Calgary’s mayor says the province\u2019s decision to overturn some Edmonton housing rules is threatening the process for local democracy.<\/p>\n
While the order from Premier Danielle Smith’s government will largely leave Calgary unaffected, Mayor Jeromy Farkas says it sets a dangerous precedent for the province working to influence city councillors in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Just because the premier agrees with how I voted yesterday, does not mean that she gets to decide how I vote tomorrow,” Farkas told reporters outside of Calgary city council chambers on Friday.<\/p>\n
Farkas says city council has an obligation to listen to citizens on important issues in public hearings as evidence for their decisions, but being forced to follow directions from a higher government undermines that process.<\/p>\n
He also put the decision in the context of Smith\u2019s government making legal changes giving it the right to call a vote on whether a local elected official should be removed from their post if the province believes the official is unwilling or unable to do their job.<\/p>\n
“You can’t order me to vote a certain way at city council and if I don’t adhere to your order, are you actually going to fire me as the mayor of the city of Calgary?” Farkas added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His comments come a day after Smith directed the City of Edmonton to abandon rules that made it easier to build multi-unit complexes in older, established neighbourhoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city has three months to comply.<\/p>\n
Edmonton implemented the zoning change in 2024 in order to build higher-density neighbourhoods and make room for intense population growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith says she does not want to intervene but is hearing concerns about parking and whether the multi-unit complexes are a good fit in older neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n
“There’s great places that you can put eight-plexes … but not in the middle of a single-family home street,” the premier said on the Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen podcast on Friday.<\/p>\n
“There’s just a basic sense that something went wrong here and we’ve got to get them back to where they were in 2024. Let’s try a reset and find the right place for these kinds of developments.”<\/p>\n
Calgary already rolled back similar rules earlier this year following a public hearing over a span of two weeks, with more than 400 public speakers and nearly 3,300 written submissions. Smith directed Calgary keep those rules in place.<\/p>\n
Rob Anderson, Smith\u2019s chief of staff, responded to Farkas with a statement on social media saying the mayor was being \u201ca bit melodramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson said the multi-unit policies reduced property values for homeowners and provided no compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a breach of property rights,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe (United Conservative Party) government will continue to stand up for regular homeowners and property rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmonton Mayor Andrew Knack has also pushed back on Smith’s announcement.<\/p>\n
He said Thursday it was ill-considered and rash and called on the premier to reverse course.<\/p>\n
There’s also been pushback from the president of Alberta Municipalities and the Opposition NDP, who say the government’s decision is another step in the erosion of Alberta\u2019s local democracy.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
— With files from Jack Farrell in Edmonton<\/p>\n
By Dayne Patterson | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary’s mayor says the province\u2019s decision to overturn some Edmonton housing rules is threatening the process for local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-926976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}