The City of Calgary owns, operates, and allocates access to a variety of indoor and outdoor recreation facilities in order to support the social, educational, physical and cultural needs of the community.

Calgary Recreation’s mandate is to shape the city’s recreation landscape, create vibrant communities, and inspire people to be active and creative by leading and investing in Calgary’s recreation sector. The City provides affordable, accessible and quality recreation, sport and leisure opportunities to participate in including programs, drop-in activities, and rentals and bookings. These recreation opportunities help build confidence, promote a positive lifestyle, and improve social, physical, and mental health outcomes.

Calgary Recreation is committed to ensuring there is a fair and standardized process to assign time in aquatic facilities for the public, user groups and others looking to secure time.

This framework will provide guidelines for how Calgary Recreation schedules use in aquatic facilities. The new framework will not apply to arenas, gymnasia, fitness studios, multipurpose rooms and any other amenity types not outlined.

February/March 2023

Aquatic user groups notified of the rationale and implementation plan for the updated aquatic allocation framework guidelines.

October 2022 to January 2023

Completion and internal approvals of the Aquatic Allocation Framework report.

April 2022

The City built out the goals and objectives of the aquatic allocation process based on what we heard from aquatic organizations, clubs and providers.

February/March 2022

There was a wide range of suggestions offered when participants were asked what The City should consider as it examines its current aquatic allocation system. Many stakeholders offered criteria that could form part of this new system. This included:

Historical user groups

Integrity of process

Nature of the organization requesting the allocation

Activity alignment with the Calgary Recreation mandate

Emerging trends and new programming

The City started the process of building out the goals and objectives of the aquatic allocation process based on what we heard from aquatic organizations, clubs and providers.

January 2022

A series of meetings and interviews were convened in December with 21 aquatics organizations, clubs and aquatics providers. The intent of these meetings was to gain insight from participants regarding the overall aquatics delivery system in Calgary and the role The City has in it. Related, participants offered suggestions for an aquatics allocation process.

November 2021

Calgary Recreation researched best practices and scheduled discussions with key stakeholders and user groups – including sport groups and provincial sport organizations – in order to create an updated decision-making framework that supports a fair and standardized scheduling process. Part of this research will involve a review of the recent Beltline and Inglewood Social and Recreation Needs assessment.

The updated framework will be based on a variety of criteria, including:

• Prioritizing children, families, and vulnerable Calgarians as well as public demand
• Equitable access
• Alignment with The City’s Respectful Workplace Policy, Community Services Program Policy and Sport for Life Policy
• Economic benefit to the The City, including net revenue and economic gain to the community

We have completed the development of a new allocation framework. Thank you to all the groups for their participation and feedback throughout this process.

Implementation of any changes will be will be starting in the fall of 2023, with the bulk of the implementation taking place over the next two swim seasons. We will continue to work with groups through this transition period to attempt to minimize disruptions to the best of our ability under this new framework.