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Rural Municipal Difficulties in Alberta1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

A. S. Abell
A. S. Abell*
Affiliation:
Edmonton, Alta
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Extract

In Alberta, the Municipal Districts are the centre, or at least the most important units, of rural, local government. They possess a greater diversity of function than either school or hospital districts and, for the most part, they assume the task of collecting all local and provincial taxes on real property within their borders. An attempt will be made in the following pages to analyse their present position and to determine what adjustments are necessary to enable them to survive.

Historically, the Municipal Districts mark a comparatively recent stage in the evolution of Alberta's municipal units. They are the lineal descendants of the Statute Labor and Local Improvement Districts which were created while Alberta was a part of the North West Territories. There seems to have been no long struggle for local government, comparable to that which the people of Ontario waged for similar privileges at a much earlier date. The theory and practice of popular municipal government had been well established and accepted by senior governments before Alberta was settled. Hence the territorial, and later the provincial, government took the initiative in the formation of municipal institutions, and the comparative instability and sparseness of the population made possible a fairly strong central control.

The year 1912, seven years after the formation of the Province, is a landmark in Alberta's municipal history. A Department of Municipal Affairs was created to administer the various municipal acts and to furnish guidance and supervision to the local authorities. An arbitrary unit, a square of nine townships (324 square miles), was adopted as the physical basis of rural municipal organization. Provision was made for the establishment of Rural Municipalities with corporate powers. In addition to this “permanent” form of municipal government, provision was made for the formation of “small” and “large” Local Improvement Districts. The former were to possess elected councils with more restricted powers than those of the Rural Municipalities; the latter were to be directly administered by the Provincial Department of Municipal Affairs.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , November 1940 , pp. 555 - 561
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1940

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Footnotes

1

A. S. Abell, Rural Municipal Government in Alberta: Taxation and Finance (M.A. thesis, University of Toronto, 1940).

References

2 Statute Labor Districts of one to four townships in size (36-144 square miles) were first formed in 1886. The area was set at one to two townships in 1897, and at three to six townships in 1903. Statute Labor Districts were renamed Local Improvement Districts in 1898 and elected councils were first granted in 1903.

3 Statutes of Alberta, chap. 3,1912. The supervision of rural municipal government was previously entrusted to the Department of Public Works.

4 The townships of Alberta, each six miles square and each composed of thirty-six sections, are not political units, but are merely the basis of the system of land survey.

5 The adoption of a single tax on land values was made optional in 1894 (Ordinances of the North West Territories, No. 3, 1894).

6 Fortunately, municipal difficulties have not been intensified by the existence of large debenture debt—either because of reluctance on the part of the municipalities to resort to this type of financing or because of restraint exercised by the Province through the Board of Public Utility Commissioners. Only one Municipal District had an outstanding debenture in 1938. But the accounts payable are, in large part, advances due to the Province for roads, relief, and social services, and consequently have tended to replace other types of pure borrowing.

7 The gross value of agricultural production declined by approximately 63 per cent between 1928 and 1932. The customary variability of agricultural income creates serious problems for public bodies directly dependent upon such income, particularly in young communities where capital accumulation is small. But when declines in farm income reach the proportions indicated above, disaster is inevitable.

8 Old Age Pensions were instituted in 1929 and relief costs, a direct product of the drought and depression, increased at a phenomenal rate after 1930. Mothers' Allowance costs, divided equally between the Province and the municipalities until 1936, experienced their chief expansion in the 1920's. Between 1923 and 1938 there was an increase of 25-30 per cent in municipal expenditure of which perhaps two-thirds was due to expansion in the above items.

9 Since 1912 twenty-three Municipal Districts have reverted to the Improvement District form or have been organized as Special Areas. Of these, fifteen were within the brown soil zone; seventeen were within the lowest precipitation zone, i.e. under 10″ per annum; all had less than the Municipal District average for population in 1921; and no less than fourteen suffered a population decline in excess of 37.5 per cent between 1921 and 1936.

10 This tendency was aggravated by the lack, until 1938, of any statutory provision preventing men seriously in arrears of taxes from sitting on the Council.

11 The Supplementary Revenue Tax or Social Service Tax.

12 This would reduce municipal expenditure by approximately 5 per cent.

13 Differential treatment is justified with respect to schools, since equivalent services are more costly in areas of low population. Upward revision of the provincial grants to schools would obviously increase the revenues available to the municipalities, but such action would only be necessary in a limited number of cases if the other proposals indicated in this article were adopted.

14 The Province has attempted to improve standards by making the appointment of important municipal officials such as secretary-treasurers, assessors, and auditors subject to the approval of the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

15 This involves extension of provincial revenues. A more careful appraisal should be made of the feasibility of production taxation. At the same time, there is a very strong case for increased federal grants based directly upon a careful assessment of the continuing disability which the Province suffers by reason of Dominion tariff policy.

16 Some improvement in average administration may be achieved; but this will apply more to technique than to formulation of policy, and the full benefit of improved techniques will be available only through the employment of capable and enlightened permanent officials. It would be wrong to under-emphasize the ameliorative effect of effort in this direction but, since municipal councils impose only 40-45 per cent of the present land levy, such effort alone cannot bring about a total cure.