City releases exhibition documents
By Lethbridge Herald on May 14, 2025.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
Mayor Blaine Hyggen, wearing a Medicine Hat Tigers jersey after losing a bet to Hat mayor Linnsie Clark, speaks at Tuesday's council meeting.Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
Confidential documents relating to the Lethbridge and District Exhibition were released by city council on Tuesday.
A resolution to release the information, with the exception of one attachment, was made by council on April 29.
The information consists of 566 pages of documents related to the construction of the 268,000-square-foot Agri-Food Hub and Trade Centre at the LDE.
Construction started in 2021 and finished in 2023, just in time for Whoop-Up Days. The City of Lethbridge contributed $25 million to the project, which had a total expected cost of $70 million with other funding coming from the provincial and federal governments, as well as Lethbridge County.
In January of 2024, the City of Lethbridge entered a Memorandum of Understanding with the LDE to take over its governance, funding and operations after it was revealed in 2023 that the LDE was having serious financial problem and was on the verge of shutting down.
Releasing the documents was important for council to show transparency to the public, said Mayor Blaine Hyggen before Tuesday’s meeting.
Council had given direction to administration in 2024 to release meeting documents that had been deemed confidential.
Since then, administration has gathered and vetted that information to ensure it complies with privacy legislation before Tuesday’s release.
The documents can be found online at https://getinvolvedlethbridge.ca/lethbridge-district-exhibition
Hyggen said that releasing the documents shows “a great level of transparency.”
Documents came in on a regular basis regarding land, legal or labour and if there are ongoing legal issues, the City didn’t want that information to be publicly divulged until they’re dealt with. And on labour matters, the City didn’t want instability in the labour force at the LDE, which Hyggen said is “doing an incredible job…we thought it was important to keep these things confidential” until the appropriate time came to release them.
The mayor said the documents provide background to what’s transpired at the LDE such as “questions, comments, suggestions, the work that was thought should be done, the work that was done and maybe shouldn’t have been done, I think this information is important for the public to also see what’s being done now.”
He noted a lot of events are now happening at the LDE and reiterated a comment that he’s made previously at council that “it’s losing less. I think that’s important and I know that’s a tough pill to swallow at this time.”
He likened the situation to other facilities such as pools and arenas, which have an element of cost to the community.
“We just want to make sure that cost is as low as possible on the taxpayer so that we still have the events and you have the celebrations that happen there at the Exhibition but at a limited cost.”
Council wanted to make sure it is sharing everything it knew about the LDE situation, he said.
“This was not a City-ran facility. There was funding that came from the City as well as from the province and other levels of government, but we didn’t give direction on what was to be done at that facility, so I can’t reiterate enough it’s really unfortunate that it got to the point that it did. And the City needed to step in and make the changes that we thought were important. And now we’re seeing those changes are benefitting the community. There are more events, there’s dollars that have been found that were maybe weren’t allocated to the right thing….”
In a statement prefacing the documents on the getinvolvedlethbridge.ca website, Hyggen stated: “we want the public to understand the limited amount of information Council had in relation to the complexity of the decisions we had to make.“
He noted at Tuesday’s press event that “it’s really exciting to see the place doing as well as it is right now. It can always be busier but we were left with this and it’s important that we do what we can to make it a facility that’s going to support the community at the least cost.”
Hyggen added it’s important for residents to know council is sharing the information they had at the time.
“It’s important that you have the full story on what’s happened there,” added Hyggen.
A previous council was presented the idea of a capital build by the LDE and were told by experts that “this is viable and this is the way that building should be constructed and what should be in the building, et cetera.”
The dollars were allocated but council, because it wasn’t the board, couldn’t give direction on its construction, citing the lack of floor drains for livestock as an example.
“Any changes or overruns or anything of this sort, we didn’t have a say in it,” said Hyggen. “So the dollars went out and that board and the administration of that board, the CEO, allocated the funds to what they thought was most beneficial. And we’ve seen that probably wasn’t the case.”
He added the City is going to do its best to get the LDE on track, with the goal being to turn operations back to a board overseen by the City, which is now the sole shareholder in the organization.
“We want to be able to turn that back over to the community in the future” with people who have the necessary skills and experience to guide it, said Hyggen.
In March the City’s Legal Services department was engaged to identify any potential legal risks with releasing the information and the FOIP co-ordinator was engaged to identify any exceptions to disclosure that could be applied to the information.
And Lethbridge Police Services was engaged to determine if the release could jeopardize any investigations under their authority.
The documents are extensive and include a resolution from May 7, 2013 in which the City commit $25 million to the Hub project on several conditions and a revised resolution from Feb. 27, 2017 on that commitment.
31-30
Hmmm…I am speechless.