Town of Vegreville council received correspondence this month from Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs regarding the local municipality’s concerns about the province’s introduction of Bill 20.
Bill 20 is the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, 2024.
Ric McIver says Bill 20 recently passed and it will modify two key pieces of legislation for Alberta municipalities – the Municipal Government Act and the Local Authorities Election Act.
Councillor Tina Warawa was very happy to hear back from the Minister of Municipal Affairs. She says “He directly addressed some of the issues we brought up and I think the biggest is a clarification on ‘how it will impact us?’ and the fact that a number of the changes were already changes that were in legislation prior and this is really just a clean up of some of those. I also think that it is really important that they are working on ‘what is the proper jurisdiction?’ and making sure that we have an ability to prosper under the province without sometimes a step from the federal government that isn’t necessary because it would be provincial jurisdiction.”
For Vegreville council, she does think there will be a little bit of a help where we aren’t looking to make decisions that shouldn’t typically be in our realm. Warawa says “Sometimes things like the health decisions. That can be a really difficult decision. We’ve faced that prior and as it was written to us in here, it appears they would then pull back legislation that really isn’t meant to be decided by the province. So it is actually quite comforting because a lot of times we aren’t in the position to make those decisions, especially when it comes to something like public health, and they are the body that should be doing it.”
Minister McIver concluded his correspondence to the Town of Vegreville by noting that now that Bill 20 has passed, his Municipal Affairs department will be engaging with municipalities and stakeholders over the coming months to explain the changes it will require at