Surprises found in mandate letter
Islanders do not welcome new taxes, regulations and bylaws
We were doing a bit of research the other day and found Premier Dennis King’s mandate letter to Municipalities Minister Jamie Fox, dated Oct. 9, 2019. As you may remember, in 2017 the new Municipal Government Act (MGA) was passed with the PC party standing and voting against it. The Liberal government used the act to create a five-year plan to amalgamate the entire province into municipalities. Remember that at the start 75 per cent of the Island was unincorporated.
In reading the mandate letter, we were surprised to see the following priority listed: “Engage and support municipalities on the implementation of the Municipal Government Act which is currently in year two of a five-year plan while identifying areas that require review.”
Why would a new PC government continue the Liberal five-year plan when they were elected to change this and promised to do this during the election? So, what was the purpose of the election and the change of government if the PC government is going to continue to carry out the Liberal/Green plan?
How could they possibly believe that Islanders (during this pandemic when everyone is struggling) would welcome new taxes, new regulations and bylaws, and duplication of provincial services? This is a time for streamlining and saving people money, not duplicating effort and adding new taxes. In April 2020, Minister Fox approved the amalgamation of West River, even though he had a petition in hand from Bonshaw residents, signed by 98 per cent of the population, asking to be left out. This is exactly opposite of what he promised.
We were happy to see that in the fall sitting, an amendment came forward to finally bring some relief to small communities that were struggling to manage the administrative burden placed on them by the provincial enforcement of the MGA. We had been asking for these changes since Day 1 and are glad that there is finally an option where communities can continue to work together and share services as they did before the new MGA came into being. A big disappointment was that there was no move to introduce a democratic process of allowing all affected to have a binding vote when being annexed or amalgamated.
On the next page of the letter the premier states, “Islanders expect us to fulfill our commitments ...” If they are smart enough to know that Islanders expect them to fulfill their commitments, why are they not smart enough to realize we expect them to keep their promises regarding the MGA?
A lot of the PC party MLAs stood with us as we fought for democracy and equality in the MGA. At that time, they believed that all residents should be treated equally. Now that they have been elected, they don’t seem to care. Don’t the MLAs of this province believe in democracy? Apparently not!
You can see this letter for yourself on our website: ruralcoalitionofpei.ca