“FINAL NOTICE. PROPERTY REPOSSESSED FOR SALE (Effective April 1st, 2024).”
Anyone walking by Government House in Edmonton’s posh Glenora neighbourhood on April 1 might have noticed a white paper sign attached to the grand mansion-turned provincial government conference facility.
The sign was put there by Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz, and as far as April Fools’ Day jokes by politicians go, it was pretty good - and it made a good point.
The Government of Alberta currently owes the City of Edmonton around $60 million in unpaid property taxes that have accumulated since 2019. That’s a point that Janz first wrote about in a December 2023 op-ed in the Edmonton Journal and that Mayor Amarjeet Sohi raised in a public letter to Premier Danielle Smith this week.
Sohi’s letter might have been the capital city’s first real salvo in response to a provincial government intent on increasing its political control over Alberta’s municipalities.
In his letter to Smith, Sohi rebuked the Premier’s condescending offer to audit the City’s administration after City Manager Andre Corbould resigned last month. The City’s administration has been in a certain amount of bureaucratic turmoil in recent years, but the tone of Smith’s offer gives the impression she is more interested in embarrassing the NDP-voting city’s former Liberal cabinet minister-turned-mayor than actually helping the city face its challenges.
Sohi was quick to point out in his letter to Smith that per capita provincial funding for municipal infrastructure has plummeted over the past 13 years:
“…provincial funding for local infrastructure dropped from about $424 per Albertan in 2011 to about $154 per Albertan today — all while demands for municipal infrastructure continue to grow.
The drop in provincial funding came as Edmonton, and most municipalities across Alberta, continue to see significant population growth. Provincial projections say Alberta will grow from around 4 million today to more than 7 million in 2050, but Smith is fond of predicting she believes it will actually reach 10 million in the next 25 years.
Smith’s United Conservative Party government has taken great interest in municipal politics recently, which is a big difference from previous governments.
Yesterday afternoon, Smith herself introduced Bill 18: Provincial Priorities Act, which would let the UCP government play gatekeeper to any federal money flowing to municipalities and all other provincial entities.
“For years now, even though the Liberal government has had the barest of representation in our province, they have been imposing their destructive agenda on Alberta taxpayers,” Smith said in an embargoed press conference held earlier in the day (this was the second day of embargoed media conferences that Press Gallery reporters appear to have participated in).
“Today we are taking back more of our jurisdictional control and telling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet that they cannot make deals without our express approval,” Smith said.
While municipalities and entities like school boards, universities and colleges, health authorities and irrigation districts, are creatures of the province, and the provincial government probably has the authority to do this, it’s hard to imagine how this will improve things for Albertans.
I pity the workers in the understaffed offices of the Department of Intergovernmental Affairs, who will watch their desks pile up with requests to let the federal government help pay for bus shelters in Cochrane, upgrade water pumps in Foremost, build a community centre in Water Valley, replace lab testing equipment at the University of Lethbridge, purchase Canada Day popsicles in Nampa, and much much more.
It remains unclear how this law will work in the mountain park towns of Banff and Jasper, where Parks Canada wields enormous authority. And it remains very unclear if this new law could undermine the impartial granting bodies that provide federal research funding for students and academics at Alberta’s post-secondary institutions, as the University of Calgary’s
writes in her excellent What now?!? newsletter.Whatever the answers, it sounds like Minister of Red Tape Reduction Dale Nally will have a lot more to concern himself with than 4 litre jugs of vodka.
While this new law will slow funding to many Alberta institutions trying to provide public services to Albertans, there’s a bit of solace in understanding this particular part of the UCP’s autonomy agenda probably has more to do with toppling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister Steven Gilbeault than it has to do with provincial freedom or getting a better deal for Alberta. I’d bet good money that Smith’s Alberta First agenda becomes a lot less urgent the moment Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives romp to victory in 2025.
But back to Government House, I wonder if Janz had a bit of irony in mind when he posted the repossession notice on the iconic Jacobean Revival-style sandstone mansion?
It was 86 years ago that Premier William Aberhart shut off the power, heat and telephone service to Government House, then the official residence of Lieutenant Governor John C. Bowen, a former Liberal Party leader who refused to give royal assent to three government bills, including the Accurate News and Information Act, until the Supreme Court could rule on their constitutionality (spoiler: they weren’t constitutional).
It might be a stretch to expect a mild-mannered mayor like Amarjeet Sohi to take a cue from Aberhart and cut the power at Government House or other provincial government-owned buildings, but theatrics and performative politics appear to be key to success in politics these days.
Maybe it will be next year’s April Fools’ Day joke? Or maybe, it’s just politics in Alberta?
Following the NDP leadership race
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Daveberta - Alberta politics and elections to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.