Alberta premier orders Edmonton to reverse decade-long densification policies

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced on a call-in program that Edmonton must reverse its recent housing densification measures within three months, accusing the federal Housing Accelerator Fund of bribing municipalities to allow higher-density development. The fund, created in the 2022 budget and launched in 2023, provides money for cities to increase housing units on residential lots and speed up approvals, but it never mandated the specific eight-unit or 16-unit configurations Smith cited.

Experts such as Mike Moffatt and former planning director Kalen Anderson stress that Edmonton’s densification policies started in 2015 to address local affordability and were already underway before any federal money arrived. While the province frames the move as correcting “bad federal policy,” Mayor Jeromy Farkas condemned it as a “disturbing attack on local democracy.” The city’s earlier initiatives, including parking flexibility and lot-splitting, were intended to curb suburban sprawl and manage growth toward a two-million-person target. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has yet to determine how the reversal will affect future federal funding.