Knack speaks on snow removal following trip to sister city in China

Mayor Andrew Knack joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton about what he learned in Harbin China about winter tourism.

The world’s largest Snow and Ice Festival happens every year in Edmonton’s sister city, in Harbin, China. Mayor Andrew Knack was there to learn more about winter tourism and joined CTV Your Morning Edmonton’s Kent Morrison with more on his journey.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: What did you learn on this trip?

Andrew Knack: So much. I think there’s a lot of great economic development opportunities, learning opportunities and exchange opportunities that we have with our sister city in Harbin. We’ve been sister cities for 40 years. They’re a post secondary leader in China. We’re a post secondary leader here in Alberta. They do incredible work around the ice and snow economy, both on the tourism side with that festival, but also how they manage snow and ice in a winter city that’s a very similar climate to Edmonton. I see a lot of potential economic development opportunities and winter tourism opportunities, things that we’re going to work on. We’re hopefully going to welcome the mayor of Harbin later this year and we’re so excited about what the future of our sister city relationship will look like and how we can leverage each other’s strengths going forward.

Kent: This is happening the week before Mark Carney is going to China to extend trade talks. How much is on the line for Edmonton with this warming of relations with China?

Knack: Especially as the City of Edmonton, we haven’t really focused on economic development in a meaningful way in quite some time. As we struggle with the financial realities of managing a city and different changes in funding from other orders of government, we need to work on how we grow our economy, grow our non-residential tax base to help make sure we’re funding the core services that people want. Things like snow removal, which we know are important.

Kent: Let’s talk about snow removal. A lot of people are unhappy with the process from that big snowfall at Christmas time all the way till now. What do you say to people who are frustrated with how the snow clearing has gone?

Knack: They have the right to be frustrated. People were getting stuck on local streets. It doesn’t matter the explanation I can give about the budget that we have and how that’s changed and how city crews were prioritizing getting rid of windrows on main roads. At the end of the day when you’re getting stuck on your local road, that’s justifiable frustration and people want to know what we’re going to be doing differently.

This is why I’ve said as we go throughout 2026 and work to recreate our budget from the ground up, snow removal has to be a critical element of that. We need to properly budget for a city that’s now 1.2-million people, that has far more thousands of kilometers of roads than we did 20 or 30 years ago. Let’s make sure our budget reflects the reality that we’re facing.

Yes, we saw an abnormal amount of snow especially from Christmas Eve all the way through to Jan. 1 and that created challenges. But we can still put in a budget that even if it’s made to reflect a larger snowfall, if we don’t see as large of a snowfall, we can address the concerns we’re seeing more quickly. I get why people are frustrated and I get why people want to see action and this next four-year budget will allow us to take that action.

Kent: What do you want to change?

Knack: I want to make sure we have a proper budget in place. I don’t think even with the increases that we’ve seen each year from 2023, including 2024-26, it hasn’t grown enough to reflect how much our roadway network has grown over the same last 10 to 20 years. We need a budget that’s more reflective of what you see in cities like in Eastern Canada. Ottawa spends about $30 million a year more than we do and they have a smaller roadway network. Montreal spends about five times what we spend, so our budget needs to be larger. It needs to allow us to address the main roads more quickly and then move into local roads more quickly.

Kent: You’ve heard from a lot of people who are angry about the snow clearing, but do you think those people are willing to pay more in taxes to have a bigger snow clearing budget?

Knack: That’s part of the conversation I’ve said we’re going to have throughout 2026, so this budget conversation is not going to be done in city hall. It’s going to be out in the community. We need to go talk with Edmontonians and say, ‘Here’s what it costs to run a city of our size. To run a city of 1.2 million that is as physically large as our city now and if we want to put money in these areas, this is how much it would cost additionally,’ or, ‘here’s what we would be willing to cut in order to fund those things at a higher level.’

That’s part of the work that has to happen. But I think snow removal is one of those services that people just want to see more work in. Even with this abnormally large snowfall, there were previous years during my 12 years on council, when people really got frustrated about the local roads in their community. So I think we need to do better on the local roads.

Kent: Is this as bad as it’s going to get? Do you think it’s going to get better from here?

Knack: Absolutely. The fact is, blading started yesterday so work is already underway. We’re seeing over the next 13 days, at most, all of these local roads will be bladed. That’s important work. It’s going to leave behind some larger windrows, which will also be frustrating for people but I think it’s better to have some larger windrows and much smoother roads than what we have right now. We’ve seen cars, we’ve seen buses, we’ve seen even an emergency vehicle get stuck in the snow. That’s not acceptable.