The United Conservative Party is pulling the plug on regional planning in Alberta in a move that will be a big win for the “Sprawl Cabal” of wealthy developers and for municipal politicians in smaller communities clustered around the province’s two biggest cities.
But it’ll be a disaster for Edmonton and Calgary taxpayers and the liveability of Alberta’s cities – and, longer term, it won’t be good news for the province’s natural beauty or the climate either.
In other words, it’s right on brand for the Premier Danielle Smith’s UCP, with its power base concentrated in rural Alberta, its ever-increasing contempt for Alberta’s big cities and their residents, and a vision ever focused on fossil fuels and fossil politics.
Something like this has happened before, back in 1993, not long after Ralph Klein became premier of Alberta.
Rural municipalities were frustrated with the powerful regional planning commissions required by the Municipal Government Act of the day, and as the “Klein Revolution” got under way, urban politicians worried something might be up.
But when announcement was made by Mr. Klein’s municipal affairs minister, Steve West, on Oct. 7, 1993, it landed like the proverbial bombshell.
While the Klein Government’s free-market sentiments had been well known, “the municipal affairs minister’s announcement nevertheless came unexpectedly,” one observer with whom readers of this blog will be familiar wrote at the time. “And the end of formal, legislatively mandated regional planning in Alberta … followed swiftly.”
In the mid-Zeros, Progressive Conservative premier Ed Stelmach made a stab at getting regional planning and regional co-operation around Alberta’s two largest cities back on track on a voluntary basis.
Arguably, though, it took until 2016 when Rachel Notley’s NDP government passed the Modernized Municipal Government Act, which among other things restored some mandatory regional planning to Alberta, that something approaching sanity was restored on the fringes of Calgary and Edmonton.
“We want to encourage municipalities to work together so that we can eliminate duplication of services, we can find efficiencies but, quite frankly, so that we can plan and manage growth in the way that works for all of our citizens,” municipal affairs minister Deron Bilous said in the fall of 2015 when the NDP introduced its legislation. (Emphasis added.)
The Edmonton and Calgary regional metropolitan boards were formally established in 2017.
And it even seemed to be working for a while, even though the Sprawl Cabal – the term is thought to have been coined by former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi – hated it because it made it harder to slap up cheap, high-profit subdivisions outside city boundaries and dump many of the costs of urban sprawl on city taxpayers.
Last spring, a report on new-house sales prices tracked by the City of Edmonton suggested that “the sprawl subsidy” – the cost of servicing new subdivisions on the fringes of Canada’s big cities – created profits of more than $1 billion on revenue of about $11 billion over a decade for Edmonton developers.
By contrast, the city of Edmonton estimates that more than 90 per cent of the vehicle kilometres travelled on regional roadways that must be maintained by city taxpayers with little help from the province are by residents of surrounding communities, clear evidence of disproportionate use by regional residents.
But plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, this is Alberta, so obviously the return to mandatory regional co-operation wasn’t going to last.
There’s been a buzz for several days that the UCP was going to do something bad to regional planning, and do it fast while they flood the zone with … other dubious policies.
But history repeated itself, presumably this time as farce, when Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver channelled Mr. West and surprised everyone all over again.
“The news was sudden. It was unexpected,” Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board Chair Allan Gamble told a Postmedia reporter after learning that the province was cutting the EMRB’s modest $1 million dollar funding and doing the same thing to its Calgary counterpart.
Mr. McIver also told the two regional planning bodies that membership would be voluntary henceforth – another page ripped from the Steve West playbook.
The result will be the same too, the collapse of regional planning in Alberta a little more than 30 years after the last time it was made to collapse.
Frankly, it’s mildly surprising former UCP premier Jason Kenney, who often governed by spite, didn’t dump it in the summer of 2019 just because it could fairly be described as an NDP policy.
As for Mr. Nenshi – now leader of the NDP – he predicted that the result will be “the wild west in planning.”
“When you’re in a housing crisis, that’s the worst possible thing you can do because you can’t plan where to put the houses where the infrastructure already exists, where transit is already in place,” he told The Edmonton Journal’s reporter.
What he most likely won’t say, if he gets around to making an official statement, is what the obvious solution is, to wit: amalgamation of the municipalities around Alberta’s two biggest cities.
This will never fly, of course, in a province dominated by politicians from rural ridings who are quite content to let urban voters pay the freight whenever possible. And we’ll probably have to put up with the Opposition staying mum on that suggestion as well.
The UCP, naturally, will likely spin this change as doing something about Canada’s housing crisis, although most of the houses built on the ever expanding fringes of Edmonton and Calgary will not-so-mysteriously remain far beyond the financial reach of the folks who need housing most desperately.
Yes the only real surprise here was the UCP took so long getting around to this. No doubt Kenney was not keen on such regional planning either, but his many years in politics perhaps helped him understand how this made sense. Or maybe his unexpectedly having to deal with COVID kept him from getting around to this.
Also, the current UCP leadership is different, more suspicious and dismissive of anything that someone else might recommend and determined to undermine or destroy any other competing centres of power to the provincial government. So municipalities will be subordinated, regional planning bodies eliminated and Alberta uber alles!
Not only this for these reasons, but the trifecta for the UCP is this takes our attention away from the Finance Ministers recent almost admission of an upcoming deficit. He said we would be in deficit in the upcoming year if oil is under $70. Guess where it is now and has been for much of the last few weeks? There has been little mention of this in our mainstream media or anywhere else and I bet there will be even less now.
If Smith were to one day write a book about her political strategy, I feel she should call it The Art of Distraction. It seems to work for her.
The UCP treats municipalities in Alberta like bona-fide crap. Dumps all the costs onto them, and municipal property taxes shoot up, and other problems escalate. Ralph Klein was horrible, but Danielle Smith seems to be outpacing him.
Hello fellow Carleton grad DJC and fellow commenters,
This was an enlightening column. It seems as if the premier is again acting as if Alberta is her personal fiefdom. I thought that everyone had regional planning, but apparently not.
Unfortunately, both the federal government and the provincial government seem to be fine with policies that are producing homes for the better off and almost nothing for residents with moderate and low income.
What I am seeing from both looking at local real estate listings and helping someone look for a rental apartment is that rooming houses are now in almost every community from better off (not rich) to lower income. And rent in these rooming houses isn’t cheap.
Once upon a time in the ’50s and ’60s, suburbs just outside of the Ottawa city limits offered small, well-built homes at moderate prices and, thanks to Central Mortgage and Housing, as it was then, reasonable mortgage rates. They were within a mile or so of transit.
Perhaps, this sprawl wasn’t the most desirable, but at least it had benefit of affordability with reasonable access to the City. Some of these suburbs became cities which later became part of the City of Ottawa.
Christina: Further to my comments in the post, Conservative governments like suburban development in part because suburban voters are more likely to vote Conservative. So there is a built-in incentive to approve that type of development. Typical voters in suburban developments, like the one I live in, complain about taxes, oppose public transit, view a range of important policies from protecting the environment to encouraging the arts as fripperies, prioritize roads above all, complain constantly about the price of transportation, prioritize owning a $100,000 crew-cab pickup truck for their daily commute on city roads to which they pay no taxes, and would be outraged by any change in policy that reduced the sales value of their suburban home or even held it steady for a few years. DJC
Rural Alberta voters behave like children.
It looks like we have a competition between Smith and Doug Ford for who can heap the most money on their developer friends. I suppose the winner gets the most Board seats after politics.
I don’t know how many of today’s notable coinages should be attributed to DJC but
Sprawl Cabal
Mid-Zeroes
Fossil Politics
Government by Spite
Wild West in Planning and
Let Urban Voters Pay the Freight
is certainly something to crow about!
Thank you!
Scotty:
Sprawl Cabal – Naheed Nenshi (unverified)
Mid-Zeroes – DJC
Fossil Politics – DJC
Government by Spite – simply an observation, DJC
Wild West in Planning – a cliche, used by many, in this case by Mr. Nenshi
Let Urban Voters Pay the Freight – ditto, this time by me
DJC
Given that commercial properties pay a higher mill rate than does residential. How do new communities, not in our urban centres, dump a tax burden on city tax payers?
Because the cost of connecting those developments , well outside what was ever considered the “city” , to city services, falls on, well, the city.
Developers get to throw up cheap (quality) but expensive (priced) housing for cents on the dollar what they would have to pay for urban development , which as DJC pointed out, happens to be where the services (and the people who need housing) already are.
As STATED IN THE ARTICLE this amounts to billions in revenue and more than a billion dollars in PROFIT for these developers, while Edmonton groans under the weight of yet another population boom.
That’s how.
Ryan: Pardon my delay, I have been busy. Industrial land is profitable. Commercial and residential (even higher density residential) are often a net loss to the tax base as they never truly generate more revenue then they cost a community in the long run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI3kkk2JdoI DJC
Here’s an example: in the Grande Prairie area, the bulk of the municipal tax base is in the County of Grande Prairie No. 1, with a significant portion of it being oil and gas service industry businesses in the Hamlet of Clairmont just north of City limits. But the vast majority of residential property tax comes from within City of Grande Prairie, and most of the amenities that area residents take advantage of are within the City proper.
Now, this situation has improved somewhat versus a dozen years ago, with the Intermunicipal Development Plan to govern each municipality’s relationship. For example, while the City’s principal indoor swimming and recreation complex – the Eastlink Centre – was funded primarily by City taxpayers while County residents also get to use it, the County now has its own sportsplex in Clairmont. On the other hand, the Public Library is in the City centre, but gets funding from the City of Grande Prairie, the County of Grande Prairie No. 1, the Municipal District of Greenview, and the Province of Alberta. https://gppl.ca/Support-GPPL/Our-Supporters
Full disclosure: my wife and I are County residents, but we have lived within the City, and all of our [adult] kids do.
Just reading your theses. Some very interesting historical data. Thanks.
This critique by David Climenhaga offers a scathing perspective on the Alberta government’s decision to dismantle mandatory regional planning once again, underscoring the long-term repercussions of such a move. The piece is rooted in a historical analysis, drawing parallels between Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) policies and the actions of Ralph Klein’s government in 1993. Here are key points of the critique:
Historical Context and Policy Implications
1. Historical Repetition: The article highlights how this policy reversal echoes the Klein era, particularly Steve West’s 1993 decision to eliminate regional planning, leading to urban sprawl and financial burdens on Edmonton and Calgary taxpayers.
2. Impact on Urban Centers: The dismantling of regional planning boards, such as the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board (EMRB), shifts the costs of urban sprawl—road maintenance, infrastructure, and services—onto city taxpayers. This benefits suburban developers and smaller municipalities while penalizing urban residents.
3. Sprawl Subsidy: Climenhaga criticizes how the “Sprawl Cabal” (a term coined by former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi) profits from unchecked suburban development, leaving urban centers to bear the infrastructure costs. For instance, the City of Edmonton report indicating a $1 billion profit for developers underscores the economic disparity.
Critique of Political Motivations
4. Rural-Urban Divide: The article argues that the UCP’s policies are shaped by a rural power base, reflecting disdain for urban voters. By making regional planning voluntary, the UCP caters to rural and suburban interests while undermining urban development.
5. Short-Sighted Governance: Climenhaga criticizes the government for focusing on immediate political gains rather than addressing broader issues like housing affordability, climate impact, and sustainable urban growth.
6. Housing Crisis: While the UCP may claim this move addresses housing affordability, the article points out that new developments are unlikely to meet the needs of those most affected by the housing crisis.
Consequences and Alternatives
7. Collapse of Regional Planning: The article predicts that voluntary regional planning will inevitably lead to its collapse, just as it did in the 1990s. This lack of coordination will exacerbate urban sprawl, environmental degradation, and financial inequities.
8. Amalgamation as a Solution: Although politically unviable, Climenhaga suggests that amalgamating the municipalities around Edmonton and Calgary could ensure fairer cost-sharing and more cohesive regional development.
9. Climate and Livability Concerns: Beyond economic arguments, the dismantling of regional planning boards is criticized for undermining climate goals and reducing the livability of Alberta’s cities.
Tone and Advocacy
Climenhaga’s tone is unapologetically critical, blending wit and historical insight to challenge the government’s rationale. He aligns himself with the urban taxpayers and advocates for policies that prioritize sustainable growth and equity over political expedience.
Broader Implications
This critique serves as a cautionary tale for other regions facing similar tensions between urban and rural priorities. It underscores the importance of balanced governance that considers long-term sustainability over short-term political gains. For Alberta, the return to fragmented planning threatens not just taxpayers but the province’s environmental and economic future.
Sprawl within city limits is a different issue as regional planning can’t do much to influence Edmonton or Calgary City Councils.
Regional planning can influence land use in the satellite cities and towns and especially in exurban areas like Rockyview and Strathcona Counties. It is largely irrelevant in the Calgary region as the SSRB water management plan froze water licenses ~20 years ago. The implication is that development must either secure connection to Calgary’s water system or buy water from an irrigation district, giving the City considerable leverage. The Edmonton area is a different story as it has many more satellite communities and isn’t as water constrained.
A better approach would be massive annexation of communities surrounding Calgary and Edmonton along the lines of what happened in Ontario in the 1990s.
Doug: That is a very foolish mistake to do something like that. It will compound problems even more.