Federation of Canadian Municipalities sees new energy in Ottawa following pre-budget advocacy trip

Posted on November 6, 2026 by Ryan Dahlman

By Anna Smith
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

There’s a new “Team Canada approach” at the federal level, says Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) rural chair Robin Kurpjuweit following a recent advocacy days trip.

Kurpjuweit, who is also a Cypress County Councillor, says these trips are common, with one in the fall and one more focused on the budget in the spring. However, with the budget coming out Nov. 5, Kurpjuweit says the FCM saw an opportunity and he says they brought some of their executive to make sure voices were heard by the federal government.

“We just focused on a very small list that we were able to get in front of several ministers and chairs of the finance and audit committee, to make sure that we kept some of our key priorities in front of them as they’re coming into this fall’s budget,” said Kurpjuweit.

At the top of the list for him was the importance of dedicated revenue streams for rural municipalities.

As the needs of each municipality can be extremely different, he says one of the best approaches is simply to ensure their voices are loud and heard, and ensure their needs do not fade into the background in the face of the larger cities’ projects.

This is especially true as many municipalities can struggle with capacity issues, so ensuring they still have this access without a dedicated grant writer was top of mind.

“These are things like the community stream, which was formerly the gas tax,” said Kurpjuweit. “It has allowed small rural municipalities to depend on funding every year, that they can use for the projects that they see fit. Cypress County gets almost $400,000 a year from that one programme.”

Meetings during the visit included minister of housing and infrastructure Gregor Robertson and minister of national defence David J. McGuinty. Kurpjuweit says advocating on behalf of the communities surrounding bases such as CFB Suffield was also among his priorities for the visit, especially in the face of upcoming defence investments.

“You’ve got $24 billion dollars being spent and invested into bases like CFB Suffield and Trenton and Wainwright, all across the country,” said Kurpjuweit. “What we communicated is that with this massive amount of investment, there is a dependence on municipalities to have the infrastructure to ensure that this investment is backed up.”

Kurpjuweit considers the visit to be highly successful and he believes there is a significant change in tone during his conversations with government. He notes a new key message in Ottawa at the moment, “Speed matters.”

“That is not something that I heard five years ago. Now this government recognizes, in the middle of a trade war, we’ve got some economic challenges. There’s a sense of urgency, a desire to get things done quickly and they are prepared to work with whoever they need to in order to accomplish progress,” said Kurpjuweit.

A moment of impact, Kurpjuweit says, came in meetings with McGuinty.

“He asked one of his staffers. He said, ‘what is the question that we try to answer for ourselves and for every voter in Canada every day with the work that we do?’ And her answer to him was, ‘are we going to be okay?’ And I was just floored by that,” Kurpjuweit said.

The work doesn’t end with his return to southeast Alberta, but Kurpjuweit believes he and his fellow FCM members are highly motivated and excited to be at the table to help keep things moving in this powerful new direction in future meetings.