Minister to unveil legislative vision for Alberta cities, towns
Alberta’s municipal affairs minister is expected Friday to lay out the NDP government’s legislative vision for governing cities, towns and rural areas to municipal leaders gathered in Calgary.
Minister Deron Bilous offered few details in advance of his speech on the new Municipal Government Act to delegates at the annual Alberta Urban Municipalities Association convention.
“It will be very much my vision and the vision of our government of how we move forward,” Bilous said Thursday.
“Generally, people will be pleased,” he said. “I and my staff have thoroughly gone through the submission for the MGA, from municipalities, business, industry and community leaders, and there is definitely some concurrent themes.”
Earlier, Alberta municipalities signed a memorandum of understanding with the former Progressive Conservative government to advance Bill 20, the Municipal Government Amendment Act.
The last overhaul of the act took a decade and was completed in 1995. The Tories said in March the ongoing update would be complete by 2016.
Bilous would not disclose whether the NDP was sticking to that timeline.
Among the areas to be dealt with in the legislation are provincial/ municipal relations, accountability, governance, regional decisionmaking, growth management, municipal revenues and property assessment and taxation.
Bill 20 also creates the authority for the province and cities of Calgary and Edmonton to negotiate city charters.
Municipalities have long pushed the government for stable and predictable revenue sources and for new taxation powers — issues Bilous said won’t be addressed in his speech.
“Those are discussions that are ongoing, different sources of revenue, so taxation is included in that,” he said. “Our speech is more setting the direction for municipalities.”
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the NDP have set a “very, very different tone” than its PC predecessors in discussions over the MGA because it was not seeking a consensus among all stakeholders.
“It was doomed to failure,” Nenshi said of the Tories’ approach. “You were never going to get everyone in a room agreeing when you have the people who benefit from certain policies and those who are hurt by certain policies.
“Minister Bilous has made it very clear that he is not going to endlessly look for consensus,” he said. “He’s actually going to make some decisions.”
During an early morning session with municipal leaders, Bilous said the current structure of the Municipal Sustainability Initiative, a provincial funding program for local infrastructure projects, would remain unchanged until 2017.
A review of the province’s funding envelopes, programs and grants for municipalities would start next year to ensure dollars follow the NDP’s “direction and the vision,” he said.