Alberta has been infected with red-tape virus
Bureaucrats are slowing us down, says Bruce McAllister.
Nimble. It’s what built Alberta. When a challenge loomed large, Albertans had this knack for pushing through, or building over, even the most complex problems. Yet the massive challenge for Albertans was never really the vast landscape or technological hurdles of building thriving world-class industry and a home for millions of people. The challenge was, and is, bureaucracy. Ottawa and her Laurentian elites move slowly in the eyes of Canada’s economic engine. Nimble innovation is baked out of federal government systems which soon work more for their own survivability than for the efficient and creative work being done at ground level. Albertans balk at Ottawa, but the slow and bloated inefficiencies of Ottawa have a way of spreading. The infection might be closer to home than we’d like to admit.
Growing in our province is a class of government bureaucracy that is beginning to mirror its Ottawa cousins. There is a surprising penchant at both the provincial and municipal levels for overly regulating policies, which hamper investment and limit job creators from doing what they do best. Bureaucrats are more interested in building edifices in celebration of their own mired policy-making machinations than supporting the nimble province that first gave them life.
Take the housing industry. In the 1970s and 1980s — a developer could go through the planning process and deliver serviced building lots to home builders in about a two-year time frame. Statutory planning documents called Design Briefs or Area Structure Plans were no more than 20 pages in length. The Lake Bonavista Design Brief is only 15 pages, including several large pictures and maps. Places like Lake Bonavista, Oakridge, Woodlands and others of that era became vibrant communities for our growing city. Nimble policies worked.
Fast forward to today where in the City of Calgary we have Area Structure Plans in excess of 130 pages (e.g., West Macleod Area Structure
It’s a layer of government and systematic oversight that is an appalling affront to the nimble culture that built our province.
Plan) referencing myriad other policy documents. Instead of taking two years to bring serviced lots to market, the current process can take 10 years or more. Bureaucrats have a lockdown on the system. The current government is more interested in giving work to policy-makers than real builders. The result is a mired system that leaves the people who actually build our next communities doing the painfully slow song-and-dirge of a bloated government department. It all sounds so necessary when coming from the chamber of secrets in Calgary, but the truth is, it isn’t.
Too many people capitulate to this nonsensical overregulating ideology. Case in point, the Calgary Metropolitan Regional Board, which is a bureaucratic dream for central planners who think they know best about how the region should grow. Taking a lesson from big government, this board mandates that certain landuse applications must come to it for approval, after going through the onerous time and money-consuming process of its own municipality. So, Okotoks and High River bureaucrats will have a say on what the people of Strathmore or Wheatland want. Or Cochrane or Airdrie’s city hall can vote on what’s being planned in Rocky View and Chestermere. It’s a toxic mix and a broken system.
The lunacy that Albertans railed against in Ottawa has moved right in and found a seat at our table. Consider this, after all the approvals are sought, after all the local bureaucratic departments are satisfied, the bureaucrats of Calgary can veto whatever they like. That’s right, if Calgary bureaucrats do not appreciate a project in Airdrie or Rocky View, they can kibosh the whole thing. Why? Because a self-protective planning official with a bureaucratic view of how the world should work might decide that they know best. It’s a layer of government and systematic oversight that is an appalling affront to the nimble culture that built our province.
Ottawa, move over. Alberta has a new class of bureaucrats that could put you to shame.