UCP wants to bring Alberta's towns and cities to heel

Local authonomy is under attack by the agenda-driven provincial gang

Winston Churchill, the unforgettable prime minister who famously led the United Kingdom through its darkest hours of the Second World War, once quipped, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Crises, he meant, create the sense of urgency politicians can tap into so they can do things that might otherwise face walls of opposition.

It appears Alberta’s United Conservative government is doing just that, exploiting the City of Calgary’s water cockup to seize greater control over cities, towns and rural municipalities across the province.

The UCP’s Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams wrote a letter to Calgary’s elected officials last week, demanding a whole host of documents related to its management of the water utility: council records, plans, policies; budget documents, records related to testing and maintaining its water system; expert reports; and media reports on council debates (hmmm, ’cause they don’t already have those?)

A long-ignored pipeline is creating chaos in the streets (photo: City of Calgary)

This comes on the heels of the second “catastrophic” failure, to borrow Mayor Jeremy Farkas’s term, of the Bearspaw Feeder Line – Calgary’s most critical water pipe – in less than two years. Williams stated in the letter the province has a duty to ensure residents have a safe and reliable water system.

The demand sent chills through the halls of Calgary’s big blue city hall. And former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, now leader of the provincial NDP, criticized the UCP’s move as a “wild goose chase.” He urged the UCP instead to focus on provincial infrastructure funding cuts. It’s a sentiment echoed by Tyler Gandam, president of Alberta Municipalities and the mayor of Wetaskiwin, who has said local governments aren’t getting enough money from the province to deal with infrastructure needs.

But let’s be frank; Calgary politicians and administrative staff led with their chins on this one. Reading the damning report on the causes of the pipeline disaster, it is hard not to conclude there was widespread lethargy over multiple warnings of a looming infrastructure failure the city absolutely could not afford to allow happen.

As other commentators have noted, the city found money to build bicycle lanes (which I support, in principle) and other pet projects, but none to address the danger lurking under our streets.

The interesting thing is Williams had already been directed in September 2025 by Premier Danielle Smith to tighten the screws on the province’s municipalities, looking to see that they stick to providing core services – water, sewer, street paving, garbage pickup – you know, the boring stuff (until they break).

“If we see examples of municipalities wading out into identity politics, the things that are not core services, and we will of course have a responsibility to step in to make sure those core services are being provided,” Williams said when the premier’s mandate letter was published.

Among the other items in Williams’s mandate letter is a directive to prevent municipalities from levying extra taxes on houses that are not a person’s primary residence. That appeared to be a shot at the Rocky Mountain town of Canmore, which wants to implement a vacancy tax on secondary housing. (The province and town are haggling over a possible compromise: limiting the tax to only those second homeowners who are non-Albertans.)

All of this feels a bit like a hectoring schoolmarm, pacing down the classroom aisles with yardstick in hand to make sure the underlings do their homework.

While municipalities are rightly subject to provincial oversight, one also wonders whether the Smith government wants to scan all those city documents in the hope of finding some way to blame Nenshi for Calgary’s infrastructure failures. It would be a convenient stone to throw at the opposition politician. (Nenshi has, in fact, publicly accepted some blame for his council’s failure to watch administration more closely.)

But the real irony is this is very much the pot calling the kettle black. If you want to point to a government that is not sticking to its knitting, it’s hard to beat the UCP.

Under UCP rule, doctors in Edmonton have declared a state of emergency after the province blew up the centralized health authority; Alberta has the highest rate of measles in North America because its government pandered to the anti-vax crowd; a gang of traitorous malcontents have been allowed to openly meet with Americans in Washington who are funding Alberta’s separation movement; teachers have lost their right to strike; and, a foreign mining company is preparing to rip up a portion of the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, while other mining companies have received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for broken promises that never should have been made in the first place.

Nicely done, UCP. Perhaps the feds should be demanding to see all your files.

None of this is to excuse Calgary’s leaders. They got this city into an infrastructure mess. It’s on them to clean it up, and to hold accountable the people who are responsible for allowing it to happen. If the evidence points to it, some people should be fired. And, as the mayor has promised, taxpayers have the right to demand rock solid assurances that the city will be way more proactive on infrastructure needs in the future.

What Calgary doesn’t need, however, is a nosy provincial government standing over its shoulder – hypocritically pretending they are so much better. Alberta’s provincial government has a shameful performance record. It needs to focus on cleaning up its own messes. Leave its towns and cities to govern themselves.

CHIPSHOT: Western food producers are among the winners in the deal between the federal government and China. The agreement de-escalates the devastating tariff war that had essentially shut canola and other farm products out of their second-largest market. Don’t be too influenced by the caterwauling coming from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and lobby groups for the Detroit Three automakers. This deal will initially allow only 49,000 made-in-China electric vehicles into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1 per cent (down from 106.1 per cent). That’s just 2.5 per cent of all vehicles sold here each year. Don’t trust China? Of course not. But neither can we trust erratic and hostile Donald Trump regime. The trick now is to find the sweet spot between the devil we know across the Pacific and the devil we know below the 49^th parallel.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Getting water was always on our minds, as we rode our bicycles across the prairies. You can read about the challenges we faced in my book: Crosswinds: A cross-country bike ride that revealed why Canada is worth fighting for. Available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.ca.

©DougFirbyUnfiltered

Reprint with credit to dougfirby.substack.com