JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Welcome back to Calgary Conversations, our first episode of 2025. And as we roll up the carpet on 2024 and roll out the carpet for the new year, who better to do that with than with our guests today. Our Chief Administrative Officer, David Duckworth, and our Chief Operating Officer, Stuart Dalgleish. 

Gentlemen, welcome.

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Jose, thank you for having us. We’re excited to be here. 

STUART DALGLEISH

Thank you, Jose. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

You bet. And like any good windshield, we can look at the road ahead, but we also have a rearview mirror. So, David, maybe we'll start with you. What are your takeaways from 2024? 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Oh, boy. Well, there are many. 2024, not unlike many other years, had a lot of challenges. And so, I would think maybe one of the key things that sticks out for me is just the resilience. The resilience of The City, and the resilience of Calgarians. We've shown when times are tough, we can step up to the plate. We can work together. And there's a lot of empathy and compassion. We had a number of challenges in 2024, so that sticks out a lot for me. It reminds me that Calgary is the blue-sky city, and it's a place where bright minds and big ideas come together to solve global challenges.

And we're a city that can do anything. I’m from British Columbia. I’ve only lived in Calgary for a little over six years. And I'm just amazed. Just the spirit that Calgarians have. And I know it drives me every single day. So again, when I look back on 2024, just the resilience that Calgarians displayed really sticks out for me.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Stuart, same question to you. 

STUART DALGLEISH

Yeah, thanks Jose. I think there are really a couple of themes for me around 2024. One was around listening to Calgarians. Calgarians told us what was important to them was housing, transit, infrastructure and safety. Those were Calgarians’ top priorities. And I'll speak to these a little more as the conversation goes on. But I think we really focused on those priorities. We listened to Calgarians, and we acted. 

The second theme is around being such a fast-growing city. And again, I’ll speak a little bit more to the growth of our city later in this discussion. But I would say that in and amongst that growth, we continue to deliver great services. You know, in 2024, we answered over one million 911 calls. We talked with Calgarians, had conversations with Calgarians in just under a million, 311 phone calls. We have about 17 thousand kilometres of roadways in Calgary. We cleaned those streets before the summer, and we cleared and plowed them in the winter, and we actually fixed about 38 thousand potholes. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

That’s a lot of potholes.

STUART DALGLEISH

So, a lot of potholes. And the same is true for our pathways. We have about 1200 kilometers of pathways, and we maintain those throughout the year as well. So, as well as meeting the demands of our growing city, focusing on those top priorities for Calgary's, we continue to deliver those day-to-day services that are important to Calgarians. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And just to pick up on a little bit of something you said, David. You talked about the resilience. We asked Calgarians this year to use less water during what was a pretty tough period for the city. 

Which brings the question to me, how can Calgarians trust that our infrastructure is indeed reliable? 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Let me start by saying Calgarians priorities are The City's priorities and one of those priorities, as Stuart just mentioned, housing, public safety, transit, Green Line — but infrastructure. We've heard Calgarians say that infrastructure is incredibly important. We completely and fully agree. 

In November of 2024, when we were with City Council to talk about the 2025 budget, the bulk of the investments that we were recommended to Council to consider were targeted to infrastructure. In fact, 60 per cent of our new investments are targeted to infrastructure. And I should say, Calgarians should have trust and faith in our infrastructure. I know I do. We have a massive, huge amount of infrastructure that we maintain, from bridges to roadways to arenas to pools to pipes in the ground. And just thinking of our underground infrastructure, over 15 thousand kilometres of water mains and wastewater mains and storm mains. On the water side, about five thousand kilometres. About 98 per cent of that water infrastructure is in good or very good condition. We have some of the best, most knowledgeable, professional staff in the country running our utility and all of our infrastructure. We take an evidence-based, fact-based approach to inspecting our infrastructure and that helps prioritize where new investments go. So, I know for a fact, our infrastructure compared to many cities across the countries, is in very good condition.

But, as Stuart just pointed out, we're a really fast-growing community. That puts different additional strains on our infrastructure. We need to continue to make sure that we're investing in infrastructure and maintaining our infrastructure and doing our best to make sure that there aren't service disruptions for Calgarians. And I think the one thing that happened through the water feeder main crisis was I think it reminded everybody — because I think the average person probably takes many of the services that we provide for granted. You wake up in the morning, you're using water every single day. You turn the tap on, you expect potable water to come out of your tap and guess what? 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, it does. And this year, we had a critical failure of a critical piece of infrastructure and Calgarians banded together to make sure that we could supply enough water throughout the city. So, if you're looking just south of the border, what's happening in L.A. right now, we needed to make sure that we have adequate supplies of water. So, if there was an emergency and our amazing fire department needed to go and battle a house fire, there was an adequate supply. 

So Calgarians really banded together. But I think through this crisis, everyone realized that water is an incredible, precious resource that we have, that we take for granted, and that we really need to make sure that we're maintaining our infrastructure. I'm pleased to say, by and large, we do. Our infrastructure is in good shape, but it is aging, and we need to continue to invest in that infrastructure. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And when it comes to the feeder main, we also have a third-party investigation to ensure that if there was anything we missed, we are going to find out about it.

DAVID DUCKWORTH

That is correct. So, we recently brought someone on to be a chair of an independent review panel. This person is going to assemble a few people on this panel of experts to review this incident in particular. What happened? Why did it happen? How could it have been prevented? And what could we do in the future to make sure that our infrastructure and our services are even more robust?

And so, we look forward to the results of those recommendations. I have no doubt there will be some great recommendations that come from us again, to make us more resilient and even stronger. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Stuart, you touched on housing. It's hard not to talk about Calgary without talking about the in-migration, the housing crisis and the housing prices. Maybe you can just touch on that a little bit. 

STUART DALGLEISH

Shelter, is important to everybody. All of us. And housing has become an incredibly critical file for Calgary. And there is an affordability aspect to the housing issue. And then there's a supply issue as well. 

There's some humour at City Hall about how long I've worked at The City. And it's quite a number of years, over 35 now. I have never seen Calgary grow in the way in which it has in this past while. We had something in the order of 75 thousand people moving to Calgary between 2023 and 2024, those kind of mid-year points. That's a six per cent growth rate. That is incredible growth for any municipality.

And so, those issues around affordability and supply for folks are incredibly, incredibly important. The fortunate thing under Council's leadership is that we have a housing strategy and it’s call Home is Here. Council adopted that strategy in 2023. And so, 2024 was really the first full year of implementation. There are 98 actions in that strategy that were adopted in 2023. And those actions go everywhere from the work that The City can do to enable more supply through our planning approval processes, providing land, working with our partners, including the Indigenous community, working with non-profit market housing, housing providers, providing direct funding. And so, there are 98 actions in that strategy. And in 2024, I’m really proud to say that we initiated 80 per cent of those strategies or all of those actions.

So that's pretty considerable. Out of 98 actions, we got 80 per cent underway. And as we got towards the end of the year under all those actions, there were some actually some really, really good metrics. At the end of 2024, we had approved at The City, 25 thousand building permits. Again, that is more than I have ever seen.

I recall a few years back we hit the 20 thousand mark, and I thought that was incredible. We hit 25 thousand last year. And I'll speak to that a little bit. There's a piece there around our development building industry, who I believe really stepped up, and our non-profit market housing providers who really stepped up to meet the demand of housing with those 25 thousand building permits.

Also, we brought on 700 non-market affordable homes as well in 2024. We need to do more in the future. But those are some pretty incredible metrics at the end of 2024. As of the six-month mark last year, we were producing the most homes per capita of any of six major jurisdictions, benchmarked by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation across the country.

So, we are really faring well. We need to do more in the housing file, but our first full year of implementation of that strategy was incredible. And it was great to see, just in the last week or so, some news around rental rates. And so, some of those indicators are: are we’re having an impact? So, I've talked a lot about supply, but you also want to have an impact on affordability.

In the last couple of weeks, we've seen that rental rates for one and two-bedroom units have decreased by 6 per cent and by 7 per cent. So, in the early days of this strategy, we're beginning to see some real good metrics as a result of the actions that were taken. But housing is, and I'll talk about sort of the future around housing and the work that we'll be doing, but we're very pleased with our first full year of implementation of that strategy.

DAVID DUCKWORTH

If I could, I'll just add a little bit around affordability.  Stuart mentioned what The City's trying to do on the housing front to make sure that rental rates of course come down, that housing is affordable. I remember when I moved to Calgary in 2018, my wife and I were shocked at how affordable the city is compared to where we come from in British Columbia. And it still is relatively affordable. But those numbers, those metrics, have changed considerably over the last six years. 

So, we take affordability for citizens really, really seriously. So, Stuart talked about on the housing front. But in addition to the housing, when it comes to property taxes and user fees, you know, when you look at Calgary, compared to the larger municipalities across the country, we compare incredibly like really, really, really well. Our taxes by and large are pretty much the lowest. And our user fees are very comparable. 

And if you just look at a typical household, I think sometimes we forget that of all the taxes and fees that a typical household pays in Calgary, 11 per cent comes to the city of Calgary, 89 per cent goes to the Province, and the Federal Government. And those are taxes and fees — everything from GST, any retail taxes, income taxes, all of those taxes add up. But if you look at a typical home, a small fraction comes to The City. Then, if you think of the services that we provide from police protection to fire protection to parks, to roadways, snow clearing, water, wastewater or garbage collection, recycling, we provide the bulk of services that a household actually needs for a reasonable amount in taxes and user fees.

And if you think about it on a daily basis, a home that's valued at $700 thousand pays about $12 per day in taxes and user fees for police protection, for fire protection, for roadways, for parks, for water, for sewer. In my opinion, I think that's incredible value. And my team and I, Stuart and I, the Executive Leadership Team and my 15 thousand colleagues at The City take that incredibly seriously. We want to make sure we continue to deliver high quality services better. At a really affordable, reasonable rate. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

That's pretty cool. I wish I would have bought a house when Stuart started the city. That was my big takeaway. What would a house have been back then?

STUART DALGLEISH

Well, we moved here in 1988, Jose. And within about a year and a half, my wife and I were able to buy our first home. And, that was about $130 thousand if I remember, in that day. And it would have been a pretty typical home, in a typical neighborhood back in that day. That same home, I know exactly where it is and go by it quite often, and you can no longer acquire that home for that price. It's probably 5 or 6 times that amount today. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Times are changing. David what are you excited about in 2025?

DAVID DUCKWORTH

So, two things. First, I would say again, The City's priorities are Calgarians’ priorities. And we know there are four key priorities. And so, I'm looking forward to delivering on those priorities around housing, public safety, transit and infrastructure. People will see improvements in their infrastructure. For example, they'll see improved roadway quality, which will help safety and driving with respect to the flow of traffic. So, I'm excited about work in those areas, but I'm also really excited about our work on our brand-new event centre, Scotia Place.

For those that don't know, by and large, the hole has been dug, structures will start to go up this year. That's a generational investment. I know Calgarians will look back 20, 30 years from now with that facility with incredible pride, just like they do right now with the Saddledome. And as sad as it is to lose the Saddledome, we're building something, in my opinion, that's even greater and better and it's going to transform the downtown. And I'm just super excited about seeing that project take shape. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

And those renderings are amazing. I know there was a whole bunch of consultation that happened before we ever landed on the event centre we're going to have. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

So yeah, it's pretty exciting.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

I heard it comes with the Stanley Cup. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

We hope so. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Stuart, what are you excited about? 

STUART DALGLEISH

Yeah. You know, maybe I'll start with David and bridge a little bit from the event centre and talk about the downtown, because I think this really is part of a larger strategy. And we know that Calgary's downtown had a lot and still does have a lot in the way of office vacancy. It really needs to be transformed and so I think for 2025, as we move forward on the downtown, continuing that work that we're doing on demising office space. We took on a goal of demising 6-million square feet of office space in the downtown, and we've already achieved 1.6 of that 6 million.

One of the great stories about that is, that in demising that office space and converting it and back to housing, we produced, through the private sector, 1500 homes and over 200 hotel rooms. So, this is not just about a downtown strategy and demising office space. It's a strategy to provide housing. And one of the great innovations that we learned is that this office-to-residential conversion strategy is one of the quickest ways that we can bring new homes to market. And so, continuing with that downtown strategy, investing in capital and infrastructure — David talked about the event centre. In 2024, we opened, and that work was led by Calgary Municipal Land Corporation, we opened the BMO convention centre. So that was super exciting in mid 2024. We've also got the Arts Commons Transformation project, which is really three projects, not only a new Arts Commons building just adjacent to the existing Olympic Plaza, but a renovated Olympic Plaza and also modernizing the existing Arts Commons building itself. So, there is that. There's more in the way of capital works for the downtown, revitalizing Stephen Avenue is another example of those capital works.

And just a little bit around, some of the metrics that we're seeing. We used to have a downtown office vacancy rate of about 34 per cent, that was pretty high, again, super concerning. We're now seeing that office vacancy rate, it is absolutely amazing, at approximately 28 per cent. So, we're making progress on our downtown strategy, and I think pretty incredible. 

So that's a little bit around our downtown, and I’ll talk a little bit about transit as well. Super important to Calgarians. In 2024, we managed to hit a ridership level of 103 million transit rides in 2024. That is our highest ever. It's higher than pre-pandemic. And it is also I think almost a 15% increase over 2023. And we've been looked at internationally as being one of the highest increasing transit ridership jurisdictions in the world, for that matter.

So, pretty incredible. We’re really focusing on transit and ridership, and in 2025 we’ll be hiring more in the way of operators. We are expanding our fleet, both our, 40-foot busses, both the electric fleet and the Compressed Natural Gas fleet. Also, our shuttle busses, both the regular shuttle busses and the access Calgary shuttle busses. And replacing that old, back to even more than the 35 years ago…

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

The U2 cars!

STUART DALGLEISH

Back to the U2 train cars. So, we will eventually be replacing all of those. So that's just a little bit around transit and continuing to focus on that and making sure that Calgarians are able to move and get around to the city. Whether it's to jobs, to work, to rec facilities, whatever that might be. So that's transit. And then, I’ll also just talk a little bit about safety.

I think safety really does relate back to the downtown and to transit. We invested a lot, Council invested a lot in safety in the last couple of years, 15 million new dollars, which I think we've gone from 85 peace officers to 185. And we are seeing our call rates in the downtown decreased by I think over 20 per cent. 

We're seeing Calgarians perceptions of safety move up, I think from 6 per cent to 75 or 76 per cent even. And so, we will be continuing the focus that we have had on safety and continue that into 2025. So those are some of the areas that I'm really excited about leaning it on. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

If I could?

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Absolutely. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

I’m just going to tap into all those amazing stats that Stuart's got in his head.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

He’s got a lot of stuff in his head, hey?

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Around transit, if you think four years ago, I remember conversations downtown were going to be dead. You know with the amount of remote work that was happening and transit was dead. And so we didn't need to invest in transit anymore, because people weren't going to ride transit. Well as of October of 2024, we surpassed pre-pandemic ridership levels on our transit system. So, we have fully recovered. Stuart mentioned that with our growth rate, we grew by close to 150,000 people in two years, the size of the city Kelowna in two years. And that has an impact on all our services, in particular transit and that leads me to one thing. Again, what I'm excited about is Green Line. And this has been a project that's been talked about — it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off. 

We are still very optimistic that we're going to work with our partners at the Government of Alberta to make the Green Line project come to fruition. And so, at times this project is discussed like it's a cost, it's an expensive project, but it's actually an investment. Stuart mentioned that we have over 100 million riders per year in our transit system. If you just pare that down just on a really simple math basis and think on a daily basis, if that didn't exist, we would be adding like 200 thousand more vehicles potentially on our road systems. And so just imagine the congestion. I grew up in Vancouver, it's not a pleasant place to drive around. And I'm not from Ontario, but I've been there. Toronto is not a great place to drive around. We're known for, when people come here, they're amazed at how little congestion we actually have. A big part of that is because of the investments previous Councils have made, and our current Council is making in transit. And the Green Line is an incredible investment.

It's an investment in our economy. It moves doctors and nurses and retail workers and pharmacists and engineers — all of these people use transit to get to work, to play after work, to go to our rec facilities. And so, this investment is so important to Calgarians. It's so important to improving the quality of life of Calgarians. Again, it's an expensive project, but it's an absolutely critical project. And again, that's one thing that I'm looking forward to in 2025. Working with our partners at the Province and the Federal Government to make that project come to fruition. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

You stole my next question. I was going to go to Green Line because it has been something we've talked about for a very long time.

I mean, looking at your crystal ball, what do you see happening with Green Line in 2025? 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

You know, we are working hard with our partners at the Province, and we've got some incredibly dedicated people on our Green Line team and throughout The City led by Stuart, General Manager Michael Thompson, Council. We're dedicated. Like, we want this project to be successful because great cities, have great transit systems. Go to any great city in the world, great transit systems.

Calgary is known to be, we were recognized as the fifth most livable city in the world in 2024. The most livable city in North America. A big part of that is because of the incredible success of our transit system Stuart alluded to, like our ridership numbers, our per capita ridership numbers, we're like at the top of the top among cities across North America. And I don't know if the average person here in Calgary understands how valued our transit system is. And so, this Green Line project is so important. We’re working so hard to make sure that we can deliver on something that Calgarians will have for a long time. Over 90 per cent of Calgarians support the Green Line project, and we want to see it come to fruition.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

So, I don't think it's any secret, but it's an election year. So, during an election year, does that change the relationship between Administration and Council? What do we do to ensure whatever it is we are doing doesn't favour one candidate or another? 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

I'll start and then I'm sure Stuart will have a lot to say.

I mean, we're apolitical. It doesn't matter who sits on those 15 seats in Council Chambers. Doesn't matter your political ideology, Administration is here to serve Calgarians and the Council of the day. So, it doesn't matter whether we didn't have a party system, we have a party system — that's not going to change whatsoever. Administration’s role is to bring our best professional advice on issues to Council. At the end of the day, Council makes a decision, provides direction to Administration. Our job is to just implement that direction. And so again, it doesn't matter who sits on those seats. What we have done, because I know this is a pilot with the City of Edmonton and the City of Calgary, around having political party systems.

I used to work in Vancouver. They've had political parties for probably four decades. So, I brought a small team of staff to Vancouver last year just to speak to them, just to help my staff understand, you know, what can we expect? Will there be changes? We suspect there will be some. The public won't. I don't think really notice. So, we will need to figure out how to work, to make sure that our relationships are really strong, with the next council. And so, we're going to be working through some of maybe what some of those changes are in 2025. I don't think they're going to be dramatic. But again, it doesn't matter who sits in those seats. Administration is here to serve whoever that is. 

STUART DALGLEISH

I'll just complement what David had to say and Jose just say, I think for Calgarians to know that the work and the services that we do will continue to get delivered throughout 2025. It being an election year, Calgarians can continue to rely on the great services that they receive every day, in fact, 24 hours a day. And that will continue throughout 2025, and we'll look forward to a new Council coming into place towards the end of the year and the direction that they provide and the vision for the for the future. Yet the services, the mandates that we have today will continue day-in, day-out throughout 2025.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

So, I suck at resolutions. Mine last about two weeks. But do either of you have a 2025 resolution when it comes to The City? Not a personal one, you can share your personal one if you want to.

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Well, on the personal side, I’m going to drink more of our amazing water. So, I'm going to drink more water. 

You know, I just want to continue to work with my colleagues like Stuart, and again, my 15 thousand colleagues at The City to make sure that the services that we deliver to Calgarians are really top notch. They are. I've had the pleasure of working in other municipalities, and I'm amazed, at the colleagues that I work with. They are so dedicated and so committed and they work so hard, and they take such pride, in the services that they deliver.

So, my resolution, really, when it comes to The City, is to continue to work hard with my colleagues, work with current Council and listen to Calgarians to really make sure I understand what's important to them, to make sure that we are delivering what they want.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Stuart?

STUART DALGLEISH

Jose, I've got probably a couple, if that's okay on The City side of things. You know, one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I know our team and David's senior team is thinking about, is that Calgary is fast getting to a place where we're going to be a city of 2 million people. And I think a lot about that. 

And so, one of my resolutions, and it's probably a continuing one, is to continue to lean in on, what are the things that Calgary needs to have to make sure that it's that city of 2 million people. David talked about the Green Line, the, the big projects that we have, the big infrastructure projects, the big transformational things that we're doing that we need. Whether it's Arts Commons, whether it's an event centre, whether it's focusing on the Green Line, those big initiatives. So, I think one of mine is thinking about that city of 2 million people and making sure that we're doing and delivering one of the big things that we need to deliver on to, to be at that city and at that place. 

The second is really around what David had to say listening to Calgarians. And one of the things that I want to do more is, is listen to Calgarians and in different ways, look at what we're hearing and seeing in 311. And this is really about day-to-day service delivery. Look at what we're hearing and seeing on 311. Look at the surveys that we do. I do talk to individual Calgarians and individual businesses and listen to them. In fact, I've got a meeting this afternoon with somebody and so I think more in the way of listening and thinking about how what I'm hearing, can translate into being better, doing things differently and being responsive to Calgarians and what they need every day in this city. So, there's a couple. 

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Well, I know you're such busy individuals. I really appreciate you taking some time to sit down with me. Anything I forgot to ask you. Anything you'd like to add? 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Stuart said a lot, so.

STUART DALGLEISH

I think really it is a privilege to serve Calgary. It's a privilege to work with David and his team and our team of 15 thousand plus, staff members at The City and our Council and serve a great community. One in which, we both work, but we also we also live, and that’s something that I really enjoy and appreciate. Thank you. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

And if I could add on to that. If you think of our local challenges, national challenges, global challenges. We are so blessed to live in the best city, in the best country. I take great pride in working with my 15 thousand colleagues and City Council and again, listening to Calgarians and making sure that we continue to be and will always be a world-class city.

JOSE RODRIGUEZ

Thank you both again. 

STUART DALGLEISH

Thank you. 

DAVID DUCKWORTH

Thanks Jose.