What LSAC and Alberta Municipal Affairs Don't Want You To Know

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Silence is Not Golden

By Joseph Quigley Mayerthorpe Freelancer
Friday, May 5, 2017 2:47:04 MDT PM

The veil of secrecy around talks between Lac Ste. Anne County, its urban municipalities and Alberta Municipal Affairs needs to come down.

It is apparent the municipal and provincial governments do not want residents to know much of anything about what conversations they’re having behind closed doors. Discussions apparently about mending the evidently broken relationships between Lac Ste. Anne County and its urban municipalities.

The way this issue has hardly progressed over the last year is a failure and reflects poorly on both local and provincial governments.

To the uninitiated, on April 6, 2016, the urban municipalities of Lac Ste. Anne County very publicly asked Alberta Municipal Affairs to conduct a governance review of the county. This occurred after a dispute during a mediation meeting between the two sides and municipal affairs, and though the full reasons behind that request are not fully clear, Mayerthorpe Mayor Kate Patrick implied there are legal implications to it during a council meeting last fall.

One year later, we of the public still do not have a very clear idea of what the county did leading up to the request to make its urban municipalities angry enough to make that request.

Alberta Municipal Affairs bungled this file badly. They waited several months to actually reject the request, and then waited several months more, before finally stepping back in to a meeting with the municipalities involved and taking a direct hand in trying to fix this situation.

Now, municipal affairs is finally starting a dialogue with a working group of administration from all the municipalities involved. Something that, if they were going to do, they probably should have done as soon as a press release first went out, instead of letting this situation drag on for as long as it has with few real steps to resolution.

Instead, the urban municipalities had to wait about trying to resolve the matter and handle the publicity of the issue. They are far from blameless in all of this. Though the issues that led to their bold declaration could be very real, they have not given the ratepayers a very clear idea of what those issues are, leaving them in the dark as to whether their action was justified. With how this process has dragged on without anything resembling a conclusion, it does not appear there was plans to follow up the press release, beyond exerting pressure to get Alberta Municipal Affairs to really step in. The snail-like pace in which this situation has unfolded, shows a lack of contingency planning for Alberta Municipal Affairs saying ‘no’.

It is unclear when this issue will see a real resolution, with all sides seemingly intent on not divulging any more information for the foreseeable future. It is a disrespect to the electorate of the urban municipalities that they are not being clearly and regularly informed of why their councils took this substantial step and what progress they are making. The County electorate would also surely likely to know what exactly Lac Ste. Anne County did that was so bad it warranted this kind of action.

Ultimately, if the municipalities and county are meeting productively for slow steps towards resolution and collaboration, that is a good thing and hardly needs the silent treatment. It’s probably a better result than a costly, ongoing, and potentially legal battle between the two sides. Though nothing is guaranteed in these types of discussions and not everything can be disclosed, I do not understand the desire for nearly absolute silence from the parties involved. Not talking about the problem publicly, does not make the problem go away in the public mind, nor does it wash away the public declaration by the urban municipalities that still has yet to reach a satisfactory conclusion.