DON’T EXPORT CALGARY’S FAILED POLICIES TO THE REGION
The Calgary Metropolitan Region Board (CMRB) was mandated by Rachel Notley’s NDP government to give Calgary control of planning and development for the Calgary region.
Since its inception, this unelected body has been working on creating a new Growth Plan for the region that contains some of the most radical changes to development and planning rules ever proposed in Alberta.
With the enactment of this Growth Plan, the Calgary Metropolitan Region Board will effectively become a fourth level of government, yet barely anyone in the Calgary region has even heard of the Board – how is this possible?
Well, in part, that’s thanks to a very deliberate effort by the former NDP government, and the Board itself, to keep the powers and potential wide-ranging influence of the Board below the radar as much as possible for as long as possible.
The Board, at least according to its designers, is simply meant to help manage the significant population growth that the Calgary region is expected to experience in the coming decades.
Make no mistake though, the Board and its Growth Plan do much more than this.
Despite claims that the Board is based on cooperation, the ten member municipalities are being forced to participate in the organization, they cannot leave, and the voting system of the board gives a veto to the City of Calgary on every issue.
In effect, this puts Calgary politicians and bureaucrats in charge of planning and development for the entire region, as without Calgary’s approval, no plan or development can go ahead.
This is no accident – the Board was deliberately created to do exactly this, and the entire Growth Plan is based on the philosophy that a small group of people, in this case, bureaucrats and City planners can do a better job planning and managing population and employment growth than the free market can.
Many urban planners and NIMBYs who are opposed to practically any development anywhere are, of course, enthused by this prospect.
But for the average resident of the Calgary region, the Board will bring nothing but higher taxes and fees, more regulation and red tape, increased housing and infrastructure costs, and less efficient delivery of utilities and services.
For years, the City of Calgary has pursued bad public policies that have increased rules, regulations, red tape, and taxes on businesses and residents of Calgary.
The situation has become so dire that many businesses and residents have given up on Calgary and are instead setting up their operations and family lives in one of the many surrounding municipalities, where regulations and taxes are lighter.
Rather than fixing this problem by cutting red tape, getting taxes and spending under control, and working to become competitive again, the City of Calgary simply lobbied the provincial government to give them the power to impose the same bad policies across the entire region – essentially killing off the competition.
Now, all types of development – single family houses, row houses, apartments, shopping malls, retail stores, manufacturing, warehouses, agricultural services, and more – will have to be approved not only by the local municipality but also by an unelected board dominated by the City of Calgary.
Thrown out the window is any concept of the free market, individual choice, property rights, competition, and frankly, basic sound economics.
The Plan also runs roughshod over local democracy in the member municipalities, leaving many wondering what exactly, is the point of electing a local Council if planning and development rules – until now one of the most important tasks of a local government – will be controlled centrally by an unelected Board.
The Calgary Metropolitan Region Board was an ideological creation of the former provincial government, based on the idea that top-down central planning is the best way to run an economy.
However, central planning doesn’t work, and the current government should reverse this mistake as soon as possible by abolishing the Board and its Plan and allowing municipalities to return to cooperating on a voluntary basis, which has worked well for decades.
Peter McCaffrey is the president of the Alberta Institute, an independent, libertarian-minded public policy think tank that aims to advance personal freedom and choice in Alberta.
The Alberta Institute has prepared an academic research paper outlining the history of regional planning in the Calgary Region and looking at the implications of the CMRB on jobs, investment, and democracy for Alberta. To view the full report, go to www.albertainstitute.ca/research
