Nelson: New year, new council, new hope for Calgary

Happy New Year, Calgary — there were days we worried you were gone for good. But you can’t keep a great city down forever. So, yes, we’re back and ready to roll into 2026.

It won’t be smooth rolling, of course. There are serious headwinds ahead, mostly on the financial front.

The Alberta government will awaken Jan. 1 with a doozy of a headache — energy prices are sliding down a cliff, and the piper will have to be paid in the year ahead. As this province’s biggest city, Calgary won’t be immune from the resulting tune played on that dusted-off austerity fiddle.

But, for now, let’s celebrate good news — after a decade of what seemed like deliberately induced division from on high, we’re finally back on track.

And make no mistake, this change of fortune arrives in the nick of time. Some of those we previously elected citywide — who should have been the biggest, most enthusiastic boosters of Calgary — instead seemed to take joy in constantly denigrating the very culture and history of the city that gave them power.

Thankfully, in the past few months, we have witnessed a return to reasonable civic governance under the stewardship of a new council and mayor, elected by fed-up citizens in October.

In the relatively brief time since the planned 2026 budget rate increase for homeowners — approved by the previous council as some sort of insulting final farewell — was reduced from an eye-watering 5.8 per cent to a more reasonable 1.6 per cent.

Sure, maybe more could have been done to get it to zero, but given the lack of time and the preponderance of newcomers on council, managing to chop the planned hike by so much is reason for applause.

Similarly, the move to begin the process of revoking the controversial rezoning rules that caused uproar among so many Calgarians, who feared their single-family home neighbourhoods would be turned into a developers’ free-for-all, is wonderful news.

True, many of those elected campaigned on doing exactly this, but for far too long we have seen civic politicians who promised one thing doing another once they got their feet under the table of power.

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In addition, improving public safety by hiring more police is what citizens asked for. This, allied with the imminent closure of the safe drug consumption site at the Sheldon Chumir Health Centre in the Beltline, should ensure downtown begins the journey back from the dark hole it was descending into.

Finally, kudos to new Mayor Jeromy Farkas for the speech he gave when lighting the Hanukkah candles at city hall, reminding Calgarians we live in a city open to everyone, but in which individual groups will not and shall not be singled out for condemnation.

This was always the spirit of this one-time small prairie town. But there comes a moment to remind each other of such long-standing grace and openness, in which inclusiveness does not mean separating citizens into silos — quite the opposite, in fact.

In a similar vein, the creeping practice of flying various national flags at city hall is also being ditched. Bravo.

It’s time we celebrated Calgary as home, and not as some convenient way station for those who won’t commit. We don’t have to ditch our past, but we do need to embrace our future — flying a hodgepodge of foreign flags outside city hall sent the wrong message entirely.

That’s a darn good two months’ worth of work by council. And although these measures are far from revolutionary, they might appear so, given what transpired at city hall over the past decade.

And who knows, we might return to the days when our biggest complaint was about snow removal. If so, we’ll truly know our city is in safe, and thankfully boring, hands.

So, Calgarians, Happy New Year.

Chris Nelson is a regular columnist.