November 5, 2026:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Calgary, AB – A report released Thursday reveals that Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, while serving as mayor of Calgary, received an independent expert report warning of serious governance, accountability, and financial shortcomings within Calgary’s water utility, but chose to hide the majority of recommendations in the report from Calgary City Council.
If those hidden recommendations had been shared with Calgary City Council and implemented, Calgarians could have been spared from the chaos of repeated water main breaks and a substantial increase in their water rates.
In 2016, Nenshi and Calgary city administration received a draft-final independent review containing nine priority recommendations to improve oversight, transparency, and the long-term sustainability of Calgary’s water system. Despite the importance of the findings, Calgary City Council never received the complete report and was only presented with four of the nine recommendations through a council subcommittee.
Nearly a decade later, following Calgary’s unprecedented water infrastructure failures that impacted everything from the Calgary Stampede in 2024 to New Year’s Eve in 2025, Calgary’s independent review of the Bearspaw South Feeder Main, prepared by Siegfried Kiefer, reached many of the same conclusions.
“Naheed Nenshi had the report. He had the recommendations. He had every opportunity to act. But he decided instead to ignore key recommendations in the report and to hide it from all city councillors,” said MLA for Chestermere-Strathmore Chantelle de Jonge, whose riding receives treated water from Calgary’s water distribution network. “For someone who never misses an opportunity to tell Albertans how everything should be managed, Naheed Nenshi had remarkably little interest in acting when experts put real problems on his desk.”
According to available data, Calgary spent just 54 per cent of the national average on water utility infrastructure investment during Nenshi’s time as mayor. While municipalities across Canada were upgrading aging infrastructure and planning for the future, Nenshi kept kicking critical projects down the road and failed to spend money that had already been approved for the job. Instead, he spent hundreds of millions on vanity projects like the big blue ring and the aptly nicknamed ‘Nenshi Towers’ on 16th Avenue.
At the same time:
- Water loss rates in Calgary’s system increased from approximately 10 per cent in the early 2000s to roughly 20 per cent by 2021.
- Water utility rates increased by more than 78 per cent.
- More than $1.1 billion was transferred from the water utility into general municipal revenues rather than being reinvested into critical infrastructure.
- Multiple recommendations to improve utility funding, governance, and long-term sustainability were never implemented.
For years, Nenshi has attempted to sell himself as the smartest guy in the room – but his record tells another story. When experts put a warning in front of him about Calgary’s water system, he failed to act. Nearly ten years later, after two major infrastructure failures, another independent report arrived at many of the same conclusions.
“Calgarians paid the price for his failures. They got higher water rates, aging infrastructure, and many of the same problems experts warned about nearly a decade earlier,” said de Jonge. “Albertans should take note, because if this is how Naheed Nenshi managed one of Calgary’s most critical public assets, there’s little reason to believe he would do any better managing the province.”
Unlike Naheed Nenshi and the Alberta NDP, United Conservatives are focused on responsible leadership, maintaining critical infrastructure, and ensuring Albertans are never left paying the bill for years of NDP-style neglect and mismanagement.
-30-
