Alberta rapidly moving towards U.S.-style education funding

Community-focused taxes to fund for education is a U.S. failure; it doesn't need to be Alberta's, too.

Cartoon is AI-generated using Copilot.

Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas let this cat out of the bag— though I don’t think it was intentional. In a Tuesday morning post to remind Calgarians that their annual property taxes were due, the Mayor included two clips from one of now-Premier Danielle Smith’s old videos. To be clear, the Mayor was highlighting the fact that the province increased the education tax portion of the City of Calgary’s tax bill. In 2025, municipalities argued against the education tax increases by the province (invoiced by municipalities) but acknowledged municipalities would face the administrative burden of separating the amounts on the actual bills to better explain where resident’s tax dollars are going.

The video begins with a clip of Danielle Smith saying she agreed with Mayor Gondek; if provincial leaders are going to complain about federal equalization, it’s not fair that they turn around and force equalization from municipalities.

Mayor Farkas agreed, adding that the way the province collects the additional education tax from municipalities would be like the federal government telling provinces to collect taxes in the province’s name— where residents would naturally assume those dollars are funding local services— something any and all of the governing parties of Alberta would surely object to.

Back in 2025, after the adoption of a resolution at the Alberta Municipalities conference to advocate for the government to put their own name to it, then-Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams waived off the concern, just as previous Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard had before him.

“This is not a new responsibility. These funds are a critical and transparent source of revenue that help support the operating costs of schools in every community across the province,” Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Williams wrote in a response to CBC.

“Education property taxes benefit all municipalities by ensuring students have access to quality education no matter where they live.”

“Alberta municipalities adopt resolution to change how taxes for education system are collected”, CBC, November 13, 2025; accessed June 30, 2026

Yes, it’s not new that the province collects education taxes through municipal property taxes, but the UCP did something very different in 2025, which also flies in the face of Minister Williams’ response: the UCP isn’t equalizing education costs anymore.

And that, unfortunately, is yet another one of Yankee Danielle’s attempts to Americanize public services in Alberta.

It’s un-Canadian, and it’s personal

After living in the U.S. for a few years, I missed Canada. It was little things like rarely hearing a Canadian band on the radio or seeing anything about Canada on the news or in the paper that really hit hard. It made it feel like Kansas City was much farther away than it really was.

I fully expected we would come back home eventually but after my first two children were born, there was a hard stop to our little U.S. experiment; because of the school funding problem.

In the U.S., property taxes collected within your community dictate whether your children get a properly-funded education or the teachers are working two jobs so they can purchase books for their classrooms. We lived on Ward Parkway first, in an early 1900’s hotel that had been converted into apartments. The building faced the Plaza and behind it was an especially idyllic-looking U.S. neighbourhood on the higher end of the market. It was a mature area with larger homes, manicured laws, and flags flying. It was quiet and a lovely neighbourhood to walk through during the three nice seasons, spring, fall, and winter. The summers were a grotesque concoction of extreme heat and humidity that growing up in Alberta could not prepare me for.

When I was pregnant with our second child, we needed a bigger place and moved slightly off the Plaza to Walnut Street. The neighbourhood changed. It wasn’t scary or anything, but it was definitely not like the one we left. We lived next to a school then; Episcopalian something or other. I expected it was private. There were no buses, only lines of vehicles dropping off and picking up children each day. It wasn’t a large school, either. It was still a mature neighbourhood but there were more than one block of higher density housing and the houses narrower, and smaller, than the first. The Plaza was a destination— which we could still walk to easily enough— where traffic was limited, every street was lined with shops and boutiques, including a lovely little market with a wine cellar, bars and restaurants, with wide sidewalks and fountains. Our new neighbourhood was not that. Apparently, I’d been spoiled first.

That’s when I started to worry whether our neighbourhood school would be one with proper funding. Truth be told, I couldn’t tell for sure if we would be forced into a crappy school. We didn’t live in what I would have called a “poor” neighbourhood but I was entirely confident that the property taxes of my neighbours were a lot lower than where we were before.

It’s only one of the issues of “independence-minded” decision-making. It also contributes greatly to a cycle of poverty, and privilege, that has absolutely nothing to do with merit. Shockingly enough.

Despite the fact that I didn’t hate the healthcare down there (with the caveat that the top-rated hospital in the state was both within walking distance and covered by spouse’s employer’s insurance) or even feel particularly unsafe (aside from the fact that the front page of the KC Star was detailing last night’s murder every damned day), I knew that I was gambling with my children’s education and that’s where I drew the line.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Prior to Danielle Smith, when the education tax portion of our property taxes increased, it increased by the same amount in every municipality in Alberta. After the UCP refused to bargain with teachers during the strike in 2025, on the basis that the province didn’t have enough money to properly fund education, they decided they would have to get money for education in a decidedly un-Albertan way: by raising taxes to cover the expense.

What they did in practice, however, was increase those taxes unfairly.

As the Mayor pointed out (and not for the first time), Calgary’s taxes were increasing at almost the double the rate of Edmonton’s.

Previously, the Premier has defended that decision by saying that Calgary’s population was growing faster, which put more of a strain on their services, so their residents should bear more of the costs to expand capacity.

The Mayor connected it to equalization, while the Premier effectively severed that connection entirely.

While squinting really hard, it might make sense on a very basic level— Calgary is growing faster, Calgary needs additional teachers and schools, therefore Calgary should bear the brunt of the cost— it goes against how we fund public services.

I always go back to the new K-6 school that was built in Carseland, Alberta. Carseland currently has a population of 525, plus surrounding rural. They probably had fewer residents when the school was built. The population isn’t big enough to warrant K-12, but they didn’t have to fundraise for that school, or see their property taxes hiked up to their eyeballs, because, as Minister Williams said; “education property taxes benefit all municipalities by ensuring students have access to quality education no matter where they live.”

Which is precisely why those tax rates used to be the same across the province.

Instead his party did the opposite by forcing Calgarians to shoulder more of the burden— for a decision the provincial government made, and doubled-down on multiple times, I might add (in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025).

The success of the “Alberta is Calling” campaign is also the foundation for the UCP’s referendum questions on denying those same families access to health and education. Apparently the UCP just thought people would show up to pay taxes and not expect to access any services those taxes pay for.

But I digress.

I have talked about the lenses through which I view political narratives, and politics and today, it hit me that even though we know Danielle Smith is a wannabe Yank, I haven’t always used it. She seems to have this fantasy of creating a Little America in Alberta because she’s constantly trying to pull a Yankee Sway with our public services; as if she thinks that how we do things in Canada is somehow lesser than. I won’t forget again.

And on that note, may I wish a Happy Canada Day to all those who celebrate; to Danielle Smith and the UCP, may I offer the Ralph Klein salute?

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