{"id":196757,"date":"2026-09-05T01:22:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T01:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/196757\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T01:22:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T01:22:29","slug":"calgary-mayor-calls-special-council-meeting-to-address-serious-privacy-breach-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/196757\/","title":{"rendered":"Calgary mayor calls special council meeting to address \u2018serious privacy breach\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas says he has called a special council meeting to address the release of privileged council documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The meeting, set for Tuesday morning, comes after Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston acknowledged that he leaked documents showing preliminary discussions about the city’s four-year budget.<\/p>\n

“I have reasonable grounds to believe that a serious privacy breach may have occurred, posing potential safety risks to city personnel and significant financial or legal exposure,” Farkas said in a social media statement.<\/p>\n

“The meeting will be held in order for council to hear immediate legal advice on the potential damage, our obligations, and what action is required to protect employees and taxpayers,” he said.<\/p>\n

Johnston says he released the documents because it was in the public interest for taxpayers to know about proposed tax increases.<\/p>\n

“I’m sick and tired of having to hide spending behind camera,” he said on Thursday. “If there’s potential repercussions for me leaking anything, then it’s going to be for every council member that’s leaked any information up until this point. It’s not just me.”<\/p>\n

‘A chilling effect’<\/p>\n

On CBC Radio’s Calgary Eyeopener Friday morning, Farkas said he doesn’t want to see privacy breaches happen at the municipal level.<\/p>\n

“As elected governors, if it’s optional which elements of the code of conduct that we want to adhere to, it sends a chilling effect through the rest of the organization,” he said.<\/p>\n

All municipal codes of conduct were eliminated by the Alberta government last year, with the province planning to propose a universal code of conduct<\/a> instead. The province said at the time that local codes of conduct were being used by some councils as political weapons.<\/p>\n

Ward 3 Coun. Andrew Yule said on Thursday that, without a code of conduct, it’s unlikely there will be any consequences after the leak.<\/p>\n

“My integrity is making sure that I keep confidential information confidential,” he said. “And if other councillors want to break that confidentiality, there should be consequences for that,” said Yule.<\/p>\n

Budget documents are starting point rather than final decision, prof says<\/p>\n

CBC News has confirmed council directed city administration to create a preliminary budget scenario that included a 15 per cent property tax increase next year, followed by subsequent annual hikes of 12.5 per cent in 2028, nine per cent in 2029 and six per cent in 2030.<\/p>\n

Mount Royal University political science professor Lori Williams says the information in those documents is a starting point for council, and that numbers will change as deliberations continue.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen a 20 per cent property tax hike,” she said. “That’s clearly just a long wish list.<\/p>\n

“On one hand, we know they’re going to whittle that down as best they can. Nobody likes higher taxes. Everyone wants fiscal responsibility at city hall, but they’ve also got to balance sort of the short term and the long term.”<\/p>\n

Williams says the leak has likely complicated the upcoming fall budget talks.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s made things a bit more difficult for those budget talks than otherwise it might have been,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Whatever discussions, whatever passions are expressed behind closed doors is one thing, but in public, it’s really important that most observers don’t know or care about what led to the fiery language.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas says he has called a special council meeting to address the release of privileged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[51,2888,8084,58671,36181,16110,1812,59287,25097,61183],"class_list":["post-196757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-eyeopener","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-farkas","tag-its","tag-jeromy-farkas","tag-johnston","tag-williams","tag-yule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}