ATHABASCA – Athabasca County officially adopted Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA) positions on Bill 20 after the advocacy group submitted a discussion paper to municipalities across the province.
During their Aug. 29 official council meeting, councillors unanimously approved the recommended motion to adopt the positions stated by RMA in their discussion paper on Bill 20, following discussion at their Aug. 20 committee of the whole meeting.
“We put this on the agenda so that council, and our public, see that there’s a lot of rules being changed again, and every time it does that, there’s a big cost to us,” said CAO Bob Beck. “There’s a big hassle — we have to bring things back to council — and there are some that smaller municipalities are going to have a hard time absorbing some of these changes.
“Maybe we’ll be fine, but there’s a cost to everyone.”
Bill 20, formally The Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment, changes the Local Authorities Elections Act (LAEA) and the Municipal Government Act (MGA), both of which govern the rules municipalities follow daily, as well as during election season.
RMA provided municipalities with the discussion paper, which totals 57 pages split into three sections; interested parties can read it in the Aug. 20 agenda package on the county’s website. It covers everything from joint use planning agreements to municipal autonomy, but councillors found their own sections of interest beyond the highlighted points.
“RMA stated, in some cases, municipalities may be unaware that a bylaw is in contravention of the provincial policy,’ and I just think of how many bylaws and policies we’ve looked at during our term, and how, if they change something, we wouldn’t know the next day,” said committee chair Ashtin Anderson during the Aug. 20 meeting.
“In some cases, we may be in contravention, not because we’re trying to be, it’s just procedurally and practically, it takes time to catch up when they make changes. It’s extra burden and extra work for our administrative team.”
Bill 20 was criticized by many municipalities for being an overstep on the province's part — while Canadians don’t have a constitutional right to municipal government, historically, provinces have let towns and cities operate relatively independently — but the legislation went ahead regardless, with minor changes.
Coun. Tracy Holland asked the discussion package be made easily accessible to the public, noting she had plenty of conversations with ratepayers who didn’t understand the process well.
“(Sometimes) they think we’ve got our own divisional budgets, and we’re the ones out there operating the graders,” she said. “It would be great to have as much info for the public as possible as more changes come down the pipeline.”
Administration had a tough time answering council’s specific questions, with Beck saying they simply didn’t have the requisite information about how the county would be impacted.
“There’s still a year to go before the next municipal election, and we’re going to need to get up to speed on all these changes before October 2025,” said Beck.
Reeve Brian Hall pointed out the “troubling” amount of downloading — the process through which the province passes responsibilities and costs onto municipalities — that has been a common theme throughout their term.
“This is just one more piling on of additional work,” said Hall.
