Phendrana Drifts

I'm not trying to suggest that no one paid attention to municipalities in the recent PC leadership race, because I know all the candidates did and occasionally a media scribe penned an article or a column on the subject, but given both the enormity of the problem and the radical nature of the solutions put forward, I really felt it was a sleeper issue with enormous importance.

In all the hype between the provinces and Ottawa, there gets lost the larger fiscal imbalance, that between the levels of government that established by the constitution and the cities who pick up your trash, pave your roads, get you to the hospital and hire police officers to protect us.

There has been some press on the issue, notably in all of the failures that was the Rt. Hon. Paul Martin as Prime Minister there was a snippit on giving municipalities a break on the GST (which constitutionally is already not levied on provincial governments).

Yesterday, fulfilling a leadership campaign promise Premier Ed Stelmach is delivering on giving $1.4 billion to municipalities. From my vague understanding of municipal politics and finances, I think this is huge - more police, better roads and hey, I could go for some snow removal right now. In any case, while I think there are some more imaginative ways to deal with this fiscal imbalance - the need is quite pressing now, so hopefully places like Wood Buffalo (i.e. Fort McMurray) will be able to get ahead a little bit in infrastructure and service provision and we'll think of the ways beyond just cash from the province and bumping up property taxes to ensure our cities can keep up with the boom.

Labels: alberta politics

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