Leah HennigEdmonton’s approval of a 6.9 per cent property-tax increase for 2026 has left many councillors frustrated, residents anxious, and the city caught between two competing truths: municipal services cost money, and people are running out of it.
The vote, which some on council supported only reluctantly, reflects a reality cities across Canada are facing. Inflation, population growth, and aging infrastructure don’t pause just because households are squeezed. Transit still needs operators. Roads still need plowing. Emergency services still need funding.
The price of doing all of that has climbed sharply. But so has the cost-of-living for every Edmonton household expected to foot the bill.
That’s the core tension behind this tax hike: it may be financially justified, but that doesn’t make it fair.
City council is not wrong to say service levels would deteriorate without new revenue. Edmonton has spent years trimming budgets, delaying projects, and stretching departments to the limit. There are only so many efficiencies left to find before public safety, mobility, and basic urban maintenance begin to crumble.
Yet the council’s decision also overlooks the cumulative burden on residents. Property owners will see higher bills, and renters — despite not getting a tax notice in the mail — will feel the increase passed through rising rents. Edmonton’s affordability advantage is shrinking, and a near seven per cent tax bump accelerates that shift.
The city can’t solve inflation. But it does have a responsibility to question whether property taxes should remain its primary — and sometimes only — lever.
What this budget debate exposed is the need for structural reform. Edmonton’s revenue model is outdated, and councillors know it. Property taxes alone cannot support a city of over one million people whose expectations for services continue to grow. Yet alternative funding streams — provincial transfers, regional partnerships, user-fee restructuring — remain either limited, contentious, or politically fraught.
That leaves the city in a cycle of annual budget crises, where councillors must choose between raising taxes or cutting services, neither of which is sustainable.
The 2026 budget is a symptom of that imbalance, not the cause.
Residents are right to question whether this hike is too much. Councillors are right to say they had few good options. Both can be true at once.
Where Edmonton goes from here depends on whether council treats this year’s discomfort as a warning. If the city continues relying on property taxes as its financial backbone, we will likely repeat this debate in 2027 — and the year after that. But if the council uses this moment to push for new revenue models, re-assess spending priorities, and demand clearer commitments from other levels of government, then this tax hike may prove to be a turning point.
Edmonton cannot keep walking this tightrope forever. Eventually, the city will have to choose whether to rebalance its finances, or accept that affordability will continue slipping out of reach.
