The City of Edmonton hires lobbyists to pressure the province. Calgary doesn’t bother

Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi speaks to reporters at City Hall on April 26, 2024. (Chelan Skulski/CTV News Edmonton)

Although Edmonton City Hall is a stone’s throw from the Alberta Legislature, Oil City feels the need to hire a third party to get its voice heard by the UCP government.

For years, Edmonton has been paying outside lobbyists to represent its interests with the provincial government.

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The most recent lobbyist registration earlier this month shows Alberta’s capital city hired former Conservative MP Monte Solberg, of New West Public Affairs, to make several requests for the 2025 provincial budget.

In a statement, the city said it "has an in-house team which provides information and policy analysis," and after identifying "structural financial challenges and opportunities, we felt we needed additional expertise in advocating to the provincial government."

The City of Edmonton did not disclose how much it paid for the lobbying firm’s services.

It said the most recent arrangement is a contract worth less than $250,000 so it falls outside of reporting requirements.

The province’s metropolis to the south, on the other hand, isn’t registered as a lobbyist and has only done so in 2020 to promote the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board.

A statement from the City of Calgary said the city "has an internal Intergovernmental Relations team that engages with the Government of Alberta’s Administrative team and supports the Mayor, as Calgary’s primary elected official, to bring concerns and issues forward on behalf of Calgarians."

Calgary is the largest city in Alberta and the third-largest in the country with a population of about 1.3 million. It is also a stronghold for conservative votes.

Although Edmonton and Calgary have an ongoing sibling rivalry, the province’s capital often feels neglected compared to its southern neighbour.

A key issue for the municipality is the grant the province provides in lieu of paying property taxes on its buildings. According to Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi, the province has only paid 50 per cent of its property taxes through the grant since 2019, amounting to $80 million not paid to the City of Edmonton alone.

Sohi has said that Edmonton is disproportionately impacted due to the sheer number of provincial buildings in the city, and has launched a website as a way to inform the public of the province’s debt.

In a recent interview, Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver said the mayor "knows very well" that the province doesn’t pay property taxes, adding there is a "perceived value in making public pronouncements."

"He’s advocating for more money for his municipality and that’s part of his job," said McIver.

Last year, Sohi said the province was treating Edmontonians as "second-class citizens" after the Government of Alberta pledged $330 million for a new arena in Calgary. When Edmonton’s Rogers Place was being developed, the province didn’t contribute at all.

Sohi said the city should receive equal payment to offset the cost of the downtown arena, which opened in 2016.

McIver said the province treats all municipalities "equitably," and that the door is always open for communication.

"It’s human nature to look at things from your own perspective and human nature to complain that you’re getting a bad deal," said the minister. "It’s like so many things in life, it’s not 100 per cent clear cut."

Provincial public affairs

The Town of Okotoks, Alta. has hired lobbyists, too. The town’s spokesperson, Ben Morgan, said in an emailed statement that "External advisors will often offer different perspectives and ideas through their experience in unique areas of expertise and practice."

"As Okotoks is a smaller municipal government," Morgan wrote, "working with external advisors can provide extra capacity for larger and complex projects, as we simply do not have the resources and budgets of many larger city governments."

An analysis of provincial lobbying registries across the country found municipalities in Alberta engaged in more lobbying activity than in any other province so far in 2024.

The same has been true in 2023, 2022 and 2021.

IJF ChartProvincial governments in Ontario, B.C. and Quebec were also lobbied by their municipalities in 2024.

By contrast, fewer municipalities lobbied in smaller provinces such as Nova Scotia.

Municipalities in Nova Scotia seek support from the province as part of a collective called the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities (NSFM).

The federation represents 49 municipalities across the province and it does not have to register its lobbying under provincial law.

Other provinces have lobbying associations, such as Ontario Big City Mayors or Rural Municipalities of Alberta but that doesn’t stop individual cities or towns from also working with consultant lobbyists.

The City of Toronto, a provincial capital like Edmonton, has its own in-house intergovernmental relations team, so it doesn’t need to hire a consultant lobbyist or register its lobbying activity.

"The city delivers a variety of services on behalf of the top three levels of government," including transit delivery, shelter, airport governance and immigration, said Jean Abou Saab, deputy chief of staff of intergovernmental affairs at the City of Toronto in an interview in January.

That means it has a bigger voice than some smaller municipalities in Ontario, he said. "If the mayor speaks out, she gets a lot of attention. But we're also on the hook for a lot of things that other cities aren't."

Smaller municipalities, however, may not have the resources or need to fund full-time governmental affairs positions.

The Town of Collingwood, Ont., for example, has hired lobbyists to ask the province for funding for a water treatment facility.

"It's not always easy to get in front of a cabinet minister, for example, depending on what your issue is," said Collingwood, Ont. mayor Yvonne Hamlin in an interview early this year.

She said consultants are "experienced at knowing who to contact and what questions to ask."

"We could," Hamlin said, "dedicate a staff person to figure that out. These aren't impossible tasks, but it would take them away from their day-to-day job and it's not very efficient."

But hiring external help can also increase scrutiny. In a May 6 council meeting, the town of Brighton, Ont. voted to hire Atlas Strategic Advisors, a lobby firm run by Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s former aide and right-hand man, Amin Massoudi.

Documents obtained by the Trillium showed local officials were specifically looking for lobbying firms that had connections to the Progressive Conservative government to increase their chances of getting funding for an expensive wastewater treatment facility in the town.

Atlas cut ties with the town of Brighton on May 8, because it said councillors "misrepresented" the work the firm does.