EDMONTON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) today released the results of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the City of Calgary, clearly showing the city refuses to release their research or future plans for new municipal taxing powers.

This past summer, the CTF filed its FOI to obtain City of Calgary documents used to prepare their request to the province for six new municipal taxes. Of the eleven documents obtained by the CTF, seven had many blanked-out pages. Fortunately, table of contents pages were provided for some of the seven documents, indicating in many cases, the pages withheld by the city contained proposed rates, revenue calculations and evaluations for 15 potential new taxes.

One 23 page document had 21 blanked-out pages; another 53 page document had 32 blanked-out pages. In total, of the 190 pages in these seven documents 121 pages were blanked-out in whole or in part.

On August 21, the CTF sent a letter to Mayor Bronconnier, requesting he provide the blanked-out pages. To date, no response has been received.

"With this being the International 'Right to Know' week - marking the importance of freedom of information laws - it's time the City of Calgary let taxpayers know their plans and calculations for new civic taxing powers," said CTF-Alberta director Scott Hennig.

"And with Mayor Bronconnier stating earlier this week he no longer wants new taxing powers for the city, why is he and the city refusing to release this information," questioned Hennig. "This refusal should make taxpayers wonder whether the mayor is serious about his commitment not to hit Calgarians with a pile of new taxes."

The City of Calgary used Section 24 of the FOI Act to withhold this information. Section 24 gives public bodies the legal option to refuse disclosure if they deem the information to be "advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options."

"It's time for the province to change the FOI laws to give the media, CTF and all taxpaying citizens better access to government information," concluded Hennig. "Too often, publicly important but politically sensitive documents are labelled as advice, just so Section 24 can be used to thwart public access. Section 24 must be repealed."

PDF copies of the seven documents can be found here:

Document 1: Evaluating Potential Municipal Finance Options
(21 of 23 pages withheld - no table of contents)

Document 2: Alberta's Competitive Advantage: Empowering Municipalities with New Municipal Revenue Sources - April 28, 2006
(32 of 53 pages withheld - table of contents provided)

Document 3: Alberta's Competitive Advantage: Empowering Municipalities with New Municipal Revenue Sources - May 2006
(18 of 36 pages withheld - table of contents provided)

Document 4: Alberta's Competitive Advantage: Empowering Municipalities with New Municipal Revenue Sources - August 2006
(20 of 33 pages withheld - table of contents provided)

Document 5: Alberta's Competitive Advantage: Empowering Municipalities with New Municipal Revenue Sources - Presentation - August 2006
(18 of 23 pages withheld - no table of contents)

Document 6: Alberta's Competitive Advantage: Empowering Municipalities with New Municipal Revenue Sources - Presentation - October 2006
(7 of 11 pages withheld - no table of contents)

Document 7: Revenues to Support Municipal Sustainability - Presentation - December 8, 2006
(5 of 11 pages withheld - no table of contents)