When Chestermere resident, Laurie Bold launched a petition requesting the Minister of Municipal Affairs to conduct an investigation into the operations of the City of Chestermere staff and council, she had no idea where that path would lead. After collecting over 5000 signatures, on March 24th 2016, Bold headed north and delivered the petition to the Ministers office – and the wait began.
Week by week, a cloud of curiosity hung over Chestermere and Bold grew more and more anxious waiting for a response. “I just kept wondering what could possibly be taking so long…just yes or no”, said Bold in a recent interview.
In the late afternoon hours of May 26th, the wait ended. I received the following statement from Shannon Greer, Press Secretary for the Minister of Municipal Affairs:
“The petition that was received on March 24, 2016 has been determined sufficient. In order to determine whether an inquiry or inspection is required, ministry staff will conduct a preliminary review into the concerns and issues that led to the petitioners’ request. The purpose of the preliminary review is to determine the underlying reason for the request and to ensure that an appropriate response is taken. The outcome of this review will determine if further action is required.
Conducting a preliminary review after determining petition sufficiency is standard protocol of Municipal Affairs and is consistent with actions taken previously regarding petitions in other municipalities”.
In the official letter that was sent Bold, Minister Larivee states “Section 572(1)(a)(I) of the Municipal Government Act (MGA) states that to be sufficient, a petition requesting an inquiry must be signed by electors of the municipality numbering at least 20 percent of the municipality’s population. The MGA requires petitioners to be excluded if they do not meet specific criteria. The petition received contained 5,493 signatures and 308 signatures had to be excluded, which resulted in 5,185 signatures remaining on the petition. The population of the city was 18,496 when the petition was received; therefore, at ease 3,699 electors had to sign the petition for it to be sufficient. Based on these findings, the petition was declared sufficient”.
The letter further acknowledges that the concerns of the electors is cause for attention and that a preliminary review will be conducted by ministry staff – who will be contacting both the City of Chestermere and Bold to initiate the review.
In an interview the following day with Bold she said, “When I sent the petition in, I think I waited for about 30 days and then someone asked me about it and I thought I should call the lady, [Cora], who was assigned to petition. She replied back and said that she was not the one who would tell me about, it would be the Minister who would be contacting me and that the Minster had no set time frame of when she had to tell me. And I asked ‘so she could take two years?’ and was told yes.. and I thought that was just ridiculous. But she said that she had never seen that happen before so I didn’t’ think that would be the case”.
Bold states that two weeks after she submitted the petitions, the Municipal Affairs staff member that was tasked with verify the validity of the petition called her requesting that all the affidavits she had obtained from her signature collectors needed to be re-done. “I was like ‘what?’ And she advised that they needed them redone because the wording on the affidavit was wrong by one or two words. So I confirmed that I had to get twenty-eight signature collectors back over to the house with my lawyer and was told yes. I didn’t’ think I’d get them all back here but twenty-four showed up and that’s probably why some of the signatures didn’t work”.
I asked Bold if she felt that this decision was a victory and she responded, “I don’t know what is going to happen. I want a full-blown inquiry done but maybe we get an inspection or maybe they find nothing out which is kinda what I think might happen, but you never know. The thing that I’m happy about is that at least they (Municipal Affairs) listened and at least what I did wasn’t a waste of two months of my life”.
Shortly after the petition decision came out, the City of Chestermere put the following statement out on their Facebook page:
“We have been advised by Municipal Affairs that the petition submitted by a group of residents has met the requirements for a sufficient number of signatures under the Municipal Government Act (MGA). City Council and staff understand that in order to determine whether further inquiry is required, Municipal Affairs will be conducting a preliminary review into the concerns that led to the petitioners’ request.
The City sees this as a positive opportunity to show how we work in an open and transparent manner. It is our goal to continue building a strong future for the City of Chestermere.”
I met with Mayor Matthews the next day and she had this to say about the decision made by Municipal Affairs. “We are happy to be able to work with the Minister of Municipal Affairs office and staff to show what an open and transparent organization we have here and work with them to move through the process”.
Chestermere Rocky View MLA, Leela Aheer, told me in an interview following the decision announcement that there had been lots going on behind the scenes up in Edmonton to get Municipal Affairs to declare a decision on the validity of this petition.
“We have been working so much on this in Edmonton. The last letter that we wrote regarding this was done with the hopes of getting a time frame on a decision. I plan on keeping a very close eye on what is going on and I’m happy to report about my findings with that. My responsibility at this point is to make sure that what the government says they are going to do is what they do and that’s what they follow up on. I support the peoples right to do petitions because this is their way to be involved and to hold their legislators accountable”, said Aheer.
Although Minister Larivee was not available for an interview prior to the printing of this article, her office did provide further information confirming that Ministry staff will complete the preliminary review, which consists of an analysis of information internal to the ministry and on-site interviews with individual council members, key municipal staff, and the petition representative.
Municipal Affairs also advised that the preliminary review will be initiated in July and is dependent upon the availability of individuals to be interviewed. The review will take approximately two months to complete and findings will be provided to the Minister. The Minister has no legislated timeline to make a decision on what actions, if any, will be taken. It was also confirmed that there is no cost associated with conducting a preliminary review.
