Advocating for Beaumont

Beaumont City Council is committed to advocating on behalf of its citizens to move priorities forward, protect the best interests of residents, and enhance/source opportunities for economic and tax base development. City Council builds relationships with other levels of government, agencies, and the business community to highlight what Beaumont has to offer.

Our community

Beaumont has grown 20% since 2019 and is expected to double by 2044. As Alberta’s third fastest growing community, Beaumont is a bustling city with a young, high-earning, and well-educated population of over 23,000 people. At 4.6% growth in 2023, the City outpaced provincial and federal population growth.

While the community’s expansion enhances its vibrancy, it also strains operational services and finances. The City of Beaumont is working on an innovative Comprehensive Growth Plan, the first of its kind in Canada, as a proactive response to the challenges posed by this growth. While the City does everything it can to deliver services efficiently as it plans for growth, more consideration to meet the needs of our rapidly growing community is needed.

Priorities

Council identified the following three advocacy priorities:

Beaumont is a bustling city with a population of over 23,000 – over 20% of which is under the age of 14. For this growing demographic, Beaumont only has one non-Francophone high school. The growth the City continues to experience, combined with the youthful demographic, means the need is great and accelerating construction is critical.

1- Estimates for 2025 and 2027 are derived using linear interpolation based on the forecasted estimates for 2026 and 2028 periods. The 2026 and 2028 periods are forecasted estimates based on Manifold Datamining inc. proprietary forecasting method.

The rural subdivisions around Beaumont, once completed, are estimated to have an additional 1,300 high school students who will travel to Beaumont for school.

Our school site

There are plans from our school divisions – Black Gold School Division and St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Separate School Division – to build two new high schools on one site. These schools are the number one priority on their respective capital plans. Our current public high school is expected to be at 126% capacity by September 2026 and we do not currently have a Catholic high school.

The ask

Beaumont is looking for design and build funding for these school boards in Budget 2025 so schools can open for students in September 2028.

The City of Beaumont engaged MNP LLP and Alberta Health Services to do a Community Health Needs Assessment, which was completed in early 2024.

 

Challenge

Provincial challenges, including a lack of physicians entering public health as general practitioners, makes it difficult to attract new physicians and other healthcare professionals to communities like Beaumont.

Opportunity

With a lack of family physicians, Beaumont is looking at innovative ways to continue providing high quality healthcare in the community.

 

Beaumont’s Innovation Park will be a place for bright minds to pursue bold ideas across 320 acres. The vision is to empower businesses to develop cutting-edge innovation and technology in areas such as:

  • Transportation and logistics
  • Safety
  • Clean tech/Clean energy
  • Agri-business/Agri-tech

With the growing international recognition of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region as Alberta’s innovation centre, the Innovation Park will enhance investment potential, creating jobs that will drive economic growth for the community, the region, and the province.

AMTA’s Safety Campus

AMTA’s proposed Safety Campus would be the anchor tenant for this business park, including best-in-class commercial transportation education, law enforcement training, and technological innovation. The campus will increase safety and competitiveness in the transportation industry; provide a high-quality location for law enforcement training; and position Alberta as a destination to develop, test, and implement new technologies.