Calgary did the homework. Handed it in. Beat the number by 104%.
And Ottawa still put a hand on the money.
Here are the figures, reported back in November. Calgary was awarded $251.3 million in total from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund. Of that, $129.5 million is still owed by CMHC. And the city exceeded its housing targets by 104%.
Read that last line twice. Not fell short. Not squeaked by. Exceeded, by 104%.
Now watch what happened when Calgary started reconsidering a local zoning bylaw.
The hearing nobody wanted a second time
Tuesday, March 24. A public hearing at the City of Calgary on the repeal of blanket rezoning.
The industry showed up. Kathy Oberg, Board Chair of BILD Calgary Region, and Nadia Friesen, Director of Policy Initiatives and Government Relations, presented on behalf of the builders who have money in the ground across this city.
They did not come to pick a fight over zoning philosophy. Their stated position was about “finding a path forward that reflects the values of our community.” That is about as combative as a church potluck.
What they brought instead was a list. Four expectations, and every one of them is the sort of thing you ask for when you have already signed contracts.
Fair treatment of existing applications under the rules that were in force when they were submitted. Transparent transition rules and timelines. Preservation of development permit exemptions and parking updates. And swift resolution, so housing delivery does not slow down and get more expensive while everyone argues.
Nothing radical in there. That is a list written by people who have to explain delays to a lender.
Notice what is missing from it. No demand that Council vote one way. No threat to walk. Just a request that files submitted under one set of rules be judged under that same set of rules, and that whatever comes next arrive with a published date attached. That is not lobbying. That is asking a city to finish a sentence it already started.
Ask what the last one cost
The previous rezoning public hearing cost $1.2 million.
One point two million dollars. For a hearing. Not for a road, not for a water main, not for a single serviced lot that a family could eventually put a house on. For process.
That is real municipal money, and Calgarians paid it. Worth remembering the next time anybody says the housing file is short of funding. Some of it went into a room.
Now for the part that should make your blood pressure move
A city that beat its federal housing targets by 104% found itself facing the threat of having that federal money clawed back. Over a local bylaw.
Councillor Andre Chabot put it about as plainly as it can be put. Clawing money back from a city that exceeded its targets, he said, “is unrealistic.”
He is being generous. Think about the arrangement on its own terms. Ottawa sets a housing target. A city not only hits it but blows past it. And the outstanding $129.5 million is still hanging there, conditional, subject to whether that city keeps a particular zoning rule on its books the way a federal department prefers.
So which was it? Was the fund about getting homes built, or was it about buying municipal zoning policy with federal cash and calling the receipt a housing program?
Because you cannot have both. Either the target was the deal, in which case Calgary is owed, or the target was decoration on a leash, in which case every municipality in this country should read the fine print before signing the next one.
The oldest pattern in the country
We have watched this movie before, and the reel never changes.
Ottawa collects the money. Ottawa attaches the conditions. Ottawa hands a portion back and expects a thank you card, and if a province or a city exercises a decision that is plainly its own to make, the tap starts making noises. This is the same instinct we get on energy, on emissions, on transfers, and now on the shape of a residential lot in southeast Calgary.
Blanket rezoning is a municipal question. It is decided by people Calgarians elect, at a hearing Calgarians pay $1.2 million for, on land inside Calgary’s boundaries. Whatever Council concludes, the argument belongs to this city.
The question of treat Alberta like a partner keeps coming up for a reason, and it is never because Albertans failed to deliver.
Meanwhile the houses got built. That is the fact nobody in Ottawa can argue with. While the rest of the country held summits about supply, Alberta is building, and Calgary overshot a federal target by a margin most cities could not reach on their best decade.
Calgary poured the concrete. Ottawa is still holding the cheque.
Should federal housing money follow the homes a city actually builds, or the bylaws Ottawa prefers it keep?
