Day one of Calgary’s public hearing on citywide rezoning is in the books, and while there were some early kinks, it started hitting stride later in the day.
The March 23 Public Hearing meeting of council is dedicated solely to the potential repeal of citywide rezoning, which was first approved by Calgary city council in May 2024.
As of Monday evening, 11 of 80 registered panels had spoken, with panels rotating in a for, against, and neutral pattern. At the last update, roughly 400 people had signed up to participate in the public hearing.
In many ways, the speakers at the public hearing reiterated the same commentary as was heard in the 2024 month-long hearing. Those for citywide rezoning preached about housing choice, affordability, sustainability, limiting new community outward growth and making more efficient use of city infrastructure.
Chloe Chan, who spoke against repealing, said that rezoning was about providing enough housing for residents, regardless of their stage of life. She said going backwards limits housing choice and potentially increases costs for both residents and the city.
“Our city is already in a vulnerable position, with the dire state of our infrastructure, high population growth, and unreliable provincial government,” she said.
“Reintroducing a bottleneck to our development at this moment is as good as taking a crowbar to the kneecaps, when what we need is a brace.”
Citizens against rezoning, and hoping for a repeal, cited the common refrain that it hasn’t helped affordability, only the bottom line of developers, it increased parking and traffic issues, impacted community character, strains on underground city infrastructure, loss of privacy and sunlight, and the like.
Bayview-area resident Tracy Cherniawsky said despite all of the opposition that attended city council at the last public hearing, city council proceeded with “this terrible idea.”
“I realize we have a new mayor and a new council, so I look forward to how this new council will listen to Calgarians. We are not interested in tweaks, slight changes, or modifications of any kind,” she said.
“We want our single dwelling houses to revert back to the way they were as single dwelling houses.”
Not all things are the same: Mayor Farkas
By all accounts, the start was a repeat of the 2024 public hearing.
There were some differences this time around, according to Mayor Jeromy Farkas. He said that, for one, this was a council largely elected to revisit this issue. The other aspect is that he believes city council was told this would be the solution to affordability issues and that it would build a certain number of units in the city.
“What we see in terms of evidence is that actually hasn’t borne out,” he said.
“I think it’s important for Calgarians to have their voices heard. Myself, many of my colleagues ran on a very strong mandate to take a look at this as an issue in terms of how we can actually work with the community.”
In the past, city administration has been very clear that this would not be a silver bullet for affordability, and that it worked in concert with the other 97 recommendations in the Home is Here Strategy.
Another thing that was different was the nature of the question this time around. Ward 11 Coun. Rob Ward was concerned that it skewed written public submissions. The calls, the texts and emails tipped him off that further investigation was needed.
After combing through the 2,400 submissions over the weekend, he saw something was wrong.
“When they did the public submission, there was an opportunity to say you were opposed, in favour or neutral. And a lot of people, over 200 people, actually said that they put opposed when really they’re saying they’re opposed to blanket rezoning, not opposed to the motion to repeal it,” he said.
“So, when I started getting all these emails, I thought that it was a really good idea to go through all of them manually make sure that I read them all and understood them all and classified them properly based on what people’s actual intent was.”
In the last public hearing, Calgarians were asked if they were for, against or neutral on applying the new citywide rezoning rules.
The current question asks for a repeal.
Councillors agreed to hear from the public until 9:30 p.m. each night, rather than cutting short the days as has been done in previous longer public hearings.
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