As the debate over Alberta’s regional plans continues, the Wildrose Alliance has a proposal it is touting as the right alternative.
The party’s leader, Danielle Smith, said they agree with the need to plan for the future, but the provincial government is going about it the wrong way.
The Wildrose Alliance has developed its own six-step process for better regional planning.
“We think it’s a multi-step process to deal with all of the issues the land use framework was created to try to address,” said Smith.
She said the Province should build regional planning from the ground up, rather than from the top down, to allow municipal councils and industry stakeholders to take lead roles in the process.
Smith argued the Alberta Land Stewardship Act (ALSA) has created a central planning model that won’t lead to better decisions.
“We’ve seen what happens when you plan from the top, that’s what happened with the health super board,” she said. “They didn’t believe local decision makers would make the right decisions.”
ALSA divides the Province into seven land use regions and mandates the creation of a plan for each area, as well as for both the Calgary and Edmonton areas. As opposition to the land use plan mounted the Province brought forward a number of changes in Bill-10 earlier this year.
Smith said people at the local level should be empowered to create plans guided by a set of basic principles.
The first step proposed by the Wildrose party is to repeal ALSA and ensure property rights are enshrined in the Alberta Bill of Rights.
Step two, honour existing deals. The party would grandfather current leases and licences.
Leases would only be revoked in rare circumstances and, in those cases, full compensation and recourse to the courts should be guaranteed.
Next, Smith said the Province could use existing legislation, rather than create new laws. She argued Alberta Environment should be free to look at cumulative effects of activities and enforce compliance with regulations rather than create more bureaucracy.
The Wildrose Alliance also wants the Province to let the Water Act do what it’s supposed to — protect Alberta’s water resources. According to Smith the Water Act already sets standards for use, quality and conservation of water and the government should work in the existing framework.
Step five is to cut red tape. The party is calling for a review of land use planning best practices from around the world to develop a model for Alberta.
Finally, the Wildrose Alliance wants to involve the community because ALSA takes over municipal authority for land-use planning. The party would develop a decentralized planning structure from the ground up to maintain local autonomy.
One MLA closely involved with the development of provincial regional planning legislation said the Wildrose Alliance’s plan copies much of what has already been done with ALSA.
“All these pieces that they’re trying to put together are almost a mix and match, cut and paste out of other pieces that are already in place, but they aren’t really offering anything new other than rhetoric,” said Livingstone-Macleod MLA Evan Berger.
He said many elements brought together under ALSA and regional plans already existed in one act or another and ALSA ties them all together.
Ultimately, Berger said he takes the Alliance’s proposal to mean they endorse land use planning, haven’t figured out how to do it yet and they have has missed the mark in a number of areas.
The government has not revoked anything with ALSA, ALSA does not remove property rights and Bill-10 includes changes to improve these rights, said Berger.
He said there are opportunities to make adjustments to regional plans.
In rare situations he said negotiations can take place to make changes to conservation areas identified in regional plans. As well, Berger said the plans will be reviewed every five years and renewed every 10 years.
“It’s a very wide open process, there’s nothing the minister can just jump up and take without triggering a whole process of negotiating,” he said. “If at the end of the day there’s no agreement, they have the right to go to court.”
While Alberta Environment can look at cumulative effects, Berger said regional plans are part of a larger process also involving other groups like the Energy Resources Conservation Board and the Department of Sustainable Resources Development.
He said input from municipalities is of the utmost importance for regional plans.
The Province brought in all the stakeholders, including industry and municipal officials, to participate on regional advisory councils. The government has also included public consultation in the process of drawing up the regional plans, said Berger.
