Calgary's executive committee heard the ongoing trade war could add an increase of hundreds of millions of dollars to city costs if cross-border tariffs continue.
Amit Patil, the city's director of supply chain management, estimated the extra costs could range from $315 million to $466 million, adding the range was calculated using "scenario-based modelling" reflecting costs of existing contracts if no mitigation or contingencies are in effect.
"I understand the number is concerning," he said, adding the higher costs are a snapshot of the city's tariff vulnerability, and the city is working on reducing costs. "We have mitigation strategies, and we have proven that they work, but not everything can be mitigated."
"Just because this is shown as an estimate, it doesn't mean we assume to pay this on our contracts. We are doing our due diligence to mitigate and combing through every contract to validate every flagged tariff cost."
In an earlier presentation to city council, Patil said the city has a procurement budget of roughly $2 billion a year, adding 95% of contracts are with Canadian suppliers and 70% of those are within Alberta and 60% are with Calgary-based companies. On its website the city notes 5% of its contracts are with American suppliers or in US dollars.
Since the first shots of the trade war were fired, the city has faced about $1.2 million in tariff-related costs, though Patil said there's another $5.7 million in potential immediate exposure on procurement contracts currently under review.
The costs come primarily from increased pricing on steel, aluminum, copper wire, stainless steel and fabricated construction materials and affect the most on infrastructure projects, utilities, transit and technology, according to Patil, noting Calgary would be most subject to Canada's retaliatory tariffs on nearly $28 billion on US goods, levelled by Prime Minister Carney on Tuesday.
The city faces a tariff double whammy on some goods, said Patil.
"The raw material from Canada is tariffed when it is first exported to the US, and then the manufactured product is tariffed when it re-crosses the border into Canada," he said.
Patil gave an estimate of specific extra costs.
The Green Line could see $31 million in tariff-related costs, while other transit projects could face an additional $84 million. Scotia Place is facing a hit of about $30 million, and fire trucks, manufactured in the US, could increase $11 million.
He said the $400 million Bearspaw South feeder main project is mostly tariff-proof, facing $1 million in tariff-related exposure, but procurement for other water projects could be subject to $21 million in tariffs.
Patil said the city is evaluating each procurement contract on a case-by-case basis to determine the most appropriate mitigation strategy.
The executive committee voted that Mayor Jeromy Farkas lobby the federal government to design a municipal tariff remittance or relief program allowing cities to apply to recover some of their tariff-related costs.
"It is a significant amount of cost that we're incurring, but the far greater cost would be the loss of our sovereignty and independence as a country," Farkas told reporters. "We know that going into an unjust trade war with the Americans was going to come with some level of cost."