'That's not good practice': Smith flags Calgary City Hall closed-door practices amid municipal transparency debate

Premier Danielle Smith says her government is looking into concerns over the use of closed-door meetings at Calgary City Hall, arguing such sessions should be “very rare” and substantive debate should not take place in private before elected officials cast public votes.

Smith weighed in on Calgary’s municipal transparency debate during her Your Province, Your Premier radio show Saturday morning, days after Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston asked the province to review Calgary’s use of closed meetings and consider changes to confidentiality provisions under the Municipal Government Act.

Responding to a caller who questioned council’s frequent use of closed-door meetings and the treatment of advice from city administration as confidential, Smith said the provincial government makes scarce use of private deliberations.

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“I’d be hard pressed to find a time that we ever went in camera,” Smith said. “It’s just not something that you do when you’ve got your entire body together.”

While cabinet deliberations may be confidential, Smith said matters that ultimately move forward are documented and information is made public. “When we approve something, we have to have clear minutes, and we have to make that information available,” she said.

Smith said provincial committees may sometimes go in camera for matters such as hiring decision, but “it is very rare.”

She likened what she has observed at Calgary city council with her experience as a school board trustee in the 1990s, warning that closed meetings can be used to conduct substantive debate away from public scrutiny.

“So everybody can get their stories straight and figure out where everybody else is going to vote to engineer a certain outcome,” she said. “And then when they go public, all the debate is already taking place behind closed doors, and the public doesn’t get to see it.”

The premier also took issue with what she described as councils publicly voting on matters without always disclosing what transpired during private deliberations ahead of that vote.

“One thing that I’m flagging is the way that they make decisions,” she said. “They say, ‘Oh, you know that secret thing we discussed in closed meeting? Now let’s have a public vote on it.’ But you don’t never get told what that secret thing was that they talked about in the closed meeting.”

“That’s not good practice,” she added. “I’ll be frank about it. So yes, we’re very much looking at it.”

Smith said concerns about municipal transparency are “not just a Calgary issue,” pointing to the recent resignations of two school board trustees in St. Albert amid a dispute over transparency and public access to board meetings.