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Local Government Reorganization in Alberta

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

E. J. Hanson
E. J. Hanson*
Affiliation:
The University of Alberta
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Extract

Among the few Canadian provinces and American states which have effected major changes in the structure of local government in recent years is the province of Alberta. During the last fifteen years, rural local government in that province has been reorganized extensively. It is the purpose of this paper to describe the main features of the reorganization, to suggest why it took place, and to appraise briefly its effects and implications.

Local Government Units in Alberta. The structure of local government in Alberta finds no counterpart elsewhere except in the other Prairie Provinces of Canada. In Alberta, the municipal district is a rural local government unit which is empowered and required by the provincial government to provide for local public works, public welfare, sanitation and health, and the protection of persons and property. Such a district levies the property taxes required to pay for these services as well as to pay the requisitions of school and hospital districts. Towns and villages within the boundaries of a municipal district are not under its jurisdiction; they are small urban incorporated municipalities operating under a special statute, The Town and Village Act. Cities are self-governing under separate charters. Thus a municipal district is peculiarly rural in character. It is governed by elected councillors, while a secretary-treasurer and office staff appointed by the council administer the district's affairs in accordance with the council's by-laws and the provincial statutes.

The less-developed rural areas of the province are divided into improvement districts. These are administrative areas in which the provincial government performs the functions alloted to the elected councils and the administrative staffs in the municipal districts.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , February 1950 , pp. 53 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1950

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References

1 In the Prairie Provinces a township is a tract of land six miles square. The settled portions of the provinces were surveyed into these squares.

2 These districts are not to be confused with the school divisions. The latter are much larger in area than the former. Some of the consolidated school districts still form independent “islands” within school divisions.

3 See Abell, A. S., “Rural Municipal Difficulties in Alberta” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. VI, no. 4, 12, 1940, pp. 555–61).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 The Special Areas, however, were created in the hardest-hit drought area of the province where municipal government broke down. Two large school units also were organized prior to 1936, one in the drought area and one in a newly-developed oil field south of Calgary.

5 Statutes of Alberta, ch. 85 of 1936.

6 See Irving, J. A., “The Evolution of the Social Credit Movement” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. XIV, no. 3, 08, 1948, pp. 321–41).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The Honourable C. E. Gerhart was the new minister. The previous minister had presumably had his hands full since he was also attorney-general, a portfolio demanding much attention during the first few years of tenure of the Social Credit government which took office in 1935.

8 Political and ethnic factors were influential in some instances. These generally explain the few failures to adhere to township lines or natural features in the case of municipal districts.

9 The main provincial land tax, the Social Service Tax, was abolished in 1946, so that the department is now almost wholly concerned with the supervision of local government.

10 By standards is here meant disbursements per pupil.

11 It can be argued, of course, that the old units could have acquired heavier and more specialized machinery too during the nineteen-forties when revenues became easier to collect. Nevertheless, it has been easier for the larger units to acquire such machinery than it would have been for smaller units.

12 For example, before school divisions were organized, the mill rates of the school districts within an area later organized as a school division might vary from 1 mill to over 40 mills. Combination of the districts brought with it a uniform mill rate, a condition which increased taxes in some districts and lowered them in others.

13 The greatly increased provincial equalization grants to education during the nineteen-forties are a major factor enabling low-assessment areas to keep pace with high-assessment areas in school expenditures.

14 The size of the present school division, by and large, conforms to minimum standards suggested by studies in the United States. See Dawson, Howard A., “Presentation of Principles on Satisfactory Local School Units” (Reorganization of School Units, United States Office of Education, 1935, Bulletin no. 15, pp. 6–12).Google Scholar