The City of Calgary is prohibited from actively campaigning for Alberta to remain in Canada, though its elected officials are free to do so, council heard Tuesday. The legal opinion came during question period at the start of the regular council meeting, where Mayor Jeromy Farkas sought clarity on the municipality's authority to advocate for the province's continued union with Canada.
Legal boundaries for municipal advocacy
Mayor Farkas asked administration what legal authority the city has to vouch for Alberta remaining a Canadian province, in light of the upcoming referendum in October. The referendum asks voters whether Alberta should remain in Canada or begin the legal process to pursue a binding vote on separation.
Lynne Davies, director of the city's legal department, responded that under the Municipal Government Act, the city is permitted to research the potential impacts of secession or commission a third party to do so. However, she noted that the law becomes ambiguous when it comes to how the city frames or publishes those findings.
“While good-faith economic analysis does not in itself promote or oppose an outcome, it may do so implicitly and it’s not clear from the legislation as to whether this would contravene those rules,” Davies told council.
Referendum advertising restrictions
Regarding formal advocacy, Davies stated that under the province’s Elections Finance and Contributions Disclosure Act, the city is ineligible to register as a third-party advertiser. Consequently, it cannot spend more than $1,000 to promote a formal stance on the referendum question.
However, she clarified that council members are able to campaign either for or against a referendum question. Additionally, if council were to pass a resolution expressing support or opposition to a referendum question, it would likely be permissible within the referendum advertising rules, as it constitutes “an exercise of the city’s natural person power and furtherance of a valid municipal purpose.”
Mayor's concerns over foreign interference
During the regular lunch scrum with media, Farkas argued that the municipality should be allowed to take a firmer stand against Alberta separation to combat what he alleges is potential foreign interference and “dark money” funding the pro-separation campaign.
“Given the economic carnage that separation would incur on the city of Calgary specifically, we have a duty and responsibility to act,” he told reporters. “We have a massive foreign interference campaign that’s being embarked on, and I’d say just anecdotally, if you look through the bots that have been just engaged on Twitter, Facebook, even my own personal page, we’re seeing about a quarter, or one-third of the bots coming from Estonia, Russia, all of these other jurisdictions. So we have to stand up, we have to fight, and we need to push back.”
Impact on Calgary's economy
Farkas had previously hosted a news conference in May to criticize the Alberta government’s decision to include a separation question on the fall referendum ballot. He argued that the vote, while non-binding, could threaten investor confidence in the province’s largest city, regardless of the outcome.
He asked the city’s legal department whether the city could allocate municipal resources or deploy relevant civic partners, such as Calgary Economic Development, to research the historic precedents and impacts of separation referenda in comparable jurisdictions. Davies confirmed that such research is permissible under the Municipal Government Act.
