The Bearspaw South Feedermain Independent Review Panel Final Report made clear that Calgary’s recent water crisis was not only a technical failure, but a governance one. While the City has appropriately moved forward with replacing the failed feeder main, City Administration is now preparing to bring an Implementation Plan to the Executive Committee of Calgary City Council on February 3, 2026. With emergency response and procurement actions underway, the focus has necessarily shifted from fixing what broke to ensuring the right long-term governance is in place to prevent recurrence.
Among the panel’s most significant recommendations is the consideration of a Municipally Controlled Corporation (MCC) for Calgary’s water utility. This recommendation has generated debate, particularly around accountability and oversight. That debate is warranted, but it should be informed by experience and best practice.
Why Governance Structure Matters
I have worked within traditional municipal department structures, including with the former City of Scarborough and the amalgamated City of Toronto, and later served as President and CEO of Calgary Economic Development, a wholly owned municipal corporation, from 2003 to 2015. That experience strongly informs my view that complex, high-risk municipal services benefit from governance models designed specifically for long-term stewardship.
A strong governance board helps solve a persistent municipal challenge: short‑termism. Leaders and staff often manage by annual budgets and performance criteria, while elected officials face additional pressure created by election cycles. A dedicated board provides the discipline of long-horizon oversight, keeping asset integrity, risk, and renewal front and centre even when the most visible priorities compete for attention.
At the same time, governance must be understood correctly. A board is not meant to be “the experts” doing the technical work. Oversight and foresight are the board’s role; the technical expertise must still reside in professional staff with the authority, resources, and culture to execute best practices in asset management, inspection, monitoring, and renewal.
This distinction matters because the engineering community has documented the risks of aging municipal infrastructure for decades. Unfortunately, buried pipes and bridge substructures are not visible, and they rarely come with ribbons to cut. Governance is how a city ensures these essentials are funded and managed before failure forces the issue.
MCCs Are Now Standard Practice
Across North America, MCCs are no longer exceptional. They are now the norm for delivering economic development, tourism marketing, electrical utilities, transit, and other complex municipal services. Calgary’s own experience with ENMAX demonstrates how a municipally owned corporation can combine strong financial performance with disciplined governance.
The issue is not whether water should be “run like a business,” but whether its governance is proportionate to the operational and risk profile of a modern metropolitan water system.
Oversight, Not Abandonment of Accountability
Some members of City Council have expressed concern about moving away from direct elected oversight. It is important to be clear: an MCC does not remove democratic accountability. Council retains ownership, sets policy direction, approves financial frameworks, and appoints the board. What changes is how oversight is exercised, from episodic reporting to continuous, expert governance.
Concerns about executive and board compensation should also be placed in context. Governance costs must be weighed against the far greater costs of governance failure, costs made visible during city‑wide water restrictions and emergency repairs.
Institutional Knowledge and the Reality of Turnover
The Independent Review Panel’s findings also highlight a structural reality facing City Council. Following the 2021 municipal election, a majority of councillors were either newly elected or new to Council experience. This was followed by the October 2025 election, when ten of fourteen councillors were newly elected.
Becoming an effective councillor involves a steep learning curve even under stable conditions. Expecting continuity of technical oversight for highly specialized, long-cycle infrastructure amid repeated turnover is unrealistic — and unfair. Governance models must account for this reality.
This reality is reinforced by public comments from both current and former members of Calgary City Council, who have stated in media interviews that they were not made aware, or not sufficiently informed, of the severity of the maintenance, risk, and operating issues associated with the Bearspaw South Feeder Main before its failure. This is not a reflection of individual capability or diligence; it is evidence of a governance model that did not reliably surface critical risk information to decision-makers in a form that compelled action.
When elected officials themselves acknowledge that they did not know enough to ask the right questions, the conclusion is unavoidable: the system of oversight failed.
This article comes forward as City Administration prepares to present an Implementation Plan to the Executive Committee on February 3, 2026. With the immediate repair response underway, the focus must now shift to ensuring the right governance framework is in place to prevent recurrence.
Administration’s Proposed Reforms: Progress, but Not the Destination
City Administration has since brought forward recommendations to the Executive Committee to hire a Chief Operating Officer for Water Services and establish a Water Utility Oversight Board within a City department structure. These proposals represent an important acknowledgement that enhanced expertise and focus are required.
However, these measures should be understood as steps in the right direction, not the end state. Embedding an oversight board within a traditional department model, supported by City Administration, still leaves accountability diffused and governance constrained by broader corporate structures.
In practice, this approach represents a half measure when compared to a fully realized Municipally Controlled Corporation. An MCC provides clearer lines of accountability, a stronger governance mandate for the board, and greater independence to adopt and enforce best practices in asset management, risk oversight, and long-term capital planning, all while remaining wholly owned by the City and aligned with Council policy and financial oversight.
Seen this way, City Administration’s recommendations should be viewed as a transitional foundation upon which a more robust MCC model can be deliberately evaluated and, where appropriate, implemented.
Looking Beyond Water
The water crisis also presents an opportunity for City Council to take a more proactive approach to governance. Rather than revisiting service-delivery models only when systems fail, Council could initiate a structured review across major service lines over its four-year budget cycle. Such a review would assess where city departments remain appropriate and where MCCs, oversight boards, or alternative delivery models may provide better value and risk management.
This work should draw explicitly on best practices shared through the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), ensuring that lessons from peer cities translate into local action. It would also send a clear signal to City Administration that Calgary expects best-in-class service delivery across its peer organizations.
If critical services are governed through subsidiaries (such as power and potentially water), Council should also be transparent about what this means for the broader municipal structure: what stays centralized, what becomes specialized, how accountabilities are set, and how local expertise, including many of my civic-minded colleagues at Osborne Interim Management, can be retained and empowered. The City of Calgary already employs many highly skilled professionals. The question is whether the governance model gives them the authority, support, and clarity of mandate to consistently bring forward uncomfortable truths and act on them.
Broader Alberta Context
Media coverage in recent months has underscored that Calgary is not alone. The Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) has warned that municipalities across Alberta face a growing infrastructure maintenance challenge, particularly for roads, bridges, culverts, and utilities such as water and wastewater systems. RMA’s work has estimated a multi‑billion‑dollar rural infrastructure deficit and projected that, without intervention, the gap will grow significantly over the coming years.
This broader context reinforces the central point of the Independent Review Panel: governance and asset stewardship are not optional. They are the mechanisms by which municipalities protect residents, maintain economic reliability, and deliver value for money over the life of critical infrastructure.
Conclusion
The recommendation to consider an MCC for Calgary’s water utility is not a reactionary response to failure. It reflects established best practice for governing complex, high‑risk municipal services. With an implementation plan now imminent, Calgary has an opportunity to strengthen governance in a way that supports Council, protects residents, and better aligns oversight with the realities of modern infrastructure stewardship.
Bruce Graham
Senior Advisor
