Calgary City Council: Decisions increasingly made behind closed doors

[CALGARY, AB] — A Ward 14 councillor is putting a number on what many Calgarians have long suspected: their city government is increasingly making decisions behind closed doors. The question is whether that number is actually accurate.

The Claim Making the Rounds

Ward 14 Councillor Landon Johnston posted on X, claiming the current Calgary City Council has held 18 closed-door meetings "to this point in our term" — compared to just 9 for the previous council at the same stage. That's a doubling of in-camera sessions, and Johnston is putting his name on the stat.

It's a striking number. It's also, right now, an unverified one.

Hot Minute Calgary could not independently confirm Johnston's figures. We're not saying he's wrong. We're saying the receipts aren't public yet, and that gap itself is part of the story.

Why the Rules Actually Allow This

Here's the framework. Alberta's Municipal Government Act (MGA), Section 197, requires council to meet in public — unless a matter qualifies for an exemption under the province's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA). Those exemptions cover things like legal advice, personnel matters, land negotiations, and intergovernmental relations. In other words, legitimate reasons exist for closed meetings. The question is always whether those reasons are being stretched.

The City's own Procedure Bylaw 42M2025, adopted October 29, 2025, is supposed to govern all of this with updated transparency provisions baked in. Council literally rewrote the rulebook — on paper, in the direction of more openness.

The Transparency Scoreboard Looks Complicated

To be fair to the current council, their transparency record isn't purely a story of closed doors. On October 29, 2024, the previous council unanimously passed a Notice of Motion titled "Strengthening Transparency: Improving Engagement with Calgarians." On July 29, 2025, they unanimously voted to publicly disclose the Chief Administrative Officer's full annual compensation package — a move that revealed the CAO's 2025 base salary is $410,000.

And Johnston himself introduced a Notice of Motion on February 1, 2026, to expand the city's "sunshine list" to include names, positions, and exact salaries for any city employee earning over $140,000 annually. That motion was referred back for further work on February 4, 2026. It hasn't landed yet.

What Calgarians Should Actually Be Asking

The hard civic question isn't just "how many closed meetings?" It's "what decisions came out of them, and why couldn't the public watch?" A closed meeting to discuss a city employee's performance review is legally and ethically different from one used to hash out a major land deal or a policy position.

Johnston's post raises the right flag. But until the City Clerk's Office or council itself publishes a transparent breakdown — topic by topic, exemption by exemption — that number of 18 is a signal, not a verdict.

If this council is genuinely committed to the transparency motions they keep unanimously passing, releasing that breakdown would cost them nothing. The fact that it isn't already public is the most interesting data point of all.