Calgary councillor seeks provincial probe into closed-door meetings after document leak

The Calgary city councillor who says he leaked confidential preliminary budget documents is now seeking a provincial investigation into council’s use of closed-door meetings.

Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston has penned a letter to Alberta’s municipal affairs minister requesting a review of city council’s use of closed meetings and confidentiality provisions, as well as amendments to the Municipal Government Act with clearer limits on when “municipal financial and policy” may be discussed behind closed doors.

In the letter, Johnston acknowledged he is making the requests “in the middle of a controversy,” after he last week claimed to have leaked confidential budget documents.

Preliminary documents, obtained by Global News, showed a property tax increase of 20 per cent would be required to fund the roughly $510 million in funding requests for city council to consider.

City councillors are getting set to discuss a pre-budget scenario of a 15 per cent property tax increase in 2027 during a closed-door session later this month, according to the documents, but the final numbers won’t be deliberated until November.

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Johnston said he isn’t asking the minister to “excuse” his conduct, but rather to look into a broader issue he feels the situation has “exposed.”

“If he wants to investigate me, he should investigate everything,” he told Global News in an interview Friday. “I think what comes out of that is going to be a strengthened process that for every taxpayer and Calgarian, whether they disagreed or agreed with what I did, will be better for everybody.”

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According to Johnston, the provision most frequently used to move meetings behind closed doors is “advice from officials,” which he called “the most abused access-to-information exception.”

He has asked the minister’s review to examine council meeting records from 2017 through to the present day to assess the frequency and duration of closed sessions and the provisions used to justify them.

Typically, council goes behind closed doors when disclosure may be harmful to the business interests of a third party, harmful to personal privacy, harmful to law enforcement or involve confidential evaluations.

“There’s some legitimate reasons we’ve gone in-camera over 20 times this year and I’d say 80 per cent of those have been legitimate,” he told Global News. “Personnel matters, those can be confidential for as long as they need to be, but even sensitive subjects need to be released at some point.”

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In a statement to Global News, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said he welcomes Johnston’s support for “provincial reforms that I’ve long advocated for,” including clearer confidentiality rules.

“Confidentiality should be narrow, justified, and time-limited,” Farkas’ statement read. “There should be independent review when confidentiality is disputed and clear consequences for when an oath of office or duty of trust are violated.”

The budget document leak prompted Farkas to call a special council meeting Tuesday morning to seek legal advice and determine repercussions.

City council voted in favour of sending a letter of its own to the municipal affairs minister as well as the provincial privacy commissioner to inform them of the leak and ask them to take whatever steps are deemed necessary.

“Investigate my incident to the fullest extent, I’ve got nothing to hide,” Johnston said. “But I think, at the same time, there needs to be an investigation into every leak that’s happened this year.”

In a statement to Global News, Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams confirmed he’s received Johnston’s letter, and is awaiting the other letter from council.

“Our office has received a letter from Councillor Landon Johnston detailing concerns related to municipal transparency,” he said. “We also understand that we should be expecting another letter from Calgary City Council, we’ll review both these letters and determine whether any further action is required.”

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The provincial government already has a municipal inspection underway into the city’s water system after a second failure of the Bearspaw feeder main.

Former Alberta Energy Regulator board chair, David Goldie, was tasked with leading that investigation.

It remains unclear when the results will be released, but the provincial government said inspections can typically last anywhere from six to 18 months.