Top 3 Issues in the upcoming Calgary Election. Affordable Housing, Education, Public Safety.
- pritimama .
- Oct 7
- 2 min read
Housing Affordability
Housing demand – and real estate prices – soared as a result, while the end of lockdown measures caused inflation to spike, peaking at a 40-year high of 8.1% in June 2022.
Fast forward to today, and it’s a very different economic climate. Inflation has now been lowered to 1.9% (as of August 2025), and the Bank of Canada is poised to resume cutting rates, after implementing seven in a row between June 2024, and March 2025, which brought its overnight lending rate back down to 2.75%. Most recently, it cut its rate again in its September announcement, bringing it to 2.5%.
Policymakers emphasized they will continue monitoring the effects of tariffs, weakening exports, and consumer demand before making further moves.
Bond markets have also adjusted to the expectation of a rate cut. The Government of Canada’s five-year bond yield has declined into the 2.6% range, prompting some lenders to trim their fixed mortgage offerings. The best five-year fixed insured rate now sits at 3.94%.
Canada faces a housing affordability challenge. For many years, housing prices and rents in Vancouver and Toronto attracted attention from all over the world. Over time, these increases came to burden many Canadians and their children. Low-income and some middle-class households struggle to even find a place to live, let alone at a price they can afford.
On a wider scale, the productivity of the Canadian economy suffers from unaffordable housing as the capacity to attract skilled workers is diminished and the young are deterred from staying in our largest cities partly because of the lack of attainable housing. And Canada’s enormous level of household debt creates a vulnerability in the event of a global economic crisis.
Challenges have become more widespread across Canada since the pandemic.
People grew tired of housing costs and long commutes, and eventually moved to other cities. For many, the ability to work remotely helped this move. This drove up house prices across Canada. Increases in demand cause higher house prices because the housing supply system takes years to adjust.
Education
https://calgary.citynews.ca/2025/09/14/calgarians-housing-education-employment-top-issues-report/
Education
When it comes to education, increased costs, accessibility to “quality learning environments,” and systemic barriers are affecting who can learn.
Parents expressed a challenge in finding affordable and quality early learning programs, while post-secondary students expressed frustration with student debt and limited access to grants or financial aid. Difficulty entering the workforce was also expressed as an issue.
Public Safety
In recent years, city hall has poured millions of dollars into addressing social disorder and making Calgarians feel safer in the transit system.
Among those initiatives, the city has hired dozens of peace officers, started working more closely with homeless outreach organizations, changed its deployment strategy to reduce emergency response times, and changed its bylaws to give officers more tools to address unsafe behaviour.
