CALGARY—City councillors met with Alberta’s new municipal affairs minister for the first time last week — but only council members who support “pro-business” policies were invited, Star Calgary has learned.

The United Conservative government’s Municipal Affairs Minister Kaycee Madu sat down with nine members of council on July 9 at McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s meeting space in Calgary. But Mayor Naheed Nenshi, as well as councillors Druh Farrell and Evan Woolley, said this week that they didn’t receive invites.

It’s unclear how Madu’s office determined which councillors support “pro-business” policies, and the meeting raises questions about how the new UCP government plans to engage with Alberta’s municipal governments.

In a statement, Madu’s press secretary said the meeting was “an excellent meet-and-greet during Stampede with members of council who support cutting taxes, reducing red tape and getting Calgarians back to work.”

The meeting was “open to all,” according to the spokesperson, but “invites were extended to members who want to see pro-business, pro-growth policies brought into effect.”

Councillors Ward Sutherland, Joe Magliocca, Jyoti Gondek, Sean Chu, George Chahal, Jeff Davison, Jeromy Farkas and Peter Demong were among the attendees, according to councillors who were there. Two councillors who were at the meeting said Gian-Carlo Carra also showed up despite not being invited. Carra declined to comment on the meeting.

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It’s unclear whether councillors Ray Jones, Shane Keating or Diane Colley-Urquhart were invited, but they weren’t at the meeting, according to their colleagues. Keating said he knew of the meeting but wasn’t sure if he received an official invite. Star Calgary requested a list of the councillors who received invites, but the province didn’t provide it.

Madu’s spokesperson said the minister is organizing another meet-and-greet with the rest of council soon, “where he will impress the need to give Calgary families and businesses a break.”

Woolley, one of the councillors who didn’t get a July 9 invite, said it’s not necessarily strange for councillors to have an informal sit-down with provincial MLAs or ministers. But he called it “odd and perplexing” that a group of city politicians would be excluded based on specific criteria.

“As someone who has spent a significant part of my last six years on council fighting and bringing forward some of the biggest pieces of municipal legislation to support the small business community, I find it odd to have not been invited if that was the premise of who was invited,” he said.

Farrell also said the meeting strikes her as unusual, adding that she’s looking forward to working with the new minister and the provincial government to make Calgary stronger.

“The city is non-partisan and that’s one of our strengths,” she told Star Calgary. “It’s critical that we don’t have groupthink or tribal thinking.”

Calgary city councillors aren’t organized under political party banners in council chambers, but some make their partisan affiliations publicly known. Some of the councillors invited to the July 9 meeting have publicly declared their support for the UCP in the past, with Chu, Magliocca and Farkas all endorsing Premier Jason Kenney during the provincial election.

Magliocca said the meeting was “just about Calgary — what’s the plan, what’s the vision,” noting that, “There’s a new sheriff in town.”

Asked why some of his council colleagues didn’t receive invites, Magliocca said the provincial government would have to answer that question, but added, “I think they have different visions.” Carra, he said, was an “uninvited guest.”

Chu said that at the meeting, the minister and councillors talked about “how we can all work together.”

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“We’re going to have a better working relationship than before with the previous (NDP) Alberta government,” Chu said.

Mayor Nenshi has yet to have a sit-down with Madu more than two months after the minister was sworn in. Nenshi said his office has been working with Madu to set up a time to meet. The day the minister met with other council members, the mayor was in the Netherlands, where he was invited to speak on a panel at the Urban Resiliency Summit.

University of Calgary political scientist Jack Lucas said the relationship between cities and provincial governments tends to shift in the wake of a change of power. City councillors and UCP caucus members were supposed to have a first meeting at city hall last month, but the gathering was cancelled.

“The relationship between the municipal and provincial government in so many ways is quite informal. It depends on relationships of trust and counting on each other to follow through on commitments,” he said.

“That just makes all of this informal stuff that much more important.”

According to a study Lucas led, most Calgary councillors are publicly viewed as leaning right on the political spectrum. And nearly all of the councillors at the July 9 meeting are in that category.

In a survey done in 2018, participants in each municipal ward were asked to rank the political standing of their councillors from 0 to 10, with zero representing the political left and 10 representing the political right. Nine of the 14 councillors were ranked at an average of a five or above.

“It definitely confirms there’s a group of councillors perceived to be on the right,” Lucas said.

Carra, Woolley and Farrell — the councillors who were confirmed to not have received invites — are all perceived as leaning more left, according to the data.

Chahal’s average score of 4.5 also places him in the political left, but Lucas noted that there was a poor sample size in the councillor’s Ward 5, making it a less reliable indicator. Gondek lands right in the middle, with an average score of 5.

Lucas’s data is based on a survey done between Nov. 14 and Dec. 13 last year, with respondents being recruited for an online survey via random digit dialing. The margin of error for a total of 1,975 people surveyed is 2.2 per cent.

With files from Trevor Howell

Correction — July 19, 2019: A previous version of this article misstated the month the meeting took place. The story has been updated.

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