When then municipal affairs minister Danielle Larivee fired three Thorhild County councillors in 2016, the county’s reeve accused the Alberta NDP of “Soviet-style government.”
Under the circumstances, this hardly seems fair.
Still, Reeve Dan Buryn’s anger can be understood, if not sympathized with. He was one of the trio of councillors who had been sacked by Larivee for what an inquiry report termed “irregular, improper and improvident” actions and inappropriate behaviour.
Larivee’s predecessor in the portfolio, Deron Bilous, had followed provincial law when he ordered the third-party inspection inquiry under the Municipal Government Act after hearing complaints about the council from people living in the county 100 kilometres north of Edmonton, including a petition signed by about 800 of the county’s 3,250 or so residents.
Minister Larivee dismissed Buryn along with councillors Wayne Croswell and Larry Sisson on March 10 for breaching directives mandated by the inquiry’s 62-page report, which had been released in the fall of 2015.
In the words of a Global News report at the time, the inquiry “found the council was not following laws, had bad spending practises and biased decision making.”
More recently, late last year, the UCP Government fired the mayor, three councillors, and some city officials in Chestermere, a community of 22,000 just east of Calgary.
In the news clips, UCP Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver sounded like he was speaking from the same playbook as Ms. Larivee – as in fact, he was. The Municipal Government Act, that is.
“The city of Chestermere has continued to be managed in an irregular, improper and improvident manner,” he said. “Every municipality in Alberta must comply with their legal obligations, and those who choose not to will be held accountable.”
Fast-forward to last week, though, and readers who weren’t paying attention could be forgiven for wondering how such things could even have happened.
Hadn’t the UCP just introduced legislation including provisions allowing the provincial cabinet to arbitrarily fire municipal councillors that McIver claimed were necessary to “ensure local councils and elected officials continue to remain accountable to the citizens who elected them”?
In fact, as the earlier council firings illustrate, the Municipal Government Act already provided the minister with the ability to fire councillors for cause.
So why did the UCP need to introduce legislation allowing councillors to be fired when the current law already grants the minister that power? As folk wisdom has it, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
The explanation is in the difference between due process and arbitrary power.
The Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendments Act will eliminate the guardrails that ensure due process is observed and no one is fired unfairly or improperly.
As University of Alberta political science professor Jared Wesley put it on social media Saturday, Bill 20 is politically targeted legislation, “all about making moderates and progressives accountable to provincial cabinet on pain of removal.”
Section 574(1) of the Municipal Government Act says that, “If, because of an inspection under section 571, a report of an official administrator under section 575.1, an inquiry under section 572 or an investigation by the Ombudsman, the Minister considers that a municipality is managed in an irregular, improper or improvident manner, the Minister may by order direct the council, the chief administrative officer or a designated officer of the municipality to take any action that the Minister considers proper in the circumstances.”
Section 574(2) sets out the measures the minister is permitted to employ to remedy the situation. These include, “(h) an order dismissing the council or any member of it or the chief administrative officer.”
These are, I think most readers would agree, both broad and appropriate powers.
The new approach to be implemented by the UCP, though, will make it possible for cabinet to replace councillors or councils based on whim, animus, ideology, or cynical political opportunity – all shielded from public scrutiny by cabinet secrecy.
Can we be said to even have local democracy in such circumstances?
Not really, when it is dependent on the whim of cabinet, by definition a highly politicized body and by Parliamentary convention a secretive one.
On the rare occasions Alberta governments fired councillors in the past, it was done according to written rules, enshrined in law, subject to the oversight of the courts.
Indeed, when the Thorhild councillors went to court to fight their firing, they were able to get a temporary injunction blocking their removal, and after a judicial review succeeded in the fall of 2017 in having the minister’s order quashed by a Court of Queen’s Bench justice.
Four days after the judgment came down, the municipal election took place and only one of the three, Crosswell, was re-elected. Buryn lost, and Sisson had already thrown in the towel and not sought re-election.
But the point is that due process was observed.
Now the UCP proposes to throw the democratic baby thrown out with the bathwater.
The Soviet Union has been gone for nearly 33 years, but it wouldn’t be unfair to call what the UCP is up to now reminiscent of “Soviet-style government.”
What’s next in Alberta political discourse? Shooting puppies?
Since the UCP government reflexively adopts all the worst ideas idea of American Republicans as soon as they emerge south of the 49th Parallel, how long can it be before we see right-wing Alberta politicians shooting puppies to prove their MAGA chops?
After all, South Dakota Governor and rumoured Trump ticket vice-presidential pick Kristi Noem is reported by The Guardian to have boasted that she shot and killed an unfortunate wire-haired pointer puppy named Cricket. “I hated that dog,” she wrote.
This was written in a soon-to-be published autobiography presumably intended to show she has what it takes to be president of the United States in the event The Donald strokes out from one Big Mac too many.
Trump might want to reconsider his choice of Governor Noem as VP seeing as she also admitted that the same day she shot what The Guardian described as “an unruly … un-castrated goat.”
But if Trump gives in to the governor’s charms and puts her on the ticket, we should probably brace ourselves for Canadian conservatives promising that if elected they’ll kill a puppy too, or at least flush a goldfish down a toilet.
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