Premier Danielle Smith and the UCP have laid the groundwork to put an end to local democracy.

Full stop.  

The UCP does not believe in small government. They believe in one government.

Yes, municipalities are creatures of the province. But a government that rewrites the rules every time a city uses its powers in ways it dislikes isn’t delegating authority; it’s renting it out.

Since the UCP has held office, whether led by former Premier Jason Kenney or current Premier Smith, municipal governments in Calgary and Edmonton have had their authority stripped from them – one piece at a time.

Most recently, it was their right to determine land use bylaws. The Oct. 8 decision by the province to force the cities to revert to pre-2024 land use bylaws and effectively ban any sort of four-units-by-right significantly limits a city’s ability to govern growth.

It’s not as though this has come out of nowhere; it’s a pattern of behaviour that’s gone on since 2019.

Covid-19 and Public Health and Safety Bylaws

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the UCP removed municipalities’ power to make bylaws in the interest of citizens’ health and safety by removing a clause from the Municipal Government Act. Primarily, this decision was driven by the fact that local policies were more cautious and contradicted Premier Kenney’s phase two removal of pandemic restrictions.

At the time, Edmonton’s now-Mayor Andrew Knack had said Edmonton city council was not confident in the decision to lift restrictions in the absence of updated public health data, a sentiment echoed by former Mayor Jyoti Gondek in Calgary.

In response to this show of local authority regarding pandemic restrictions, Premier Kenney and then-Minister of Municipal Affairs Ric McIver amended the Municipal Government Act to remove local authority on bylaws related to the health of citizens.

The data requested by both Calgary and Edmonton was released later in 2022. It showed that Covid transmissions spiked again immediately following restrictions being lifted. A Calgary judge later found the UCP to have breached the Public Health Act by interfering with the Chief Medical Officer’s public health recommendations.

Calgary and Edmonton’s City Charters

The cities of Calgary and Edmonton represent approximately 56 per cent of Alberta’s population in only 0.2 per cent of its land mass.

In recognition of the unique needs of major metropolitan cities, the former Alberta NDP government negotiated the 2018 City Charters, allowing Calgary and Edmonton to act with additional autonomy on issues unique to major municipalities separate from the powers found in the Municipal Government Act.

A few of the additional powers found in the charters included infrastructure cost sharing with developers, affordable housing provisions such as inclusionary zoning (the powers to require affordable housing in new developments), and the ability to create building code requirements that were higher than the bare minimum of provincial building codes.

However, after being lobbied at the height of the housing crisis by the development industry in 2024, the governing UCP put forward legislation that changed City Charters to remove municipal powers over the building code, over inclusionary zoning, and reduced control over off-site levies.

At the time, the UCP claimed that removing affordable housing provisions, changing infrastructure cost-sharing rules, and removing the municipal ability to require higher-quality housing was in the name of affordability and red-tape reduction.

Removing municipal ability to work directly with the federal government

Also in 2024, the UCP moved to restrict municipalities and other provincial entities from entering into, amending, or extending agreements with the federal government. Bill 18 (later titled the Provincial Priorities Act 2024) was enacted because municipalities were entering into housing agreements with the federal Liberal government, primarily through programs like the Housing Accelerator Fund.

The Housing Accelerator Fund was designed to help remove barriers to support the development of more affordable homes. A part of that was to provide funding to municipalities for infrastructure (such as wastewater, water, transit, etc.) that enabled the construction of housing.

In Calgary, some of the funding from the Housing Accelerator Fund was used to fund these essential infrastructure upgrades, allowing more homes to be built without this additional cost being transferred onto future homeowners.

However, to be eligible for these programs, the federal government said that municipalities must commit to housing targets through strategies such as rezoning. In Calgary and Edmonton, this stipulation was irrelevant because both municipalities had committed to this in their own housing strategies or bylaws prior to the signing of these agreements.

Besides the Housing Accelerator Fund, Bill 18 now prevents municipalities from directly signing agreements with programs such as Canada’s Public Transit Fund without provincial approval (which is just an additional layer of red tape) and the Unsheltered Homeless and Encampments Initiative, or UHEI (funding to end encampments in municipalities).

Local Infrastructure: The Green Line and, of course, bike lanes

The UCP spent years delaying the Green Line through endless reviews. There was finally an agreement to move forward in early 2024.

Fast forward to September 2024, UCP Infrastructure Minister Devin Dreeshen backtracked on a $1.53 billion funding commitment to the project and threatened to derail it if the Green Line tunneled underground.

At that point, the City of Calgary had contracts in place, construction plans were moving ahead, and detailed designs for the stations had been completed. The project was ready to build. However, without provincial funding, the project couldn’t continue.

In a tight vote, the previous City of Calgary council bent the knee to ensure the funding was secured to move forward. The Green Line had been delayed too long; the UCP’s threats could’ve killed the local project, so rather than watch it disappear, Calgary accepted the provincial ultimatum.

Minister Dreeshen then turned to hyperlocal infrastructure and is now introducing legislation to take control over municipal bike lanes.

Mirroring legislation in Ontario, the UCP intends to supersede municipalities’ authority to build and maintain bike lanes and other infrastructure projects. If they don’t like it, the UCP could force municipalities to rip out their own infrastructure and do it all at their own cost.

Intervening in local democracy: Municipal political parties

Local governments in Alberta had always been characterized by their independence. Often, local candidates vying for council would show their political stripes – sometimes literally when you look at lawn sign designs – when they ran for council.

However, the absence of political parties meant that most candidates ultimately were accountable to themselves. At the end of the day, it was their name on the sign, on the ballot, and citizens didn’t have a party slogan under a candidate name on a ballot to guide their vote.

The UCP then introduced legislation in 2024 to bring in municipal parties to make local elections “more transparent.” In response to this, political scientist Duane Bratt stated that “[Premier Smith] made it explicit that the purpose is to elect Conservatives in Calgary and Edmonton.”

The most outspoken supporters of this legislation at the local level came uniformly from people aligned with the governing UCP. Councillor Dan McLean, who recently lost the nomination for the UCP’s candidate in a Calgary-Shaw byelection, was Calgary council’s most outspoken supporter of bringing in partisanship to local government elections.

“I think what the province is trying to do is formalize what already exists,” said Ward 13 Coun. Dan McLean.

When speaking about the benefits, now-Calgary councillor Mike Jamieson said it would simply make the process easier having a brand under the name of the candidates.

While the opposition to this legislation stated that political parties would introduce greater partisanship into local politics, reduce accountability to the broader constituency, and would only benefit Conservative ideological voters.

In the event that political parties do not produce the political outcomes the UCP desire, there is always the Recall legislation that was introduced in 2021 to recall elected officials, most famously in a failed campaign targeting former Mayor Jyoti Gondek.

Now back to the Oct. 8 land-use decision

Regulations for land use take up a significant chunk of the Municipal Government Act. It is the number one job of municipal authorities outside of the budget.

On Oct. 8, Premier Smith announced the most sweeping intervention yet:  Mandating that Edmonton repeal its Land-Use Bylaw and bring back a bylaw originally drafted in the 1960s (and revised multiple times over the years). Calgary, which already repealed citywide rezoning, is forbidden from bringing any such policy back.  

In a survey prior to Edmonton’s municipal election, Edmontonians’ main priority for the upcoming council was housing affordability. Infill was number 11 on a survey of Edmonton’s top voting issues prior to the election.

Edmonton is leading the nation as the most affordable major metropolitan city.

Edmonton and Calgary are leading the nation in rent declines across major metropolitan markets, according to Rentals.ca.

Further, this is all on the heels of the province praising the actions of Calgary and Edmonton for leading the nation in housing development and affordability in the midst of a housing crisis. The UCP even initiated an online portal where organizations and citizens could report municipalities for delaying or denying diverse housing in the name of reducing red tape.

The very red tape they sought feedback on are the exact bylaws they are now forcing Calgary and Edmonton to (re)adopt.

When seeking to validate the reasons provided to justify this intrusion on local politics, the Premier cites infrastructure capacity challenges, parking, and property value reductions.

When Calgary examined these issues following its own discussions on rezoning, it found three things:

1. 91% of Calgarians do not struggle to find parking near their homes and residential parking utilization is less than 50% in most neighbourhoods.
2. Most neighbourhoods have excess wastewater and water capacity, and every new development undergoes an infrastructure analysis prior to approval.
3. Missing Middle housing development has limited extreme price escalations in Calgary.

While many local groups use extreme and hyperbolic language to describe the state of infill development in Calgary and Edmonton, upon investigation, the concerns represented by these individuals are not broadly supported by data and rely heavily on anecdotal evidence. As of right now, there’s little, if any, research and data support the claims of “responsible growth” advocates. Rather, it appears “responsible growth” is simply an attempt to rebrand NIMBYism.

Premier Smith’s announcement on Oct. 8, however, was titled “Growing neighbourhoods responsibly.”

The path forward appears to be an end to local autonomy and authority

It’s becoming more evident that municipal governments are being shaped to serve populist ideals of the UCP and its ministers, rather than the constituents that elected local officials.

We didn’t even touch on the removal of municipal codes of conduct, Police Act changes, costly repeats of infrastructure reviews (Bearspaw), and the ability of cabinet ministers to put forward motions to revoke municipal bylaws.  

The pattern is clear: The legislation that outlines municipal authority can change in an instant should that authority not align with the preferences of the provincial government.

If authority and autonomy of municipal governments only exist to confirm the opinions and preferences of the provincial government, it is not authority – it is subordination.

If we don’t have independent municipal governments, why do we even have them?