednesday, both LWC and Global Calgary broke a story on a planned revised budget plan that called for a preliminary plan to increase property tax revenue over the next four years by a cumulative 42.5 per cent.

After that story, Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston quoted the Global News story, with a lengthy admission that he’s the one who provided confidential documents.

On Thursday, just before Mayor Jeromy Farkas was set to speak, Johnston sounded off to reporters, saying, “We have no real vision for this council going forward.”

His issue is, as it has been for some time, is that council does too much business behind closed doors.

“We’ve had how many dollars spent behind camera [sic]?” Johnston said.

“There’s been councillors and the mayor complicit in hiding stuff from taxpayers. I’m not going to stand for that.”

In-camera meetings are allowed under the Municipal Government Act (MGA), and while information discussed inside the meetings is considered confidential, it can be released publicly as city council deems fit. That’s done in a rise-and-report.

The vast majority of information is kept private and given a release date years later.

Under the Municipal Government Act, section 153 (e) discusses councillor duties, including, “to keep in confidence matters discussed in private at a council or council committee meeting until discussed at a meeting held in public.”

Johnston was asked about the rules around the release of private council information.

“I’m hardly the first person to release confidential information. I was just the first person not to be a coward about it,” he said.

“But this is public interest. It’s an unconstrained budget. This gives us a reason to come back and attack the priorities that Calgarians want.”

Lack of a council code of conduct to handle such matters

The MGA states that the enforcement mechanism for confidentiality breaches such as this is handled by the “code of conduct governing councillors.” This, however, was stripped from Alberta municipalities in 2025.

The province discussed ongoing work on codes of conduct earlier this year.

The City of Calgary’s prior Code of Conduct for Elected Officials bylaw, which was repealed in 2025, laid out Section F on Confidential Information, with several clauses (a) through (e) that discussed confidential information.

Under the MGA, and subsequently the Code of Conduct, if a complaint was filed, the office of the integrity commissioner would investigate it. Sanctions ranging from a letter of reprimand, up to suspension of their remuneration based on removal of duties, was allowed.

The MGA states, however, that a councillor cannot be removed from office for code of conduct breaches.

In a brief statement, the City of Calgary said that it could not provide legal advice or an interpretation of the MGA to outside parties. They directed inquiries about the Act to the province.

The province was asked for a response to this situation, but hadn’t provided anything by the time the story was published.

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule said this is a prime example of why a code of conduct for elected officials is needed. He said that he took his oath of office seriously, and his integrity in keeping information deemed confidential locked was important.

“At this point, the province is still working on our code of conduct framework, and this was a clear breach of the code of conduct that we don’t have,” Yule told reporters.

“If other councillors want to break that confidentiality, there should be consequences for that. Right now, we don’t.

“I really hope that the province is paying attention to what not having a code of conduct framework is doing for Calgarians, because this isn’t great.”

For his part, Mayor Farkas didn’t directly address Johnston’s breach of confidentiality, except to say that he wouldn’t speak on closed-door discussions. When asked directly if there should be repercussions for Johnston, Farkas remained tight-lipped.

“I don’t want to get into hypothetical situations,” Farkas said.

Earlier, Johnston had claimed the mayor had been sending messages to fellow councillors lobbying to have the Ward 14 councillor removed. When asked, the mayor denied it.

“I have not seen anything like that,” Farkas said.