Local Governance in Alberta: Principles, Options and Recommendations

Municipalities in Alberta have faced challenges for some time. Many of these challenges have emerged at both local and regional scales, and include slower growth and aging populations, constrained finances, a shifting economic base and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (AUMA 2020). In response, Alberta Municipalities, an organization that advocates on behalf of more than 250 urban municipalities in the province, has commissioned several reports to address these concerns. We were tasked to assess the current state of Alberta’s local governance model and investigate if changes to government structure might offer some remedy to the deficiencies uncovered in our assessment. Accordingly, the report aims to do the following: 1) provide conceptual tools to understand local government structure; 2) impart a set of principles to guide strategic efforts; 3) evaluate existing regional governance in Alberta; and 4) offer several restructuring suggestions for Alberta Municipalities to consider in consultation with municipalities and to advocate for the province to act on those they wish to pursue.

The key governance concepts of viability and legitimacy underlie this report. A government becomes viable when a critical mass of population and other antecedents are present to catalyze development. Local governments become legitimate when they can take justifiable actions in a legal manner and have active support from their citizens. To improve the viability and legitimacy of local governance, structural reforms must be guided by a set of principles. This report proposes five such principles: efficiency, capacity, accountability, accessibility and responsiveness.

To supplement viability and legitimacy, we also invoked the additional concepts of fragmentation and its counterpart, consolidation. Together, these latter two concepts support a tiered, spatial and authority structure, which can work as an analytical tool to discuss and evaluate the local government models in Alberta and elsewhere in Canada. Collectively, these concepts enable us to identify and compare the number of local government units within regions to better understand how the spatial distribution of governance may uphold the five principles of good governance. The tiered structure of a municipal government, whether it is horizontal or vertical, reveals the extent of spatial geography it serves and the distribution of authority and service responsibility between and among tiered units.

We find that Alberta’s primarily horizontally fragmented governance arrangement, which includes over three hundred urban and rural municipalities, provides an accountable, accessible and responsive system. Such a system, however, lacks efficiency and capacity. Our analysis suggests that no one-size-fits-all model will work for Alberta. However, strengthening the current fragmented governance model in Alberta through intermunicipal collaboration frameworks, growth management boards and regional service commissions can bring about meaningful improvements. More disruptive options — such as amalgamation, regional districts or a two-tiered governance structure — also offer some benefits, but they should be scrutinized against the particular context of the area for which they are considered.

The report presents a series of recommendations that Alberta Municipalities can pursue with the Government of Alberta. The overarching suggestion is that the province mandate dispute-resolution mechanisms to resolve all intermunicipal challenges, including annexations. This would minimize intermunicipal frictions and foster cooperation to improve municipal viability, while also improving the fairness and the legitimacy of the governance 3 system. To achieve this, the current dispute resolution mechanisms must be strengthened and expanded. The other recommendations are divided into three categories, as they pertain to three distinct geographies of the province: metropolitan regions, regions outside of census metropolitan areas and small and remote urban municipalities.

METROPOLITAN AREAS

Alberta has four census metropolitan areas — Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer and Lethbridge — as per Statistics Canada,1 with strong economic and municipal servicing linkages that transcend municipal boundaries and would benefit from the following actions:

1. Consider creating growth management boards for the Red Deer and Lethbridge areas.
2. Extend intermunicipal collaborative framework requirements to communities that belong to growth management boards.
3. Require clear parameters on annexations or changes in urban growth boundaries in intermunicipal development plans.
4. Encourage and incentivize ways to share both hard and soft services within the metro region.
5. Allow growth management boards to manage, and also to deliver, regional services such as emergency, water and wastewater or broadband, that cover two or more contiguous municipalities.

REGIONS OUTSIDE OF THE METROPOLITAN AREAS

Regions outside of the four metropolitan areas require greater municipal viability and regional cooperation. Stagnated population and growth, coupled with under- or overuse of infrastructure and services, are some of the many elements that contribute to a municipality’s poor viability. The following actions would address these concerns:

1. Encourage and take an active role in voluntary amalgamation where multiple municipalities in immediate proximity face viability issues, or where there is a collective desire or mutual agreement to amalgamate.
2. Support amalgamation of municipalities where viability, governance or service provision are recurring issues.
3. Amend intermunicipal collaboration framework regulations to allow agreements among or between non-contiguous municipalities where necessary and require inclusion of both cost- and revenue-sharing arrangements.
4. Actively encourage the formation of regional service commissions to deliver key public services.
5. Establish a provincial monitoring and oversight mechanism to assess the efficiency and accountability of regional service commissions.

SMALL, REMOTE URBAN MUNICIPALITIES

Small, remote urban municipalities, which are generally characterized by a small tax base, have low populations and less administrative capacity. Many are burdened because their infrastructure and services are used by those who live outside their boundaries. The viability of such communities is a concern that should be further investigated, as follows:

1. Periodically assess the viability of urban municipalities with small populations (three thousand or under).
2. Require municipalities periodically to assess the efficacy of agreements and update them, including intermunicipal development plans and other service and governance agreements.
3. Include any longstanding issues, such as servicing or boundary changes, in intermunicipal agreements.
4. Expand funding to assist low-capacity municipalities in high stakes discussions and negotiations.
5. In the new funding formula under consideration, recognize the unique need of small municipalities based on the use of their infrastructure and facilities rather than merely on their population and the length of their roads.