Alberta premier says housing minister working to help Calgary keep federal housing money

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks to CTV Question Period host Vassy Kapelos, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026.

On Tuesday, members of the Calgary planning commission will discuss the risks that come with repealing blanket rezoning.

About $129 million from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) is frozen until there is clarity on the status of blanket rezoning.

The paused federal funds support several key housing strategies, including secondary units, converting downtown office space into residential units and accelerating affordable housing development.

On her radio call-in show Saturday, premier Danielle Smith said that uncertainty was one reason for the Provincial Priorities Act, forcing the federal government to negotiate with the province which prevents municipalities from agreeing to certain terms to receive federal funding for projects.

“We’ve got 320 municipalities we need to protect, so we drafted some laws that had been in place in Quebec for a long time, saying that if you want to deal with spending in our area of jurisdiction, you’ve got to go through us,” Smith said.

“And then we will be, through our power over municipalities, we will be the ones to make sure it’s distributed fairly,” she added.

“It was a bit too late for those (municipal governments) who signed agreements in advance (of the passing of the Provincial Priorities Act),” Smith said, “but my housing minister Jason Nixon is working, he’s heavily engaged with Calgary and with the CMHC and with the federal government to allow them to keep their money without getting punished.”

The City of Red Deer recently had $12 million in federal funding for its housing accelerator program cancelled when council backed down on making zoning changes to allow up to four units per residential lot.

Calgary city council will hold a public hearing on blanket rezoning on March 23.

The City of Calgary issued a clarifying statement to CTV News, saying that funding for housing was not on pause.

“We believe that Housing Accelerator Funding, as well as other streams of federal funding programs, may be at risk in the context of potential changes to our zoning policy,” they said.

“At this point in time, Calgary is currently in full compliance of our HAF agreement. And importantly, as of December 31, 2025, we have achieved 136 per cent of our overall supply target in just 24 months, incentivizing over 58,000 homes for over 125,000 Calgarians.”

Wednesday, a city committee was presented with a report that said repealing blanket rezoning could put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding at risk.

Scrapping the rezoning bylaw “may result in The City being deemed to be non-compliant with its HAF Contribution Agreement (HAF Agreement) with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)” to the tune of $861 million, the report states.

Councillors are set to decide the fate of the blanket rezoning bylaw next month after a public hearing.

“The City is exceeding HAF Agreement targets for market units. However, several City initiatives depend on the last two advancements of HAF funding to support the development of affordable units and its associated targets,” reads the briefing from city administration.

With files from CTV’s Jordan Kanygin