Opinion by Shane Wenzel
Calgary’s Pride parade steps off on September 6. I am a gay man who has watched this event grow for most of my adult life, and I have spent thirty years running a company, which means I have also watched a lot of organizations grow past the point where they can pay for themselves. Both of those things are true at the same time, and neither one obliges me to pretend the current funding request adds up.
Let me be clear about what I support. The security money is legitimate. Steinbach Pride cancelled its festival last September over what organizers called credible safety threats, and that is not a theoretical risk. By Ottawa’s own accounting, the federal government has put $6.3 million into Pride security through Fierté Canada Pride since 2023, and in June it committed another $3 million over two years. Protecting people at a public gathering is a core function of government. I have no argument with a dollar of it.
The new request is a different animal. In March, Pride Toronto, Fierté Montréal and Vancouver Pride went to Parliament Hill asking for $9 million over three years, $3 million annually, spread across roughly 200 festivals. That money is not for security. It is for artists, staging and operating costs. Ontario organizers followed in April with a request for a provincial Pride Festival Support Fund worth $1.5 million a year, which by late June had produced nothing. Vancouver council approved $75,000 in June and wrote into the motion that the grant was extraordinary and one time only.
The ask is now federal, provincial and municipal at once.
Here is the number that should end the debate. Pride Toronto warned of a $900,000 shortfall before its 2025 festival after Google, Home Depot and Nissan pulled out. In the year since, it cut a stage, reduced programming, trimmed part-time staff and administration, shortened the Church Street footprint and signed new sponsors. The City of Toronto raised its annual grant to $350,000 and committed to increasing it by 62% by 2027. Ottawa extended the security envelope. After all of that, the organization is still projecting a deficit of about $700,000, and its executive director is already warning that 2027 will look very different.
Cut a stage, trim staff, add sponsors, take a bigger city grant, and the hole moves by $200,000. That is the cost of the festival talking, and no grant closes a gap that size when security alone runs more than $425,000 a year.
Every festival in this country is in the same squeeze. Insurance, staging, policing and volunteer burnout have hit the rodeo, the folk fest and the street fair alike, and some of them have already folded. Calgary Pride lost about $300,000 in sponsorships and grants last year, roughly a third of its budget, and postponed its arts festival as a result. Some of that was companies walking away. Some of it was Calgary Pride declining sponsors under a screening framework of its own making, a decision the organization made before the corporate pullback compounded it.
That is where I have a problem.
In July, Calgary Pride declined the University of Calgary’s application to march as an institution, pointing to the university’s handling of the 2024 encampment removal and a court case filed this year. Faculties and student groups can still walk provided they leave the university’s name off. Political parties may apply for the first time since 2023, subject to review of whether they have advanced the rights of marginalized communities.
I am not going to second-guess who gets a spot in a parade. A private organization sets its own standards, and that is its right. But an organization screening applicants against its own political criteria has told you what it is. You cannot decline a publicly funded university on political grounds in July and ask that same public to underwrite your operating budget in August.
Organizers point to economic impact, and the figures are enormous. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver put their combined number at $1.3 billion a year, with another $700 million claimed for smaller festivals. Those estimates come from the organizers and the tourism bodies that benefit from them. If the return is genuinely that good, sponsors and ticket buyers should not be hard to find. Businesses rarely walk away from an audience that profitable.
My position is simple. Fund the security, because safety is a public duty. Leave operations to the people who want the festival. Publish audited books before anyone signs another cheque. Apply one standard to every festival in the country so the rodeo, the folk fest and the Pride parade all live by the same rule.
I have opposed bailouts for condo developers, for airlines and for outfits my own industry deals with every day. I am not changing the rule because this one is closer to home.
Stay Connected with Shane Wenzel
For candid perspectives on housing, business, politics, leadership and the issues shaping Calgary and Canada, follow Shane across his platforms:
SourceHeavy Machinery
Read Shane’s latest articles
Subscribe to Shane’s Substack
Follow Shane on X
Follow Shane on Instagram
Connect with Shane on LinkedIn
Subscribe to Shane on YouTube
Don’t just catch the occasional post. Follow and subscribe so Shane’s latest commentary, videos and articles reach you when they are published.
