Candidate for Councillor
1. Will you vote to repeal or remove the vacancy tax if elected? Why or why not?
I think it is unlikely that a motion to completely repeal or remove the vacancy tax would be successful based on councillor votes in the past. I would motion, however, that the tax is not implemented for the 2026/27 year (at the very least) for the following reasons:
- The current council has created a new Property Tax Taskforce (to convene in November 2025) “To engage interest holders in a review of the Town’s municipal tax policies, principles, targets and metrics, including tax classifications and mill rates, and to provide advice to Council on an appropriate level of taxation between subclasses.”
- This indicates to me council recognizes more work needs to be done, and the new council needs to move forward after this taskforce has made their recommendations.
- This tax is before the Court of Appeal. Any implementation of the tax needs to be reconsidered once that decision is handed down.
- The Minister of Municipal Affairs has been directed to “Develop and implement a strategy to protect Albertans from specialized municipal taxes directed at homes that are not a primary residence.”
- I have heard from community members, both full-time and part-time, who are not in favour of this tax as it has been presented.
- The tax has created a divisiveness that does not align with Canmore’s values.
2. What ideas do you have to fund, incentivize or otherwise address housing in Canmore, aside from a vacancy tax?
I have heard many ideas from community members including pursuing Municipality Resort Status, removing barriers for private businesses to build/fund affordable housing, creating a housing affordability committee to make recommendations to council, leveraging the communal knowledge of Canmore residents (full- and part-time) who have “out of the box” ideas, providing incentives to developers to provide more affordable housing units in their new builds, and considering a private investment type approach to fund new affordable housing.
There are also new finance models that could leverage land that the town already has access to that would serve as a long-term investment into perpetual affordable development. All of these ideas need to be explored and considered.
3. How will you bring more accountability and effective governance to the Council and Administration?
As a consultant, I work directly with organizations on strategic planning and leadership, and I know the importance of operational review. I think there is a great opportunity for the new council to move forward with a third-party review (understanding there is a cost associated with this) to identify areas of strengths and areas for improvement. This review would give the new council a confident starting point to address any accountability and/or governance issues that may exist.
I also think the new council needs to ensure they are authentically engaging with the community before they make decisions on projects that have a broad impact on the town and/or interest groups and not just “checking a box” for community engagement.
The new council needs to ensure they are well informed about decisions before administration makes recommendations, and they need to be comfortable, and have the competence, to ask critical questions before they vote on those recommendations.
4. Do you support Canmore pursuing Resort Municipality Status as a means of raising funds for the operation of the Town? Why or why not?
Yes. There is an opportunity to receive funding through visitor spend that can be directly put into affordable housing, infrastructure, operations, and environmental initiatives in Canmore. We have seen our visitor numbers grow exponentially in recent years, and we will continue to welcome visitors to our community. Being able to receive funding from those visitors, who put strain on our resources, will take some of the burden away from our full- and part-time residents.
5. Do you believe the province is supportive of the vacancy tax initiative?
The recent letter from the Premier to the Minister of Municipal Affairs clearly demonstrates a lack of support for the vacancy tax initiative.
6. Why do you think the town spends so much money on external consultants, including lawyers? Is that a worthwhile spend?
To simplify, I would break this down into two types of consultants:
- Proactive consultants, such as environmental experts, when the town needs expertise that does not exist in-house. For example, consulting wildfire experts to determine the best path forward for wildfire mitigation that endeavours to protect our town and environmental impact consultants to guide best-practice decision-making for our changing environmental priorities. Yes, I think this is a worthwhile spend.
- Reactive consultants, such as lawyers, when the town needs expertise because they are facing legal litigation for decisions they made that do not comply with municipal and/or provincial legislation. No, I do not think this is a worthwhile spend as decisions should be complying with legislation and not requiring legal defense.