Danielle Smith's UCP comes down hard on Alberta’s municipalities

Changes will send chills through municipal councils and create a lot of grief for MLAs

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (source: Danielle Smith / Facebook)

One of my goals when I moved Daveberta over to this Substack newsletter in 2022 was to take a different approach to writing about Alberta politics. For 17 years I published, sometimes, almost daily commentary on Alberta politics. Now, being on this site gives me a chance to take a breath, observe, and not feel like I need to rush analysis of what’s happening on our province’s political scene.

With that in mind, it has been very interesting to watch over the past week how Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government has unrolled its suite of changes to municipal governance and local election laws, and responded to the loud backlash from municipal leaders.

The UCP has spent a lot of political capital and government resources in its ongoing jurisdictional fights with the federal Liberal government in Ottawa, but Smith’s sovereignty agenda isn’t limited to challenging the powers of the federal government. This week’s Bill 20, Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act and last month’s Bill 18, Provincial Priorities Act are aimed at removing decision making powers from Alberta’s locally elected leaders and increasing the powers of the provincial government.

The drastic changes to the Local Authorities Election Act and the Municipal Government Act introduced by Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver gives the provincial government sweeping powers to overturn municipal bylaws and increased powers to remove locally elected municipal mayors, councillors, and school board trustees.

Changes also include legalizing corporate and union donations to municipal candidates and introducing a formal structure for political parties in municipal elections in Calgary and Edmonton.

It’s hard to imagine how most of these changes would improve municipal government or municipal elections, or that there is even broad support for some of these changes (there isn’t).

Firing municipal leaders

The provincial government already has some ability to dismiss municipal councils and school boards, as McIver did in the City of Chestermere in 2023 and NDP minister Danielle Larivee did in 2016 in Thorhild County. This power is usually reserved for exceptional circumstances where there is alleged corruption or extremely dysfunctional governance, like now-Premier Smith experienced when she was removed along with the entire Calgary Board of Education in 1999.

Why these powers need to be expanded now remains unclear.

Alberta already has municipal recall laws. The high threshold for overturning the results of a free and fair democratic election means that a lot of recall campaigns fail, but that’s not a bad thing. It should be very hard to overturn an election.

Cabinet can overturn municipal bylaws

One of the most puzzling changes proposed in McIver’s bill would give the provincial cabinet the ability to overturn municipal bylaws, an area that I am convinced most MLAs would agree they do not want to involve themselves if they really thought about it.