Re: "Second open house planned for new county gravel law," April 14 Gazette.
There is no doubt Alberta should make careful use of its natural resources, especially to supply the province's own requirements. However, careful use is contradicted when government agencies aggressively promote the extraction of non-renewable resources before integrating environmental protection during the municipal planning and development stage.
As a result, the protection of our water, air, and land seems to follow as an afterthought if considered at all. This is demonstrated in the Strategic Alignment Checklist of the Sturgeon County Resource Extraction Regulatory Review final report (2021), which recommends that environmental stewardship is “not applicable.”
The importance of rule-of-law values and procedural safeguards in municipal decision-making is explored in a 2016 Osgoode Legal Studies research-paper publication by researchers Stanley Makuch and Maathew Shuman. They describe a power imbalance within Canadian municipal governments, where “individual municipal council members and their core constituents have become, not only the key decision-makers in municipal government, but also the primary beneficiaries of expanded municipal powers and discretion in municipal decision-making.”
Whether due to “a weak-mayor system, lack of party affiliations, and elections by individual districts or wards,” municipal decisions can be susceptible to “the whim of an individual councillor” or “a small group of politically powerful (ward) members.”
Makuch and Shuman argue that without limits to their discretion, municipalities have the power “to make decisions for almost any purpose” and may do so to benefit select members of the public. Municipalities must prioritize transparent, evidence-based decision-making, with public review and scrutiny, to counter the erosion of the public’s trust in their governance.
A good bylaw needs to be drafted for certainty, predictability, democratic transparency, accountability, and enforceability. Each statement should be clear and precise enough that everyone is able to determine what they must do to comply with it.
A good example of clear legislation is captured in this excerpt from the Alberta Public Lands Act Section 54(1): “No person shall cause, permit or suffer … the existence on any public land of any excavation of any kind that is undesirable … the doing of any act on public land that may injuriously affect watershed capacity, … and the disturbance of any public land in any manner that results or is likely to result in injury to the bed or shore of any river, stream, watercourse, lake or other body of water or land in the vicinity of that public land ... .” The text clearly describes the requirement to not cause or allow damage to bodies of water (or land adjacent to) on public land.
A properly-drafted bylaw allows municipalities to ensure that political decisions reflect common good and that municipalities (and not the provincial government) are accountable for such decisions.
The Sturgeon County sand and gravel bylaw decision will directly affect all Albertans. Prior to making any decision, more information is required. Land-planning decisions must not ignore the permanent negative impacts to water quantity and quality, adjacent lands, and the laws that protect them.
Ian Skinner, Sturgeon County
