Danielle Smith blames former Calgary mayor Nenshi for city’s water woes

If Premier Danielle Smith wants to assign political responsibility for Calgary’s water failures, she can’t exempt herself from the timeline.

The second catastrophic break occurred under her premiership, after the first failure in 2024 had already established that the Bearspaw feeder main was a critical, high-risk asset. At that point, the issue was no longer hypothetical or historical—it was an active, province-level risk to public safety and economic continuity.

Smith’s government has broad authority over municipal frameworks, infrastructure funding, and regulatory oversight. If she now believes provincial oversight of municipal water systems is necessary, that raises an obvious question: why wasn’t that oversight initiated after the first break? The risk was known. The vulnerability was proven. The opportunity to intervene existed.

Instead, the province remained hands-off—until the pipe failed again. Only then did the rhetoric shift to blame and retroactive scrutiny.

You can’t argue that municipalities alone bear responsibility while simultaneously suggesting the province may need to step in. Either this is a local matter—in which case blaming a former mayor is pointless—or it’s a structural infrastructure issue with provincial implications, in which case inaction after a known failure is itself a choice.

Infrastructure doesn’t fail on election cycles. But responsibility does track timelines. And on that front, Smith isn’t commenting from the sidelines—she’s in the frame.