The City of Calgary’s top bureaucrat remains on the job amid a growing sentiment from a group of city councillors that, in the wake of the city’s water issues, a change is needed in senior leadership.
The calls for accountability come after the Bearspaw feeder main, which carries 60 per cent of the city’s drinking water, ruptured for a second time in less than two years.
An independent panel tasked with reviewing the circumstances that led up to the pipe’s original failure in June 2024 found systemic issues with the management of the city’s water system dating back two decades, including repeated deferred inspections and gaps in oversight and governance.
Although the panel’s report did not blame the feeder main’s issues on any specific individual or single decision, some councillors told reporters Tuesday that they’d like to see somebody fired in “the upper echelons.”
“It’s been clear from Calgarians that somebody needs to take responsibility for this,” Ward 1 Coun. Kim Tyers said. “If we can show the public that we’re serious about this and that we’re serious about accountability, maybe that would be a good way forward.”
Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean stopped short of providing specific names, but said he wants to see change “at the top.”
“We’ve heard a lot in these reports about culture, about a culture change,” McLean said. “If you want culture to change, maybe it has to start at the top.”
Under the Municipal Government Act, the only city employee who can be hired or dismissed by city council is the chief administrative officer, David Duckworth, who has served in the role since 2019.
When asked about the situation, Duckworth told reporters he and his team are “laser-focused” on getting the Bearspaw feeder main back into service and implementing a series of recommendations laid out by the independent panel.
“It’s an honour to serve Calgarians, city council and city administration as the chief administrative officer,” Duckworth said. “It would be up to city council to have that conversation if they don’t want me here.”
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Councillors on the city’s executive committee spent much of Tuesday evening behind closed doors for a pre-planned discussion on the process and metrics for Duckworth’s upcoming performance review.
Global News has learned a vote on Duckworth’s future did not take place during that discussion, nor could it, according to Calgary’s mayor.
“It’s a fundamental misunderstanding in terms of any type of changes to contract,” Jeromy Farkas told Global News. “That type of thing can’t happen at our executive committee; that’s a decision that legally can only happen at a council meeting.”
At one point, Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot left the closed-door session over concerns the conversation had devolved from what was on the agenda, which was the metrics of the CAO’s performance review.
“For a council that’s talked about being transparent and open about all of their activities, this is not being transparent and open,” Chabot told Global News. “I did not want to be party to discussions that I felt were inappropriate based on what we had put on the agenda.”
Council emerged after nearly four hours in closed session and approved a series of recommendations aimed at tightening up the measures and standards of Duckworth as part of his performance review in the coming months.
Farkas said previous councils “played it really loose” when it comes to the standards around managing the CAO’s performance, and that the new standards include “very strict” expectations for the CAO.
“This council is going to be operating very differently than previous councils, we’re going to be very specific of what we expect from our city manager,” Farkas said. “If our city manager doesn’t perform, all options are on the table including possibly termination.”
However, not everyone on council is in favour of a change to senior city management.
Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness accused some of her colleagues of being on a “witch hunt” instead of communicating the need to reduce water consumption until the pipe is fixed. City data shows water consumption has been well above the 485-million-litre daily threshold deemed sustainable while the feeder main is out of service.
“We still haven’t hit the green zone,” Wyness said. “Meanwhile, we’re sitting here discussing and being asked questions by the media about what we’re going to do with our CAO.”
Earlier in the day, city councillors grilled city administration during an interim update on implementing the independent panel’s recommendations.
City officials told councillors that administration has already begun work on some of the recommendations after receiving a “High Priority Action Report” from the panel on Oct. 15, 2025, which wasn’t passed on to city council at the time.
Ward 14 Coun. Landon Johnston questioned why that high-level report was only provided to council last week as part of the independent panel’s full findings.
“Budget could’ve been a whole lot different had we seen this report,” he told administration.
City officials told councillors that it was a draft report to allow administration to determine if it needed budget approval to move forward with the panel’s most urgent recommendations.
Duckworth said administration had the resources to begin work on implementing the recommendations without the need for an additional funding request, and that prior to the feeder main’s rupture on Dec. 30, 2025, there were two sessions planned with council in January to go over those urgent recommendations.
“There were no intentions to withhold or hide information,” Duckworth told reporters. “Administration has acted on all the panel’s high-priority action items, we’re well underway, and we didn’t need additional resources from city council.”
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