Somebody Call 9-1-1, the Municipals Are Fighting Back *and* the History of Senate Elections in Alberta
EXTRA: Alberta's senatorial election history and the big-box ballot
The brawl may have seemed to be about who answers the phone when you dial 9-1-1, but the ongoing fight between the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and the Alberta government was about a broken relationship. And this tattered relationship, say many watching it all closely, will be a central part of the coming municipal election campaign.
Round one was extraordinary stuff. Don Scott, mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo—and former MLA and provincial cabinet minister—stood before a camera last Wednesday and called out the hand that feeds him.
“I challenge the provincial government to remove me as the mayor,” Scott said. “I believe in this cause enough that I stand by it completely.”
Scott and his entire council are angry that a recent provincial government decision to consolidate emergency-response dispatch services — the people who answer when you dial 9-1-1 — have ignored their significant, ongoing objections to the decision, as well as those from Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge. Scott spoke of sending letters of protest for months to Premier Jason Kenney and to Health Minister Tyler Shandro, and of getting nowhere. While this is about 9-1-1 on the surface, what it’s really about is the relationship between Alberta’s municipal governments and the provincial government. This puts Scott’s comments in perspective. “We have been met with total resistance,” he said, in a video posted on the region’s YouTube channel.
Wood Buffalo’s council made its anger at the province concrete last week by unanimously voting to stop sending 9-1-1 EMS calls to the provincial, consolidated dispatch. The provincial government, in turn, sought a court injunction against the municipality. And on Friday, the province won.
Speaking to Fort McMurray Today after the court’s decision, Scott said this isn’t over. “Wood Buffalo has a proud history of resilience and solidarity. I appreciate that the court of public opinion weighs heavily in our favour. I remain resolved to continue this fight in the courts of Alberta.”
Where does this go from here? Well, there’s an election in October. That’s where. Here’s what you need to know:
1. This ain’t normal
Vincent McDermott, editor of Fort McMurray Today, tweeted that he’d never seen the Wood Buffalo council this angry before. He told Rage Against the Municipal that Scott openly defying the provincial government would have been unimaginable until only a few months ago, but no longer. “I’ve noticed the mayor saying we’re getting screwed over, that the province isn’t paying attention,” McDermott said. “It wasn’t just over this EMS dispatch thing, though that was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
2. This isn’t about Wood Buffalo
Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge are also openly calling on the province to reverse its decision on EMS dispatch. Lethbridge Mayor Chris Spearman told RATM, “It’s fair to say the province hasn’t listened. I agree with the mayor of Wood Buffalo.”
3. October makes it all great tea
The coming municipal election makes Scott’s fightback very interesting indeed. Many expected the upcoming municipal election, which is the focus of this newsletter, to be about political alignment — or, in other words, about partisan politics, which are not a feature in most municipal councils in Alberta.
Indeed, there’s been a lot of anticipatory discussion about the UCP or those loosely in its orbit creating candidate slates that support a UCP agenda over local agendas in their run for mayor and council seats. But Scott’s open defiance, as well as the provincial, municipal-heavy uproar and subsequent walk-balk by the UCP on its changes to provincial coal policy, suggest that all might be collapsing.
Who, after all, would run in Wood Buffalo right now while openly supporting the Kenney government? Further, why would the UCP actively want to make the coming municipal elections a direct litmus test for its lagging popularity?
Spearman, in Lethbridge, now sees it all playing out at the ballot box. “This municipal election will be more politicized than those in the past, which were previously about local issues,” he said. “Now the question will be is this candidate aligned or not aligned with the provincial government?”
Big-Box Ballot
Back in 1998, Preston Manning, the Albertan who founded the federal Reform Party on the populist idea that disconnected elites were holding back the people of the Prairies, had made himself a household name by pushing the idea of an elected Senate in Canada to replace patronage appointments by the prime minister.
The Senate is not well understood by Canadians. It roughly oversees the House of Commons as a chamber of ‘sober second thought’, and its members are appointed (then and now) effectively by the Prime Minister and can remain in the position until 75.
But back to 1998. That year, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s caucus got behind the elected-Senate idea. Klein, like Manning, was also a populist and knew as any Alberta premier inherently does that most Albertans love a good brawl with Ottawa. The elected-Senate idea allowed for another scrap, even if the result had zero actual power to choose who the prime minister appointed to the Senate. By spring, all Klein needed was an actual election to symbolically elect some senators and stick it to the Laurentian elites. Why not use the province’s municipal elections that October? And so, they did.
This should sound familiar. In October, all of Alberta’s municipalities will hold elections for mayors, councillors, reeves, school board trustees and other positions. These are people elected to work on things within their communities; we call on them if something’s broken. We do not call our senators. But these representatives will nonetheless be elected this October in the shadow of another symbolic senator election, as well as a provincial referendum on equalization, the proposal to create a provincial police force, and any other axe-grindings with Ottawa Premier Jason Kenney and the United Conservative Party dream up.
What will this mean? “I’m worried about democracy,” one mayor told Rage Against the Municipal.
Analysts have gone further, to suggest the UCP is potentially manipulating a process that’s ripe for interference, given the historic low voter turnout municipal elections see in Alberta.
Do they have a point? Well, if 1998 is a guide, it seems non-municipal politicians have a lot to gain from fights with Ottawa during municipal votes. Back then, the vote for mayors and councils was sidelined in news reportage by the far juicier idea of fighting with Ottawa about the elected Senate.
Was there an imminently opening seat in the Senate that this election needed to fill? Well, no. Were there headlines, regardless? Hell yes. Rallies were held in Edmonton — not for money for towns and cities to build things people actually needed, but for the elected senate. Deborah Grey, a Reform Party MP from rural Alberta, told a crowd at one of the rallies that Alberta’s six sitting senators should just resign to give this new election actual clout. “Quit and run,” the Edmonton Journal reported Grey as saying, “or you’re going to get steamrolled, hit-and-run.”
Steamrolled was, indeed, how some municipalities likely felt. That same year, the province had handed Alberta municipalities the responsibility to decide how many video-lottery terminals should be allowed in their communities, which the municipalities were also putting to a plebiscite. Complaints about the Senate election taking oxygen from this divisive issue for communities were made but swept away by provincial cabinet ministers.
The Senate election went ahead. Albertans ‘elected’ Bert Brown and Ted Morton as senators.
Brown remained the elected senator-in-waiting for nine years, until 2007. The aftermath for Morton was more interesting. He was ‘elected’ to the Senate by Albertans but never appointed to sit there by the prime minister. Morton eventually was elected as an MLA, too, and appointed to Alberta’s cabinet.
The provincial election that Morton won was, of course, held on its own dedicated day rather than sidelined by symbolic referendum questions.
Photo: Mayor Don Scott Photo is a screen cap of the RMWB YouTube channel
Photo: Preston Manning: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license.