Some problems are so profound, some mistakes so obvious, that anger gives way to laughter when thinking too much about them. Take the Capital Region Board, for instance.
Contacted recently to give his thoughts on the CRB, University of Alberta political science chair Jim Lightbody answered bemusedly, “Imagine yourself a Masai on the Serengeti. You’re herding the animals, and in the herd you have an elephant, an African elk, a bunch of gazelles, 15 warthogs and an ostrich with his head in the sand. Your job is to coax them to herd together.”
The so-called elephant in the room isn’t difficult to discern either.
“The City of Edmonton,” said Lightbody. “That is the problem. That is the basic problem.”
The CRB is a board of 25 members, a board with the intention of unifying the capital region and encouraging municipalities to work together, but with a requirement that 75 per cent of the member population must back any decision, anything that doesn’t meet Edmonton’s standards is like rolling a boulder uphill, as the city has about 73 per cent of the regional population. Lightbody said it’s a shame the CRB accomplishes little besides social time for elected officials because regional planning is vitally important to Alberta’s future, and most such planning is being pushed into the future, such as the fact there is no regional transit plan and no regional transportation plan.
“The CRB, in its current form, prevents these kinds of basic planning decisions,” added Lightbody.
Regional boards of this ilk have failed in the past – take Hamilton-Wentworth in Ontario, for example. With small suburbs and a massively populated central city, the board was unmanageable. The province dissolved it.
Readers of the Gazette will wonder if the CRB’s goal is being achieved, especially with the Town of Redwater stating it wants out of the CRB, apparently disgruntled that it’s not allowed to develop as it wishes.
Lightbody nixed that idea out of hand.
“They’re not allowed to pull out,” he said. “They’re in because of the act. They’re legislated, they cannot opt out.”
So if putting on a parachute and bailing out isn’t an option, what is?
While some have failed, other regional municipal initiatives work. Take the Greater Vancouver Regional District. It functions relatively well with members of roughly equal population and no single municipality can dominate the board. Obviously, in this region that won’t work. The elephant will always lead the herd.
While Lightbody said an assessment of the CRB is that it is flawed, he said the board is the provincial government’s brainchild and any changes to it must come from the provincial government, including tangible authority to put into place regional planning and the ability to control and direct growth.
Until then, the CRB is as good as it gets until somebody can float a better idea.
