Calgary councillor slams 2024 Bearspaw report: ‘A $2 million AI summary’

As the Dec. 30 break of Calgary’s Bearspaw Feeder Main nears final repairs, Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness is raising concerns about the report on the 2024 break released last week.

In a post to social media, she says “a lot of misinformation” is “being perpetrated online and in the media” regarding the report.

Wyness lays out a timeline of when the report was ordered versus its release, saying the publishing of the report with less than 24 hours notice and without public engagement doesn’t reflect good governance or effectiveness from the panel.

The councillor seems to reject the panel’s findings of governance of organizational issues within the city, saying council received three updates following the initial break that went unacknowledged by the panel.

“Why did it take this fourth review 18 months to complete essentially a summary of the preceding reports – and with a budget of up to $2 million for the equivalent of an AI summary,” Wyness wrote. “This feels absurd.”

Wyness has come out against the recommendation to create a city corporation to oversee water services, similar to how electricity is handled through Enmax. She claims this will remove all elected official oversight.

“Op-eds and running the media circuit to force the Mayor and Council’s hand to say yes and skip our responsibility to complete due diligence and engage Calgarians is unacceptable,” she said. “Calgarians should be wary of any independent panel that chooses to run a media campaign after misrepresenting the work that is currently happening and the structures in place to Calgarians.”

Wyness says the councillors in favour of the report’s recommendations are newcomers to council and they pressured for the expedited release of the report.

The head of the independent review panel Siegfried Kiefer says he is not looking to pressure members of council but says, based on the panel’s review, council needs to be “action-oriented” rather than being “debate-oriented.”

“Every repair on this pipeline is costing $40 to $50 million in investment by citizens on a half-hazard approach to the system that we are involved in,” says Kiefer.

One of the new councillors, Ward 14’s Landon Johnston, is also raising questions about the release of the report. He wrote on social media on Sunday that he was concerned the council wasn’t provided with an urgent water report during orientation and that there might be other essential reports they haven’t seen.

Wyness was elected for a second term in the October 2025 municipal election. Johnston was elected for the first time during the same vote.