Municipal Affairs minister scolds city councillor for budget leak, but doesn't suggest sanctions

A Calgary city councillor was scolded by a provincial cabinet minister, but won’t face consequences for leaking confidential budget documents to the media last month.

In a pair of letters this week, Minister of Municipal Affairs Dan Williams responded to a recent request from Calgary city council to address Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston’s disclosure of preliminary budget details to Global News in early September.

On Monday, Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams sent a letter to Mayor Jeromy Farkas and two days later Johnston received a letter. Williams was responding to the councillor’s public admission that he leaked a trove of budget details that council discussed during a private meeting in July.

Those budget documents — which Johnston said he divulged in a show of transparency — indicated that Calgarians could face steep property tax increases for the next four years if council supports all the funding requests they receive ahead of this November’s 2027-30 budget deliberations.

At a subsequent special meeting of council called by Farkas, council voted 12-2 in support of a motion to send a letter to Williams requesting he take whatever steps he deems necessary to address the leak.

Councillors heard from city solicitor Jill Floen at that meeting that without a code of conduct in place, they had no mechanism to sanction or discipline Johnston.

Johnston, who recused himself from that meeting, sent his own letter to Williams that asked the UCP cabinet minister to address council’s propensity to meet in-camera and assess whether their rationale for doing so consistently meets the statutory grounds permitting councils to exclude the public from discussions.

In his letter addressed to Farkas and council this week, Williams reiterated the UCP government is establishing a new provincewide “councillor accountability framework” that will apply to all municipal politicians.

The framework — a policy Williams previously promised would be rolled out last spring — will replace individual municipal codes of conduct, which the Alberta government removed in 2025.

In his letter, Williams said the province recognizes the importance of protecting confidential information entrusted to local elected officials, noting the Municipal Government Act (MGA) requires council members to “keep in confidence” matters discussed in-camera at council or committee meetings until they vote to disclose the matter at a public meeting.

“This obligation supports the ability of municipal councils to appropriately consider sensitive issues related to legal considerations, personnel, public safety and confidential matters,” Williams wrote.

Farkas said Thursday he appreciated Williams’ correspondence, but added that municipalities across Alberta are still “operating in a vacuum” when it comes to having a formalized framework to govern council member conduct and ethics.

“I urge him, as quickly as possible, to restore the accountability measures that their government took away, and I’ll be eagerly awaiting that,” Farkas told Postmedia.

In his letter to Johnston, Williams said the first-term councillor’s actions were “unacceptable” and “inconsistent” with his duties as an elected official, though he did not suggest any sanctions for allegedly violating the MGA.

Williams added that as an elected official, Johnston is entrusted by Calgary residents to “exercise the responsibilities of public office with integrity” and his access to sensitive information carries an obligation to protect it.

Disregarding that obligation, he wrote, “undermines trust among council members and erodes public confidence” in municipal governance.

“Calgary residents are entitled to expect integrity, sound judgment and respect for the obligations of public office,” Williams wrote. “I am encouraged that you have publicly committed to uphold your confidentiality obligations without exception going forward and acknowledged the consequences of your actions impact the effective functioning of council.”

Johnston did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. However, in the aftermath of his leak, he told reporters it was a “wakening” for everyone on council to carefully consider what they debate in closed sessions.

“Going forward, I would hope that this council and all councils within Alberta think twice about what they’re talking about in-camera, because it’s the taxpayers, the Calgarians, Albertans, that really have the voice, the power,” Johnston said in September. “I was just trying to give it back to them.”

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