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St. Albert, Sturgeon County mayors talk future of regional boards

Municipal Affairs ministery hopes work of collaboration boards in Edmonton and Cagary regions will continue, "formally or informally"
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St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron, second from left, and Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw, fourth from left, at a press conference for Telus fibre internet in 2019. File photo

Morinville will become one of the first Edmonton Metropolitan Regional Board (EMRB) members to vote on whether to walk through a door opened by Alberta at the end of last year.

On Nov. 22, a Friday, Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver, caught mayors of the member municipalities of the EMRB and its counterpart in Calgary flatfooted by announcing membership in the group would be voluntary going forward. He also informed them the province was tying off the last of the $1 million in annual funding it provides to each panel.

The EMRB board, which is made up of the mayors of six cities, four towns and three villages in the Capital Region, held an in-camera meeting in December and decided each city and county’s council would hold their own vote declaring their intent to stay or go.

In St. Albert, that vote is likely to take place at the first council meeting of the year on Jan. 21. Edmonton has special council meetings scheduled for Jan. 13 and 20; neither agenda has been made public.

The item will be discussed at Morinville council’s next meeting Jan. 14 (watch live at 4 p.m.), Mayor Simon Boersma told the Gazette Tuesday.

“Regional collaboration in this area has had an amazing effect,” he said. “Working together as mayors on things that are of interest to the region has been very effective. We have similar needs at very different levels.”

Options on the table

Alanna Hnatiw, Sturgeon County mayor, said there was already a report coming to her council on their position in the EMRB and options with respect to membership at another councillor’s request, so some of their “homework is done already, but now there are more options on the table for consideration.”

Sturgeon was one of five members that voted to leave Edmonton Global, a regional marketing corporation created by the EMRB, at the end of 2023. St. Albert council voted to remain in EG in November, accepting that the city’s dues would increase since there are fewer members paying in.

“There’s no denying that there is absolute benefit and importance to regional collaboration,” Hnatiw said. “I think it just changes based on the economics of the time, and maybe the politics of the time, and who the members are at the time and what struggles or opportunities are in front of the members at the table.”

Hnatiw said regional planning has had “ebbs and flows” since the 1950s, with membership in successive bodies voluntary prior to the 1980s when it became mandatory, then voluntary again in the 1990s. When Alberta created the 24-member Capital Region Board in 2008, it was mandatory again, as the EMRB was until McIver’s announcement.

St. Albert was at the centre of the conversation then, too: then-mayor Nolan Crouse became the first member-elected chair in 2012, replacing a provincially appointed administrator.

“So this is just, I think, a different iteration coming about and we'll find our way forward,” Hnatiw said. “But Sturgeon County believes in collaboration, absolutely.”

Hnatiw said Sturgeon County participates in 30-plus external boards, in a leadership role in some including the Edmonton Region Hydrogen Hub and Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association, both of which she currently chairs. Others include the Capital Region Northeast Water Services Commission, the Edmonton Regional Airports Authority and Homeland Housing.

“None of us live on islands and we're well aware of that,” she said. “So there's been iterations around the governance and the funding of these bodies of work over time, but you know, communicating with your neighbours is absolutely imperative for success.”

That said, there are differences between the EMRB communities, from residential-heavy municipalities to those with more of a balance with an industrial tax base. Hnatiw said there has to be value in taking part for each individual county, town or city.

With the county experiencing in the last eight or nine years a shift from a severe economic downtown and population contraction to unprecedented growth, there are forces at work that would put any set of local leaders through their paces.

“So we're wrestling with those complex issues,” she said. “We aren't a member of anything just to check a box. We show up and we lean into the conversations. We're always willing to do the heavy work.”

All for won

St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron told the Gazette in December she is concerned about the shift to voluntary membership in the EMRB, pointing to the failure of the regional transit initiative in 2023, scuttling a decade of groundwork, and the pending Edmonton Global exodus.

“When they're not mandated, you have individuals in that regional entity who are looking out for themselves and not the region,” Heron said. “It's probably like a nationalistic on a municipal level mentality, prioritizing themselves and not the greater good of the region. And so when something doesn't go their way, they back out.”

She said it was the province that came in to the Calgary regional board, which was fraught with “dysfunction,” and “said ‘maybe you guys have to work together.’ So this change of tune is a complete 180, and we’ll see what happens."

“I think there's still a desire in the region [to] work together, but I don't see it being much more than just a coffee club, right?”

St. Albert is the most populous EMRB member after Edmonton, and Heron has been involved in regional collaboration since she was a councillor in the mid-2010s. She planned to spend the holidays thinking about what she could do on the file to help in 2025.

“I believe so strongly in the region and that we can't survive on our own,” she said, adding EMRB members ascribe to the notion that a rising tide lifts all ships, and that when it comes to economic development, they “hunt as a pack."

“And so I kind of see another meeting of the willing, (which) would definitely be most of the urban mayors, happening in the new year to try to figure out what we can do to create something that has abilities that require us to work together that we could maybe get provincial approval on and maybe even legislate it. We'll see how it works.”

But it would take a lot of work, Heron conceded, especially with the municipal election looming, to say nothing of the earlier-than-expected federal election likely to take place in the spring.

“There's mayors that aren't running, there's silly season coming up,” Heron said. “So, I feel a little bit of pressure.

“The federal government recognizes the value of regionalism. It's just the provincial government right now that is listening to, I don't know who, but they're not listening to the regions, because we'd never wanted this.”

Formally or informally

Heather Jenkins, press secretary in the Office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, said in an email the province appreciates the work of the EMRB and the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board "in support of better planning and servicing in their regions.

"We recognize that changes to the funding model may have implications for the boards and their members," she wrote. "It is our hope that the regional collaboration the boards have achieved will continue, formally or informally."

Jenkins said the ministry will continue to talk with those boards and municipalities individually on the future of regional collaboration.

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