Edmonton has three months to roll back its housing rules after Premier Danielle Smith ordered the city to undo its work on densification.
The premier blamed the federal government for paying cities to replace single-family houses on residential lots with buildings for 16 families and no parking. Speaking on a call-in radio program Saturday, Smith called money from the federal Housing Accelerator Fund a “bribe” to get councils to allow more housing and said Alberta was undoing “bad federal policy.”
But that explanation ignores Edmonton’s housing ambitions and the city’s choices to pursue them, said Mike Moffatt, a housing expert and founding director of the Missing Middle Initiative.
The federal fund gives cities money for changes such as allowing more homes on residential lots and speeding up approvals. It did not specifically require Edmonton to allow eight homes on a single lot — its current maximum — or reduce the space between buildings and neighbouring property lines, Moffatt said.
That work started in 2015, long before the federal government got involved, in response to the city’s own housing and affordability needs. The Housing Accelerator Fund was established in the 2022 budget and launched in 2023.
Expensive suburbs drove densification
By the time the Housing Accelerator Fund got moving three years ago, Edmonton had already done much of what the federal government was asking other Canadian cities to do, said Kalen Anderson, a former city planning director who now leads the building industry association BILD Edmonton Metro. “We were already making all of these decisions with or without that funding,” she said.
Anderson said Edmonton included housing changes it had already approved in its federal funding plan. The money helped pay for downtown student housing, faster permits and water and sewer upgrades to serve new homes. Cities like Calgary and Red Deer are more likely to have changed their housing rules to get federal money than Edmonton, she added.
Calgary repealed its rezoning policy earlier this year after public opposition. Smith supported the reversal, but Mayor Jeromy Farkas described provincial interference in city decisions as a “disturbing attack on local democracy.”
Edmonton’s years of work gave it a head start, helping it become one of the fund’s top-performing cities, as Canada’s National Observer previously reported.
That work began more than a decade ago, Mayor Andrew Knack told Canada’s National Observer in May. The city could not afford — financially or environmentally — to keep spreading into new suburbs, he said. Knack described suburban expansion as the biggest driver of property tax increases over the last 30 years. Meanwhile, some older neighbourhoods were losing residents, contributing to school closures and leaving businesses with fewer customers.
Edmonton was preparing to grow to two million people, Anderson said, with half its additional housing in new suburbs and half in existing neighbourhoods. Allowing eight homes on a lot was one way to make room.
Anderson said the 16 homes Smith described are spread across two lots that used to be one. Around 2014–15, Edmonton began allowing 50-foot-wide lots to be split into two 25-foot-wide lots, she said. With eight homes on each, land that a decade ago held one house could hold 16.
Edmonton’s parking changes also predated the federal fund. In 2020, it became the first major Canadian municipality to let builders choose how much parking to provide. Building parking spaces adds to housing costs, so builders could leave them out if residents would not need them, Anderson said. But many eight-home developments had no parking, leaving residents to find space on the street.
Even after years of public meetings, some residents only understood what the new rules allowed when larger buildings started going up next door, Anderson said. The city should expect to adjust its rules based on what works, she said.
“Those are big changes, so we’re not going to get them right out of the gate,” she said.
Knack said the city had lowered building height limits and changed spacing rules in response to residents’ concerns. “There was a desire for refinement, not a desire to undo this work,” he said.
The mayor’s office told Canada’s National Observer in an email response that it had received no details beyond the province’s announcement, which did not specify precisely how the province expects cities to comply with its de-densification order. Without knowing exactly what Edmonton must change, it could not assess the consequences for federal funding.
‘Easier to make Ottawa the villain’
This isn’t the first time a province has told cities to change their housing rules. In 2023, BC required municipalities to allow three or four homes on many residential lots and six in some locations near frequent bus service. But Moffatt said setting common standards across municipalities, as BC has done, differs from overturning a specific city decision.
He sees a closer parallel in Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s push to remove Toronto bike lanes — another fight over a city’s decisions that can appeal to voters who live outside the cities.
Moffatt described Smith’s push as a sign of a shift toward right-wing populism, with premiers increasingly stepping into decisions normally left to local councils.
The fight comes days before Alberta’s Oct. 19 referendum, which includes questions about seeking more provincial power and whether to hold a binding vote on leaving Canada. In a booklet sent to households, the province says Ottawa uses conditions attached to federal funding to interfere in provincial decisions.
“I think it’s a lot easier to make Ottawa the villain than a fellow Albertan,” Moffatt said.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has not yet decided whether the changes will affect Edmonton’s or Calgary’s funding, Piper McWilliams, senior communications advisor to the Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, told Canada’s National Observer in an email response. The federal agency checks each city’s yearly report on its housing commitments before deciding on further payments. Those reports are not yet due.
“Our singular goal remains ensuring that we can deliver on building affordable housing for Albertans,” McWilliams said.
Sonal Gupta / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer.
Copyright 2026, Canada’s National Observer. All rights reserved.
Sonal Gupta, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada’s National Observer.