More than 350 people have signed up to speak Monday at what is expected to be another marathon public hearing on Calgary’s highly divisive, citywide rezoning issue, and that number could grow as the hearing gets underway.

The issue is back before council after it became a key point of debate in last fall’s municipal election, with many of the members of the new city council promising to repeal or reconsider the policy, which was approved by the last city council in 2024.

That approval came after a historically long public hearing with 736 people speaking to the issue, over 15 days. The majority of them opposed to blanket rezoning, which resulted in the city’s base residential zoning policy being changed to allow for more housing types on a single property, such as row houses and duplexes.

2:00
Public hearing on repealing citywide rezoning set to begin at Calgary city hall next week

The policy change was aimed at boosting the supply and affordability of housing in the city.

However, the new council voted in December, by a 13 to 2 margin, to kickstart the process of repealing the policy.

“Its not so much blanket rezoning yes or no,” Mayor Jeromy Farkas said ahead of the hearing. “[It’s] more that continuous debate over change, community character, how we continue to be able to build the needed housing in a way that the community feels involved in and respected.”

Shameer Gaidhar, chair of the Calgary Inner City Builders Association said the city needs row housing, but not everywhere. “There are location criteria that have involved community engagement, industry engagement, so if they are the appropriate places, why aren’t we approving them and moving those forth.”

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While those in favour say the policy say it is working, opponents say it is damaging the character of their neighbourhoods.

Along with the hundreds of speakers, council has also received nearly 2,400 written submissions on the issue.

The public hearing is scheduled to run 12 hours per day for the entire week and into next week if needed.

Other people who wish to speak will be allowed to register as long as the public hearing is still going on.

Farkas said that if the policy is changed, there needs to be a replacement strategy on how the city will continue to build the housing it needs.

1:48
Calgarians agree more affordable housing needed but divided on blanket rezoning

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Canada may have the ability to substantially raise its GDP and add thousands of new jobs by building more oil pipeline infrastructure, a new study suggests.

According to the report from ATB Financial, Canada could increase its total oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day — an increase of one third — and generate an average $31.4 billion to Canada’s GDP every year for the next decade. Doing this could increase Canada’s GDP by 1.1 per cent every year.

In 2025, GDP averaged 1.7 per cent overall, and after the two previous years each grew by about two per cent.

The ATB research report, titled, “The GDP Payoff of Additional Pipeline Capacity,” was released Wednesday in collaboration with Studio.Energy, a Calgary-based energy research and analytics company.

The report said the calculations were based on a scenario where Canada financially commits to several pipeline projects that are either currently being evaluated or in the process of being approved.

“New energy infrastructure doesn’t yield just a marginal gain for Canada’s economy — it’s a structural shift that will pay ongoing export dividends,” said Mark Parsons, vice-president and chief economist at ATB Financial in the release.

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“Expanding our export capacity would fundamentally improve our national economic health and global standing at a time when Canada needs it most.”

2:54
Carney says potential Pacific oil pipeline would be ‘twin with the pathways project’

This comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney aims to double Canadian exports to countries other than the U.S. over the next decade amid the trade war and U.S. tariffs, and as the war in Iran jeopardizes global oil supplies and caused energy prices to surge.

That theoretical increase in oil exports under the report’s proposals would also generate 112,000 new jobs over the next decade, the report said, which would peak at 136,100 during the initial construction phase.

Many of these jobs would include those of general labour, engineering, steel, equipment, and services across the supply chain.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said earlier in March that the Iran war’s impact on global energy markets underscores the need to build a pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast.

A separate report released earlier in March from the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority said exports of Canadian crude oil moving through the port in 2025 increased 95 per cent from the year before, and that was months before the Iran conflict began.

The same report said the Trans Mountain expansion helped fuel the rise in oil exports off Canada’s West Coast, with most of the oil shipments going to markets like China and South Korea.

To get these pipeline projects built and filled with the higher amount of oil would also require a large amount of funding, the report said.

“Building the pipelines is estimated to require cumulative investment of $41 billion, while ensuring there is enough oil production to fill them would require an additional $100+ billion in upstream investment — more than double the pipeline cost — generating long-term returns through export revenues, royalties, and taxes,” the report said.

The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project completed in 2024, and cost the federal government a total of nearly $35 billion to complete. That included the $4.5 billion to acquire the project from Kinder Morgan in 2018.

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With the start of the summer tourist season just a few months away, people who work in Alberta’s tourism industry are expecting another boom of visitors from both within Canada and around the world.

The soaring number of visitors has been especially noticeable in places like Banff National Park, where the town of Banff welcomed a record number of tourists — almost seven million vehicles into the town site, up four per cent from 2024.

The federal government’s decision to renew the Canada Strong pass, which provides free access to national parks and national historic sites, amongst other benefits, for a second summer is expected to again help fuel the boom in visitors.

Parks Canada said that between June 2 and Sept. 2 of last year, the period when the Canada Strong pass was available, sites administered by the agency saw an estimated 14 and a half million visitors — a jump of 13 per cent over the previous year.

1:42
‘Very busy’: Elk Island National Park exceeding capacity due to pass program

It’s a stark contrast to the United States, where the Trump administration will be charging non-residents an extra $100 tourist fee to visit many of America’s national parks, which is likely to encourage even more people to look elsewhere — perhaps north of the border.

“Banff is such a beautiful place and everybody wants to come,” said Stéphane Prévost, executive chef and managing partner for Block Kitchen and Bar and Shoku Izakaya in Banff.

While Prévost told Global News that he feels privileged to live and work in Banff, and is eager to welcome visitors, he said it must be done in a sustainable way.

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“I think this is a good situation for us in Canada. There are always different opinions on opening the gates and making it free for everybody to access the parks, which amplifies the inbound traffic. Of course there’s things that we need to manage carefully with that,” said Prévost.

“Over-tourism is a big topic, a big subject that can be divisive, polarizing. However I’m on the side of promoting tourism in the right way, in a sustainable way. That’s how our economy can continue to thrive and succeed for us to keep everybody employed and to be successful and to continue to deliver this great experience to the guests that visit us from all over the place, Canada and the world.”

Concern about Over-tourism is a issue the mayor of Banff says the town is working hard to address.

Corrie DiManno says the expansion of sustainable transit options, like Roam Transit, which encourages visitors to park their cars and take the bus to visit popular attractions like the Banff Gondola, has helped greatly reduce traffic congestion in town.

“We have invested millions of dollars into our transit system to try and address it,” said DiManno.  “After last summer we now know that 40 per cent of the bridge crossings over the Bow River happen on sustainable transportation. So it’s either folks on the bus, buses across our vehicle bridge, or by foot or by bike across our pedestrian bridges. So sustainable transportation is the solution here in town.

“We’ve put in a transit lane that goes to one of the top attractions in the park — the Banff gondola. We have flaggers at intersections during peak times. The town has basically pulled every lever within our control,” added DiManno.

What she claims the town needs now, to help continue to address traffic concerns, is support from the provincial and federal governments to develop better mass transit options from the city of Calgary.

The town is also exploring ways to help grow the winter demand for tourism.

“The impetus behind that is to try and smooth out our tourism so that it’s not so heavily weighted in summer and instead to have more consistent tourism throughout the year,” said DiManno.

“This helps with business certainty as well as folks knowing that they have a steady job. The peaks and valleys can be quite difficult for our residents. There already is a high cost of living here and if folks are getting their shifts cut and not able to have consistent work, then that’s going to affect their ability to pay rent, buy groceries, those sorts of daily things.”

DiManno said the town is also planning an in-depth study of the issue of over-tourism, consulting with residents and businesses about exactly what the issues are and what problems need to be solved.

“I don’t believe the request for proposals has gone out quite yet, but they are working on that,” said DiManno.

“For example, we know our road network is at capacity during peak time, but are our sidewalks? That’s a question we don’t have an answer to,” said DiManno.

“What about restaurants? What about the trails? What about our hospital and health centres? So we’re gonna have this exploratory conversation with all sectors of the community. We know it’s going to be about a year-long process. We want to make sure we’re doing this right.”

In the meantime, both residents and business owners are gearing up for what could be another record tourism season.

“In my opinion, Banff National Park is one of the most beautiful places on the planet and it’s such a gift to be able to share the town with the world and we take it very seriously that we live within a national park and we want to be stewards of this place,” DiManno added.

1:59
Canada Strong Pass expected to boost summer travel

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Canada’s middle class appears to be struggling with the higher cost of living, with new data showing more are taking on debt as financial pain bleeds out into broader sections of the economy.

It comes as the so-called “K-shape” economy continues to underscore a widening wealth divide between Canada’s highest and lowest income groups, with Equifax reporting debt among Canadians with higher credit scores is rising.

“There’s more of a divergence happening and a few of the higher income or low-risk people are kind of switching almost on that ‘K’,” says Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of analytics at Equifax Canada.

“Everything that’s happening right now is just going to add pressure to an already difficult situation where we did have diversions in financial health.”

Total Canadian consumer debt in the fourth quarter, or final three months of 2025, increased 3.13 per cent from a year earlier to $2.65 trillion, and non-mortgage debt increased by 4.5 per cent.

Those with higher credit scores of between 751 and 880 out of the scale to 900 saw their non-mortgage debt rise by 6.1 per cent, while lower credit scores of 320 to 580 remained mostly the same, the report showed.

“It doesn’t really matter what your credit score is. What matters is how much income you have relative to your expenses. And so if your expenses are growing faster than your income, a 750 or 800 FICO score isn’t going to make you any wealthier,” says mortgage expert Clay Jarvis at NerdWallet Canada.

“So if anything, I would say having a higher credit score may have actually hurt some of these homeowners by allowing them to squeeze into these giant mortgages at a time when everything else is becoming more expensive.”

1:59
Affordability remains top of mind for many Calgarians

Missed payments on non-mortgage debt peaked at the end of December, Equifax says, with the number of Canadian households that missed a minimum debt payment by 90 days or more rising from 1.64 per cent to 1.73 per cent.

That’s a 5.43 per cent increase from the previous year.

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The data may soon show more severe changes, too.

That’s because this data out now shows a snapshot from the end of 2025, and a lot has happened since then, including the Iran war, which is expected to lead to higher prices for gas at the pumps, groceries, and just about everything else.

“With all these headwinds in what’s happening this year since January, that’s just going to put more pressure,” Oakes says.

The K-shape economy refers to a sharp divide between higher-income earners being able to spend more over time without going into debt, while lower-income earners are losing purchasing power and have to cut back more and more to make ends meet.

It’s effectively a visual cue to picture an economy where those on the upper end of the spectrum are able to continue increasing spending, while those on the lower end are declining.

A report from November 2025 showed this pattern unfolding based on survey data on expected holiday spending among consumers. Twenty-six per cent of shoppers said they planned on spending more than $1,000, while 46 per cent planned to spend less than $500, and 15 per cent said less than $100.

The Equifax data, Oakes says, shows a consistent result, where consumers did spend less than the year before.

“Our numbers are telling us is that there definitely is more concern, I think, coming from consumers in terms of affordability. We’re seeing that translate into spending behaviour,” she says.

“In the backend of last year, it was a holiday period. We saw quite a pullback in terms of spend by certain groups of consumers during that holiday period.”

Oakes adds that these higher debt levels, especially when including mortgage debt, were concentrated in British Columbia and Ontario, where cities like Vancouver and Toronto demand higher incomes to keep up with the relative cost of living, including for housing.

2:21
Dream of home ownership still alive for majority of Canadians: RBC

Mortgage debt increased to $1.95 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025, Equifax said, which was up 2.6 per cent from the previous year.

A large wave of mortgage renewals was the main reason for this, Oakes says, and many Canadians locked in at higher interest rates than when they started in 2020, 2021 and early 2022, when rates were at multi-year lows.

“Stronger credit scores, maybe strong incomes, are able to kind of get hold of those higher balance mortgages. But the reality is that the payment shock they’re now seeing on renewal is just too much for them,” she says.

“Combine a cost of living increase with a payment shock if your mortgage is renewed at a higher rate or higher payment amount, and that, for some consumers, is just too much.”

On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada left its benchmark interest rate unchanged for the third straight meeting, but signalled the Iran war was raising the risk for Canada’s economy and the outlook is even more uncertain.

Some economists even suggested, based on what the Bank of Canada said after the announcement, that rates may even need to be increased in Canada if the war leads to long-term inflation spikes.

“It’s just it’s so hard to be positive about anything. Anybody I talk to about anything is feeling really really down and that’s just the overall sentiment when it comes to your finances,” says Jarvis.

“Anybody who is able to glide through this right now without having to worry about their finances every day … I don’t think they realize how lucky they are and what kind of a bubble they’re living in.”

A key plank of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate plan will likely ​miss its target implementation date, industry sources said, raising new doubts about Canada meeting its environmental goals in the face of higher oil prices and uncertain U.S. trade policy.

Carney, a former U.N. climate envoy, committed last fall to negotiating a stronger industrial carbon pricing policy with Alberta by April 1.

He is counting on a strengthened pollution pricing scheme to keep Canada’s emission reduction targets on track after rolling back many of his predecessor Justin Trudeau’s climate policies to restore friendlier relations with the oil-and-gas producing province and prioritize economic growth.

11:31
Carney rejects ‘hypocrisy’ claim on Alberta pipelines, defends low-carbon energy

Two industry sources familiar with the talks told Reuters these negotiations have been challenging, and that no deal will be struck by the April 1 deadline ‌because large oil sands companies are pushing back on parts of the federal proposal.

Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson has acknowledged there may be a slight delay. “As we all know in doing deals, sometimes deals come ⁠right up to the deadline.

Sometimes they go a little bit over the deadline,” he told reporters.

One ‌of the sources said even if a pricing agreement is reached later this spring, oil sands producers are now unlikely to commit to another key part of the agreement: building the entire high-profile C$16 billion ($11.47 billion) Pathways Plus carbon capture and storage project, though a smaller, scaled-down project is ⁠possible.

The Canadian government continues to work closely with Alberta and all relevant parties and will have more to share in due course, said Keean Nembhard, press secretary for Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin.

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A ‌spokesperson for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith declined to comment directly, pointing instead to a television interview earlier this month in which she said the discussions are “complicated,” but that all parties are committed to getting to an agreement soon.

POLITICAL, ECONOMIC CLIMATE SHIFTS

Oil companies hope ⁠to boost production and sell more oil and gas to Asia in the coming ‌years to diversify away from the U.S.

Carney also wants to reduce economic dependence on the United States, which buys 90 per cent of Canada’s oil.

Now, the Iran war has bolstered global demand for Canadian oil and gas, and Canada agreed last week to support the International Energy Agency’s oil release with 23.6 million barrels from domestic producers.

6:51
Breaking down the impact of oil prices

A December report from the Canadian Climate Institute had already warned Canada is not on track to meet any of its climate targets, including its 2030 Paris Agreement commitment.

The benchmark Brent crude now trades near US$100 a barrel, about 65 per cent above its level at the start of the year.

While some Canadian oil sector leaders once spoke publicly in favour of industrial carbon ‌pricing as a way to incentivize emissions reduction, their tone has shifted.

Oil sands companies investing in carbon capture and storage should not have to pay an industrial carbon price on top of the costs of constructing and operating the project, Canadian Natural Resources CEO Scott ⁠Stauth said in a March interview.

While Stauth said he had no reason to think the April 1 deadline on carbon pricing would be missed, he noted the negotiations are complex.

“It takes time to work through all the details to ensure that the needs of all of those involved are met and that it supports the vision that I think the prime minister has for growth in Canada,” he said.

HIGHER CARBON PRICE

Stauth’s comments followed an open letter released in January by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobby ​group, which argued that higher costs for carbon directly reduce Canada’s competitiveness, at a time when the U.S. has demonstrated a “willingness to leverage all tools at their disposal ​to achieve geopolitical and energy goals.”

Both Alberta and the federal government pledged last fall to work together on a new industrial carbon pricing policy, aiming to increase the effective price the province’s heavy emitters must pay ‌on carbon from an existing C$95 a metric ton to C$130 a metric ton.

The date at which this will happen, and the price increases over time, were to be negotiated.

Alberta and the federal government also agreed to cooperate on building the Pathways Plus project, pitched by Canada’s five largest oil sands companies in 2021 to be the world’s biggest carbon ⁠capture project.

The Carney government has bundled that project together with Alberta’s vision of ‌a new pipeline to export its oil to the Pacific coast — a pipeline no company has yet committed to build — and placed them both on its priority list for ‌fast-tracking.

Just 28 per cent of countries globally require industrial emitters to pay a carbon price, ​which means Canada’s oil and gas sector has legitimate concerns about the ways in which a strengthened regime could impact ⁠its competitiveness, said Kevin Birn, ⁠head of carbon research for S&P Global.

“Canada needs to find a policy approach that ensures this industry is competitive, and ensures it can achieve its objectives around diversifying markets, but also maintains policies that are important ​to Canadians for environmental protection purposes,” he said.

2:46
Canada ‘reliable’ and ‘low-risk’ oil exporter, will up production amid energy crisis: Carney