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Bill 41 - Municipal Government Amendment Act, 2008 (No. 2)

November 6, 2008 - Second Reading

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak in second reading to Bill 41, the Municipal Government Amendment Act, 2008 (No. 2). I was very interested to see this one come forward, partly because I’ve had a number of schools close in my riding, as you know, and it just creates a huge hole in the community. The school board is allowed to dispose of the school land following certain criteria if it deems it to be no longer needed. Now, really, what this bill is addressing is sort of the other end of that, the front end of it, in that this is land that has been set aside for school use in which it’s determined that it’s not likely going to be used or not fast enough to be useful for a given community. This is changing the MGA to allow the municipalities to do some things with that land that they wouldn’t have been allowed to do with that land previously.

I think this is a good move, and I’m very glad to see it, actually, because I know that we had some sort of – I don’t want to call it creative bookkeeping because that’s really not fair. There was some very hard work put in by my municipality, the city of Edmonton, I believe working with some government members, in trying to take some surplus school land and allocate it for first-time homebuyers to be able to build houses on that land that the city could contribute at a reasonable rate. Builders could then build houses on it. Because the land was less expensive to begin with, the cost of the house itself was an entry level cost for first-time homeowners, and that’s in fact how it was designated. That was very innovative, but it was hard to do because the MGA did not give the municipalities the flexibility to do that. So we now have that possibility, and others, which I’ll come back to, are enabled through this change in the MGA.

Let me just back up. What we have here is that delegation from the province. Really, the municipalities are entirely dependent upon the province for permission to do things because it’s the provincial government that enables their legislation through the Municipal Government Act. As we end up with larger municipalities – truly, metropolitan areas, when we look at the cities of Edmonton and Calgary – and including our other cities, more than 80 per cent of the population of Alberta is residing in one of those areas. So these are very important entities, and most of the people in Alberta live in them. We have to find better ways of allowing the cities to be creative and to serve their citizens, who are also our citizens. That counts in a bunch of different ways in other programming.

What we’re talking about here today is the use of the land. There are two other things that are being brought out in this legislation, which I don’t think anybody has any problem with. Nobody has raised any issue with me about it. One is the first section, which is amending section 292 of the original act, which is really clarifying and closing a loophole, that you can’t use stale-dated information, that, basically, the Alberta Utilities Commission or the ERCB – why do they keep changing the initials? – those organizations, have to be providing more current information for the assessments. That’s just closing a loophole.

The second one is amending section 304(1)(f). That’s essentially putting into legislation what’s already in practice; that is, that the M and E taxes should be paid by the holder or the controller of the land. I think I got that the right way around. Yeah. Those are fine as far as I know. As I say, no one has contacted me with any kind of a concern about it.

Where I’m concentrating my interest and my energy is on what’s being amended in 616, 671, 672 and 674, et cetera, of the MGA. This is what is allowing for a new category to be created of community services reserve. Essentially, what we had before was reserve and nonreserve. Those two categories were all the school board and city could interact on. The reserve was land that if the school board indicated it wasn’t going to use it or need it – in other words, it was surplus – it would be sold to the municipality for a dollar for the municipality to use for designated purposes. The nonreserve, with again the same provisos about being identified as surplus by the school boards, would be sold to the city at market assessment or market value. That makes a big difference for the municipalities.

In my reading of this, but perhaps the sponsor of the bill could clarify, I take it, then, that the community services reserve is designated as reserve land, which means that it should be able to be sold to the municipalities for a dollar, and I’m getting that by looking at 4(d). If I could get confirmation on that because that’s a really important point for the municipalities. Whether they’re paying a dollar for it or whether they’re paying market value for it is, I’m sure, a major factor in their decision-making.

Okay. There’s the way it has been designated and the money factor, and then the second piece of it is allowing for the uses of it. We have not in the past had a lot of leeway in how that land got used. Currently in Edmonton, anyway – I’m sorry; I don’t know what it is in Calgary – we have some 40 school sites right now that are kind of up for grabs, if I can put it that way. Vacant and assembled reserve school sites in Edmonton: that’s the official language on it. That’s a lot of opportunity. In Edmonton and, I think, in a number of the other municipalities and, I’m hoping, increasingly in the province we recognize that we need to not keep building out in our cities. We need to start working with density.

You can imagine that being able to use 40 sizable plots of land in a city the size of Edmonton, that’s a lot of opportunity for denser – I’m not saying densest but denser – housing but also communities building because there are other possibilities for the use of that land that is being anticipated and allowed for in this bill. There are two things that the government has done right here. One is that they have designated non profit. I think that’s important because if we’re talking an asset that is essentially either paid for or belongs to the citizens, or both, it should continue to be used in that vein. I don’t approve of having those assets made available to a for profit at a deal. Let me clarify that. I have nothing against entrepreneurs. I need them downtown big time. We love our entrepreneurs. We love our small businesses. What is not right in my mind is giving a for-profit business a deal by somehow giving it access to special circumstances that should be reserved for public administration, public ownership.

I’m sorry if that wasn’t very clear. Let me try that again. What this legislation has done is right. It’s essentially saying that if you’re going to use that reserve land as the new title, which is community services reserve land, it needs to be used for non profit activity, such as daycare, senior citizens, or special-needs facilities, and that the facility is owned or operated in a manner other than to make a profit. And that’s exactly right. That’s what we should be doing here.

Then it adds in that concept of community services reserve in the definition of reserve land, which also includes environmental reserve, municipal reserve, school reserve, or municipal and school reserve. Okay.

The bill also goes on to then name a number of possibilities for use of that land, and it’s exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing. We need to be moving towards more of a village approach in the way we build our cities; in other words, somebody actually could walk around and get what they need to conduct their life for a week, let’s say. They should be able to walk to a place of public transit so that they can get to work or to school. They should be able to shop for groceries or food and basic supplies, you know, have access to some ways of repairing or making minor repairs to their abode, to have access to recreational or even artistic venues and activities. They should be able to walk around their area and get most of that or access it without too long a trip on public transit.

When you look at those chunks of land, you say: wow, that’s not bad. You could definitely get some spaces happening in there which are a community focus. That also allows and attracts, frankly, other for profit businesses to cluster around it, and that’s exactly what you want. The for-profit businesses can take advantage of the vitality and the drawing-in of people to that area for the public services, and then people can take advantage of the for-profit services that have clustered around them. It’s exactly what you want.

They’re allowing for things like public libraries, police stations, fire stations, ambulance facilities, not-for-profit daycares – yay – not-for-profit seniors’ centres, which we’re going to need more of, thank you, and special-needs facilities. Then, you know, this could also be, I’m thinking, not activity centres, but frankly it could be things like group homes or small long-term care centres as well – and I see no problem with that – a municipal facility that’s providing service to the public, so that you could have, for example, some of the city FCSS delivery agencies housed there, and affordable housing. That was the idea that started off in Edmonton, and I think all credit to Mayor Mandel for pioneering this one.

It does allow us to look at that housing in those small areas and to use them for – I don’t want to say special in the sense of needy – distinctive housing projects, let me put it that way. We need the three levels of government to step up and help on housing. We know that we don’t get affordable or entry level or first-time buyer housing opportunities from the for-profit sector. And why should we expect them to do it? They are there to make a profit. Why on earth would we expect them to turn around and sell stuff for a lower price? They’re entitled to make their profit out of that.

But given that reality, we have to have the public sector step up and work with groups like – oh, they’ve changed their name. Homeward Bound? Homeward Trust? Home Trust? Anybody from Edmonton?

An Hon. Member: It’s Homeward Trust.

Ms Blakeman: Homeward Trust. Thank you. [Ms Blakeman’s speaking time expired] Oh, Mr. Speaker, this is so exciting. Well, I look forward to Committee of the Whole. Shoot.

The Deputy Speaker: Hon. members, there are five minutes for question and comment. The hon. Minister of Health and Wellness.

Mr. Liepert: Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to make a few comments on this particular legislation and maybe have the opportunity to help with some of the comments and questions that were raised by the Member for Edmonton-Centre. This particular piece of legislation is kind of special with me because during the year and a bit that I had the opportunity to be Minister of Education, it was through that time that I was consistently asked by the mayors of the two large cities, Edmonton and Calgary, if we could do something about this issue. We did manage to pull together the chairs of the four large school boards and the two mayors, and subsequent to putting together a working team over a few months, this is the culmination of that good work, and I think it is incredibly important.

It is a difficult issue, though, and one of the things that maybe the hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre is unaware of is on this reserve/nonreserve issue. Prior to 1957 schools owned the property. Subsequent to 1957, as part of rezoning, developers were required by municipalities to set aside I think it’s 10 per cent for reserve, which really nobody owns. The difficulty you have is that the property owned by the school boards, the nonreserve property prior to 1957, has a value because the school boards own it. So that gives you a little bit of a difficulty. I’m sure that applies in this member’s case because her constituency is an inner-city constituency. Most of the property that school boards hold title to would be pre-1957. In many cases it was deeded to the school board, and legitimately they have an asset that is worth a fair bit of money.

What the majority of this bill deals with are the post-1957 properties, which, really, the school boards do not own. The problem they had, because they didn’t own it, was that they had first claim on it for a school site and were reluctant to give it up, so they sat on it. The agreement that we reached with the school boards and the two municipalities has culminated in this particular legislation.

It has a process in place now that moves it out of what I would call the holding pattern that the school boards were in and allows us to be able to bring forward the kinds of initiatives that are outlined in the particular legislation. I just wanted to make it clear to the member that there are two distinct kinds of property here, one before 1957 and one post-1957.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much. That was very helpful because I did know the difference between reserve and nonreserve. I just didn’t know why, and that makes perfect sense. Therefore, being sold at market assessment is very fair because they own it.

Okay. Fair enough.

Mr. Liepert: They bought it.

Ms Blakeman: They bought it. Right. My question, then, is: is this new category of community services reserve coming under the reserve category, which would mean that it would be available to the municipalities for a dollar?

Mr. Liepert: I would ask the member to actually clarify that in committee, but it’s my understanding that that is the way. I haven’t actually been part of the drafting of the legislation; I was part of the negotiations leading up to this legislation. That is my understanding, but I would ask her to get clarity from the sponsor of the bill.

Ms Blakeman: That’s excellent. Thank you.