The city of Calgary has just enacted a new policy which should make municipalities across Canada sit up and take notice.
For some background… shortly after his October 2025 election, rookie Calgary mayor Jeromy Farkas called for the city to amend its flag policy of allowing non-Canadian national flags to be raised at City Hall.
The old policy stated that foreign flags could be flown at City Hall provided they were from countries recognized by the Canadian federal government.
That list of countries became a bit more controversial this past September, when Canada became the first G7 country to recognize the State of Palestine.
Almost immediately, supporters of Palestine and the terrorist group Hamas, which governs Gaza, requested the flying of the Palestinian flag at Calgary City Hall on November 15th, a mere three weeks after the local election.
Newly elected Mayor Farkas rightly argued that the practice of “national flag-raisings,” which had been intended as celebrations of the community’s unity in diversity, were “now creating division,” and should be ended.
Farkas called for an “urgent notice of motion” vote to be taken by the almost entirely new slate of councillors. If passed, this last-minute motion would have allowed for a debate on this issue. The vote was held on November 18 and was defeated by a razor thin margin of 8-7. The result? Farkas’s new “foreign flag” ban was not allowed to be placed on the agenda for debate.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Mayor Farkas persisted, and he perhaps even did some campaigning behind the scenes.
In early December, Ward 13 Counselor Dan McLean filed a formal motion to amend the city’s flag policy such that only flags representing Canada, Alberta, and Calgary itself could be flown.
For the record, the motion read, in part:
“The display of national flags at city hall, while originally intended as a gesture of respect and cultural recognition, has increasingly become a focal point for demonstrations, counter-demonstrations and heightened security concerns…. Discontinuing the practice of flying national flags is consistent with the city’s responsibility to prioritize local community harmony and protect the municipal complex as a place for all Calgarians.”
The motion also mentioned the importance of avoiding any “perceived alignment” between the City of Calgary and any foreign government.
The motion to change the flag policy came to a vote on December 15. With Councillor John Pantazopoulos switching his earlier “no” vote to a “yes” in support of the foreign flag ban, the motion backed by Mayor Farkas passed by a single vote.
The final 8-7 vote tally broke down as follows:
In favour – Mayor Jeromy Farkas, Councillors Dan McLean, Andre Chabot, Kim Tyers, Rob Ward, Mike Jamieson, Landon Johnston, and John Pantazopoulos.
Opposed – Councillors Nathaniel Schmidt, Jennifer Wyness, Raj Dhaliwal, Myke Atkinson, D.J. Kelly, Harrison Clark, and Andrew Yule.
Now, perhaps a few readers will agree with Ward 5 councillor Raj Dhaliwal, who, arguing (and voting) against the motion, said, “We got better things to do. We shouldn’t be fighting over flags.”
This is typically the sort of argument that politicians make when they oppose the principle of an issue, for one reason or another, and don’t want to take a stand, or even have a discussion.
Perhaps, to them, a flag might just be a brightly coloured adornment, useful mainly as a reminder of which airport in which they’re currently changing planes as they jet off to Davos. And among those who have characterized the issue as “not a priority,” that stance may also reflect a degree of alignment or sympathy with the cause the flag represents, rather than simple indifference.
But flags, as symbols, do matter, and the rest of us know that flags are sacred symbols of national unity.
Flags are not decorations, they are declarations. And when a city hall starts hoisting dozens of them from all over the world, that city is no longer neutral ground. It has become a battlefield of competing loyalties.
The beauty of Mayor Farkas’s new policy is its ruthless clarity: City Hall will fly the flags that belong to all Calgarians – those of the city, of Alberta, and of Canada – full stop.
As Farkas himself put it, “Flying flags of other nations at a time of such incredible geopolitical tumult doesn’t send the right signal. We need to be here for absolutely every single community in Calgary, and being pulled into some of the geopolitical challenges that are happening around the world only makes public spaces like City Hall less safe.”
Bravo, Mayor Farkas!
Letting every diaspora group plant its colours on public flagpoles doesn’t celebrate diversity – it imports division and pretends the price tag is zero, all the while trying to make some sort of international statement.
Calgary’s old policy, and similar ones in municipalities across this country, were born in an era of “diversity is our strength” feel-good optics. These virtue-signaling policies have now become a liability in a world of imported tensions.
In forcing, and then winning, this battle over foreign flags in Calgary, Mayor Farkas deserves a lot of credit.
Calgary’s new mayor lit a path for every other municipality whose residents are tired of being dragged into political conflicts they didn’t start and cannot finish. City halls across the land should be places where everyone feels at home under the flags that unite us.
At Municipal Watch, one of our wishes for 2026 is that other municipalities across Canada will follow suit and ban the practice of flying foreign flags.