Provincial property tax hike will cost Calgarians, on average, 6 times more than city council's
CBC
In a provincial budget that lacked significant new funding to help Calgary manage its urgent needs like water infrastructure, the city’s homeowners are still set to absorb a large tax hike.
The typical Calgary homeowner will see their property tax bill rise roughly $28 per month, after it already jumped up about $19 monthly last year.
That increase is on top of the comparatively smaller $4.50 monthly property tax hike introduced by city council this year.
The day before Alberta tabled its new budget, Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas said he’d be looking for the provincial government to “live within their means” when considering an increase to that tax.
Municipalities collect this tax, which has at times been a source of tension between them and the province.
Alberta Finance Minister Nate Horner said the province didn’t seriously consider changing this model, so as not to create duplicate tax collection systems.
“I would advise them if they have a problem with that, when they're giving their tax issuances with them to their constituents ... have a line item that makes it clear that this is because of the province,” said Horner.
When the province raised education property taxes last year, Horner had warned at the time that the rate would go up again in 2026.
The Alberta government tabled its budget Thursday, which came with a $9.4-billion deficit and no plan to balance it for at least three years. To help cover the budget’s increased education spending, the province has targeted the education property tax for a hike.
Alberta’s budget intends for 33.4 per cent of its education operating costs to be funded by this tax.
Property owners pay the tax, which is used as a stable source of revenue for the province’s education system. The tax is levied on assessed property values, alongside municipal property taxes, but the province imposes on municipalities how much they are set to collect on the tax.
The annual requisition from Calgary is expected to increase to $1.2 billion, which is about 20 per cent more than the tax demanded last year.
At city hall, Calgary council wrestled the proposed municipal property tax hike down to 1.6 per cent during its own budget discussions last fall.
“We’ve done our part, and we’re calling on the provincial government to do their part too," said Farkas on Thursday in response to the budget.
The system behind the emergency department wait times Winnipeggers see online had multiple flaws that made waits sometimes appear lower than they should, an internal memo shows.
Police on the west coast of Newfoundland say a 27-year-old woman was arrested on Friday night for impaired and dangerous driving, after being caught speeding down the main road in the rural community of Piccadilly at 88 km/h over the speed limit.
Scientists are seeing tropical fish in Nova Scotia with more frequency, and their arrival is prompting concerns about what their presence could mean for local species down the road.
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt says health care won’t be exempt from her efforts to cut spending — even though her health minister says big spending increases will be unavoidable in coming years.
Pierre Ny St-Amand, the man who drove a bus into a Laval daycare in 2023, killing two young children and injuring six others, has been declared a high-risk accused.
A former CTV and CBC reporter hired to serve as Manitoba’s trade envoy to the United States is taking home more than $480,000 Cdn a year in consulting fees, according to his contract with the province.
The teen who lit her classmate on fire at a Saskatoon high school returns to court on Monday to learn the judge's decision on her sentence.
On a July morning in 2024, Dwayne Cardinal was packing up his tent outside the Bissell Centre when a police cruiser pulled up and two officers got out.
The City of Revelstoke and the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District have passed motions formalizing their intention to push the provincial government to protect an old-growth forest.
The province will once again decide who will hold Niagara’s top municipal post after the sudden resignation last week of Bob Gale, but exactly when the next regional chair will be announced isn’t clear just yet.
A wind warning is in place for Windsor-Essex, Chatham-Kent and Sarnia-Lambton on Monday with gusts as high as 90 km/h possible, according to Environment Canada.
Just a year after the Alberta government made a big splash unveiling its new border security team to the public with an announced $29-million investment, its latest budget shows the province only spent a third of the total it earmarked for the work over its first year.
Following several fatal collisions in northern Ontario this winter, a Sudbury, Ont., resident has created a website to track incidents across the region.