The special meeting of Calgary city council, called by Mayor Jeromy Farkas to review the Alberta’s education tax increase was held Wednesday, with the mayor surprising council by asking about holding a plebiscite on the amount of property taxes the city sends to the provincial government.
“Asking any questions of Calgarians is very serious, but we want to continue to fight for our fair share,” said Farkas after the meeting.
The meeting wasn’t popular with some councillors, who spoke up.
Ward 14 Cllr. Landon Johnston suggested to the mayor the meeting wasn’t necessary and what they heard could have been managed in an email, adding, "It was performative. We didn’t really accomplish anything today.”
Ward 2 Cllr. Jennifer Wyness said the discussion of the Alberta’s education tax increase should have first been put on the agenda of the council’s executive committee.
The committee meets to hear from city administration and others who want to take issues to regular council meetings. It's job is to approve those requests or deny them, making sure council is debating issues it should be debating, and not just because someone wants them to be debated.
Ward 13 Cllr Dan McLean said, “I am the chair of the Governmental Affairs Committee, which is next week and I think this (discussion) is probably where this belongs." He continued, saying “We can have these discussions (about tax increases) but we’re not going to like them.”
“Many of us speak to the need for more provincial funding for education, which is (the Alberta government’s) responsibility, not ours. They collect dollars from residents to pay for schools and teachers, which we all want more of. Coming from a family of teachers, I understand that and (Alberta) has a huge commitment of almost a billion dollars, more than what they collected, into schools, into teachers, into 45 new schools things that we need and these things come at a cost and we've all asked for it.”
Wednesday evening, the office of Alberta's Minister of Education Demetrios Nicolaides, issued a statement in response to Farkas' criticism of the education property tax increase for Calgarians.
“In 2026 we will collect $976.4 million from Calgary homeowners and $271 million from business owners for the education property tax requisition,” reads the statement.
"We’ll be providing two major (school) boards with $2.24 billion in operating (capital) in the 2026/27 school year. We also have 45 school projects underway which will cost the province between $2.32 billion and $3.79 billion. We will also invest over $144 million for Calgary charter schools in budget 2026.”
"So, clearly the province is investing far more than it receives from Calgarians, back into the city’s school system.”
The provincial education property tax request is more than $1.2 billion from the City of Calgary, almost double the request for Edmonton.
Earlier this year, city council reduced Calgary’s property tax from a potential of 5% down to 1.81%. The province’s education tax increase this year is 21.05%.
The combined result will see an extra $388 added this year for the typical single-family homeowner in Calgary.
Farkas is not making a commitment to hold a plebiscite, but he did defend calling the meeting.
“I can't possibly understand why any member of council would not want to have this discussion out in the open to be able to share that information with Calgarians,” he said.