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Board Governance Best Practices and Stories/Experiences Shared
Ric McIver: [00:00:02] If an ordinary person with an ordinary job does a good job of it, they can probably keep their job for as long as they want. Being elected is not like that. No matter how bad a job, I or a municipal councilor, does, you're stuck with us for four years. No matter how good a job we do, we have to reapply for that job every four years. That's why you need to vote carefully. Because when you give somebody that job, you're stuck with them for four years. And if they're doing a great job, that's a happy four years. And if they're doing a terrible job, that's a long four years. So after all the rest of the stuff, there is no substitute for voting carefully.
Munir Haque: [00:00:40] Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Boardroom 180 Podcast. I'm your host Munir Haque, an executive coach and senior board strategist. I have partnered with Action Edge Executive Development to lead their governance and political acumen division. In each episode, we meet with governance leaders and step into their boardrooms, where decisions shape the world around us. In this episode, we look at a pivotal moment in Alberta's governance as the provincial government passed Bill 20, a landmark legislation poised to redefine the landscape of transparency, accountability and accessibility in local elections. This is according to the province. In a democratic society, the cornerstone of trust lies in the integrity of our electoral process and the accountability of our elected officials. According to the Province of Alberta, with Bill 20, otherwise known as the Municipal Affairs Statutes Amendment Act, the province seeks to uphold these fundamental principles by making amendments to both the Local Authorities Act and the Municipal Government Act, the MGA. According to the Municipal Affairs Minister, the Honorable Ric McIver, these proposed reforms will enhance transparency in the local election processes, empower voters and demand clear accountability from the municipally elected representatives, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the democratic process and strengthening the voter confidence in the lead up to the next municipal election seasons in 2025. As Minister of Community Affairs, he was the sponsor of Bill 20. Some of the key legislative changes include: it allows the creation of municipal political parties, initially limited to Calgary and Edmonton, where parties can endorse candidates and affiliations will appear on the ballots. There are campaign contribution changes allowing corporations and unions to contribute to local election campaigns, and there will be manual vote counting, which will replace electronic.
Munir Haque: [00:02:31] With regard to governance and accountability at the municipal level, it changes councilor training and conflict of interest rules, provides new disqualification rules, enhances provincial oversight by giving the province increased power to amend municipal bylaws and remove councilors. With regard to housing and development, it proposes measures to streamline and accelerate housing development process. The bill was passed earlier this year and most of the legislation came into force on October 31st, 2024 to share insights on governance implications of the change legislation. We are honored to have the Minister of Municipal Affairs on The Boardroom 180 Podcast. Ric McIver was first elected as a member of Legislative Assembly for Calgary-hays in 2012, and subsequently reelected in 2015, 2019 and 2023. He was sworn in as a member of the municipal affairs on my birthday, June 9th, in 2023, likely just a coincidence. He previously served as the Minister of Transportation, Minister of Infrastructure, as well as the Minister of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labor. Prior to his service as an elected official at the provincial level, Mr. McIver served three terms on the Calgary City Council. During that time, he served on the Police Commission and as the chair of the Calgary Housing Company, among many other assignments. He has been a long term volunteer for over 15 years with the Calgary Stampede. Welcome to the show, Mr. McIver.
Ric McIver: [00:03:57] Mr. Haque, it's good to be here. Thank you.
Munir Haque: [00:03:59] Yeah, maybe we'll just jump into it a bit. This has been all over the news, at least in Alberta for the last little while. I recall, on the drive in to work once, an interview that you were having on CBC morning. It's not without its controversy as in opposition. We'll get into that and talk a little bit about that today.
Ric McIver: [00:04:20] I look forward to it.
Munir Haque: [00:04:22] You're in a position here-it's a nonpartizan podcast. So you'll play both sides of the coin here. At points I might play a little bit of devil's advocate, but you're used to that.
Ric McIver: [00:04:34] Your introduction of the bill was good. There's a couple of things that I will try to clarify as we go through the discussion, and I'm sure I'll have that opportunity, so it's all good.
Munir Haque: [00:04:43] Sounds good. Why don't we start out with a little bit of an overview about the primary motivation for introducing this bill? I have a bit of a background in municipal government, and I know that policies often don't get pushed forward unless there is a reason for them or there's somebody advocating for it. So why don't you give a little bit of a background on the primary reasons for moving forward with this?
Ric McIver: [00:05:04] Sure. Well, thank you for this opportunity. It's pretty normal in Alberta, at least in government, that halfway between each municipal election, we take a look at the rules that govern that election, and we look at what happened in the last election and since, and we try to update the legislation. The next election is October 2025. We really started this a year and a half ago, just leading up into the halfway point between the two municipal elections that are four years apart. It was apparent some improvements needed to be made, plus some things that went on along the way made it at least apparent to me that some updates to the legislation had to happen. Bill 20 rolled all that into one package, and we presented it to the House. There's a number of elements to it, and some of it's just catching up, in my view, with what's already happening. A whole bunch of elements here, but you did talk about the party politics, part of the regulations or the rules, which if that's okay with you, I'll touch on that first. But we got a lot of other ground to cover on Bill 20, also.
Ric McIver: [00:06:10] Listen, in Calgary and Edmonton, there's an old saying I believe in and it's not original, obviously. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it might be a duck. Well, in the last couple of elections in Calgary and Edmonton, a lot of people would say there are no Partizan politics and no political parties involved. It's just not true. Some of the hard examples I can give you is, I can tell you in Edmonton, the unions back 6 or 7 candidates that mostly got elected and now serve as a voting bloc on council and rule most of the big decisions that council in Edmonton makes. To be clear, I'm not criticizing the union. That was not against the rules. Calgary, the unions backed-had about $1.7 million, backed about eight candidates that mostly got elected and largely carried the day on most of the big decisions on council and Calgary, and mostly act as a voting bloc. To be clear, it's not just the left side of the political spectrum deal. There is two mayoral candidates in Calgary last time. One, the business community furnished them with $500,000 to try to get elected and another one $400,000. This is both sides of the political spectrum. To be clear, I'm not criticizing any of that because as the rules were written, as far as I know, nobody broke the rules.
Ric McIver: [00:07:28] But I think you might agree with me, and some of your listeners and watchers might agree with me that it sure looks and sounds like a political party. When people pool their money together and support candidates of a like-mindedness and try to get them elected. So I think, okay, that's fine so let's just make it official. Let's make it that people can declare that they're a political party and have it on the ballot. So what's changed is that even though people have been acting as if they were in a political party the last few elections, you can't tell from the ballot because it doesn't list any affiliations on there. So we decided to put some rules around there. Along with that, let me say also that part of that is, we made it okay for corporate and union donations again. I was on municipal council in Calgary for nine years, and those corporate and union donations were always allowed then. When the NDP was in government here in Alberta, they took that away. Except they didn't. So officially the corporate and union donations were not allowed. But let's face it, if they couldn't donate directly, they did it through third parties and they put their oar in the water anyways. The big difference is nobody actually really knew about it.
Ric McIver: [00:08:40] Nobody knew that the unions were supporting these people and the business community was supporting those people. So now, nobody's going to be forced to be in a political party in Calgary, Edmonton, but they can choose to. Now, the other thing that you said in your introduction, and while you weren't strictly wrong, it could be interpreted in a way that's not accurate, is that you said political parties can support candidates in municipal level. I take only a slight issue with that because in fact, the rules are rules. Bill 20 explicitly prohibits any relationship between a municipal political party and any provincial or federal political party in Canada. No relationship is allowed. In fact, if there is a political party in Calgary and a political party in Edmonton, they're not even allowed to be affiliated. Which means they can't share money, they can't share resources, they can't share information. So local politics, even though these political parties allow it, Bill 20 was designed that local politics will remain local. So no municipal conservative party, no municipal Liberal party, no municipal NDP parties, explicitly prohibited. Not only that, not just the name, but no actual relationship sharing money or information allowed between a municipal party and a provincial or federal party. So again, local politics will remain local.
Munir Haque: [00:10:01] And were you finding that was happening?
Ric McIver: [00:10:04] Yeah, I mean, unofficially, you're never supposed to share information, but realistically it probably happens. I can't prove it per se, so I can't say it, but realistically, probably there is some of that. But here's the other thing, too. There were certainly business communities supporting typically are on the right side of the political spectrum, the conservative side supporting very specific candidates and the union money supporting, usually on the left side of the political spectrum, supporting other specific candidates. So all the earmarks of a political party were there, except for the transparency for the public to vote.
Munir Haque: [00:10:42] So essentially, I mean, there's nothing preventing from an ideological perspective that these local parties align, there's just no sharing of information, presumably. Can they use similar names?
Ric McIver: [00:10:54] No, and actually the names have to be done that there's no confusion between the parties and a provincial or federal party. I think if you see when parties form in Calgary and Edmonton, I'm sure you'll look at one party and look at their platform and you'll probably say, well that sounds like a conservative platform. The other one, you'll probably say, that sounds like an NDP platform. Other ones you'll say it sounds like a Liberal platform, but there can be no direct relationship.
Munir Haque: [00:11:20] I think I've read some critique on it, that it makes it maybe more challenging for The Independent than it was before. Assuming before there was Nonpartizan.
Ric McIver: [00:11:31] I don't believe there was nonpartizan candidates, or very few of them. I know that those people elected-now, the majority of them say that, and I don't believe it. I'm not buying it for a second because I've seen the show. There's nothing wrong with being Partizan, I just think it should be more apparent. I think what's more important is more transparent to the people that go to the ballot box to vote, to know, generally, who somebody's getting their money from. They can say, okay, well that sounds like a NDP type of candidate, that's what I really want to support, I'm going to vote for them. Or they'll say, that sounds like a conservative type of candidate, that's what I believe in, that's what I'm going to vote for. I think that making that more transparent and more out in the open is actually helpful to the voters. Because let's face it, Bill 20 wasn't made to please elected people, it was made to be better for the people that vote, the citizens of this province, to make it easier for them to determine who they're voting for and why.
Munir Haque: [00:12:27] I've seen before where mayors and councilors are always hesitant about expressing their alignment with the province, because often the province is the governing body that you're going up against to work with, to challenge their policies. And that makes it a little bit more difficult if you've expressed some sort of previous alignment with them or with their political ideologies.
Ric McIver: [00:12:51] I understand why currently elected people don't like this, because let's face it, one of the biggest advantages I had the three times I was elected was name recognition, when people knew who I was. Especially if you're already elected, your name is in the paper 3 or 4 times a week on the 6:00 news, on the podcasts, on the radio in the morning or afternoon. Your name gets known, and it's a lot easier to get people to vote for you if they have an idea who you are. Where this, to some degree, levels the playing field a little bit. Because they might say, well I know who Rick is. I like some of the things he did and I don't like other ones, but really I want NDP platform so I'm not going to vote for him. Or I want a conservative platform, so I will vote for him. All that's okay. But what's most important is that those that go to vote feel a little more empowered and a little more knowing about who stands for what, when they go to the ballot box.
Munir Haque: [00:13:48] When I was doing some of the background research for this, I went on the provincial website and it talked about leading up to, that there was a consultation process. Can you tell me a little bit about that? And as I said before, obviously there's often people who are advocating one way or another on this one. So if you can tell me a little bit about that process and maybe talk a little bit to some of the pushback you're getting from Alberta municipalities.
Ric McIver: [00:14:14] Well, listen, some of the folks in the legislature and their opposition, so they're supposed to oppose so I don't have a problem with that, but they said there was no consultation. We actually did two separate consultations. We publicly published the results, they're available on the government website, and I tabled both of them in the House. To say, look, I've tabled this. You can't say there was no consultation because I just proved to you that there was. Now, on some particular issues in the legislation, there might have been something that we decided was needed and didn't consult on that, and we did it. Okay, so there is a piece here or there where somebody might legitimately be able to say you didn't consult. But on the biggest part, we had at least two public consultations, published the results months before the legislation came out. And some people might also say that, well you didn't do everything that the elected people wanted you to do. And that's true because, we needed to hear from them because they're largely the experts on this stuff. But on the other hand, the legislation wasn't designed to make elected people happy, it was designed to make Albertans happy and make them more informed when they went to vote. So here's a couple of examples of things that I did because I thought they were necessary.
Ric McIver: [00:15:24] Back to what you said in the introduction, I didn't completely agree with. You said you gave yourself new powers to overturn legislation and to dismiss councilors. There is no new powers given, we've always had that power. Always, always, always. Any power that any municipal councilor or mayor or reeve has only comes from the municipal government act. In other words, if the province doesn't 'giveth' the power, you don't 'haveth' the power. It's always been that way. It's not just Alberta, it's all across Canada. That's the way our system is designed. The suggestion that we give ourselves new power to fire councilors to change legislation is not true, we've always had that power. But we did create a shorter path between deciding that that power is needed and the ability to exercise it. I would agree with that. It's not a new power, it's a quicker way to pull the trigger. A quicker way to take action. So here's a couple of things that inspired me on some of this stuff. When Covid was going on and it was getting near the end of the big part of that and our government, our health ministry said, no more mask mandates, we're not doing this anymore. The City of Edmonton said, no we're going to put our own mask mandate in because we don't agree with the health department.
Ric McIver: [00:16:32] Well, the city of Edmonton doesn't get to be the health Ministry and they tried to anyways. So at that time, I actually had to hustle a piece of legislation into the legislature and pass it in a few days so that Edmonton couldn't do that. They were unhappy with me, but I was unhappy with them because they don't get to do that. They just don't. I thought to myself, what if they did this the day after the legislation rested for summer? It would have been five months before I can fix it. Or at great, great, great expense, I would have had to call the legislature back to do it. And I thought, no, we need a shorter pathway for when this, what I'll call silly stuff, happens to correct it. Other thing about this, and the argument that you can't dismiss people. Well, it was a year ago before the legislation came out. I actually dismissed four members of Chestermere council. So you really can't say it's a new power. But I will say during that process, it took a couple years to do, and in my opinion, it was too long under the circumstances and we needed a path in extreme cases to be able to do it sooner, and Bill 20 now provides that shorter path.
Munir Haque: [00:17:34] How much shorter is it now? You said that was a couple of years to get through that process. You said it's quicker?
Ric McIver: [00:17:40] Well, this could be a lot quicker but there are some accountability for us in government too. Initially, the bill said we can dismiss counselors through complaints and people said, well where's the public part of the process? So we thought, even though it needs to be quicker-actually if cabinet passes a motion that somebody, I'll use myself as the bad example, that Ric has to be fired, then what happens now is that a vote will be called in whatever jurisdiction I got elected in, in my case it would be Calgary-hays. The folks of Calgary-hays would be able to vote to, yes I want to keep him, or no he's gone. We can trigger that vote. In other words, cabinet will look silly if it goes 90% in the elected person's favor. So in other words, we shouldn't pull the trigger unless we have a really good reason to do that. Because overturning an election is something that you shouldn't do quickly, you shouldn't do lightly, and you should only do when something really bad or really severe has happened. In this way, at least there's some accountability to the government. Listen, if we go to release somebody and they win a 90% vote, that's going to make it harder for us to get elected next time. On the other hand, if we win a 90% vote and the person goes because we thought they would, then we were kind of justified. Or if we say, I get it, the person had to go, we're going to make them go. No system is perfect, but I think there's enough accountability in there that if the government makes a decision like that, then we will at least be held accountable by the vote count, whether we made a responsible decision or not.
Munir Haque: [00:19:17] What about, one of the items in the news legislation is that, giving the ability to repeal municipal bylaws if they're deemed not in the public interest. How do you define the public interest and determine that it's something you move forward on?
Ric McIver: [00:19:38] That is never an exact science. But in terms of, we did that with Edmonton with the mask bylaw, we overturned it. Because we just said, you're out of your lane, you're not the health department, you don't get to do this.
Munir Haque: [00:19:49] That one is pretty black and white. I've sat through council meetings where at least there was one councilor on time. We don't have a public health officer, even. It's just made on the consensus of, seven people were sitting around a table.
Ric McIver: [00:20:04] Listen, we don't want to overturn every bylaw. There's 330 municipalities. You know what I don't want to be, is the mayor of 330 municipalities. Boy, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. I very much respect the municipally elected people that do it. But here's an example, Calgary. They're overcharging people taxes on their electricity by north of $125 million a year. In some years, a lot more than that. So our minister went and talked to them and said, you need to fix this. And Calgary said, don't worry, we got it, we'll fix it. And this is earlier this year. So what did they do? They fixed it as of 2027. In other words, 3 or 4 more years of collecting north of $100 million in excess taxation compared to every other municipality in Alberta. So our affordability Minister Nathan Neudorf put a piece of legislation and overturned that decision and said, no it's happening January 1st, 2025. Enough already. So that's that's another example. Is that in the public interest? I'll leave that to people listening to this to decide, but I'm pretty comfortable it's in the public interest. The municipality gets to set the tax rate, but comparatively when it was $100, $125 million more in Calgary than any other municipality in Alberta, I think it's very much in the public interest not to be overcharging people that much on their electricity bill.
Munir Haque: [00:21:26] Thanks for the elaboration on that. I think you alluded to it a little bit, but in terms of checks and balances from the province perspective, make sure that the provinces, when they're approaching all these issues, they're approaching it with a similar even hand across the province.
Ric McIver: [00:21:45] I know, and I've heard that argument too, that we trust you guys to do this but what if the other guys are in charge? The other guys could pass the same legislation and then be unreasonable. They could also pass the same legislation and be completely reasonable. They're not here to defend themselves so I don't want to unfairly throw them under the bus. My point is not what they would or wouldn't do, my point is whoever's in government would have the same level of authority to pass this legislation and then deal with it properly, or pass this legislation to deal with it improperly. That's the nature of government. When you elect, and this goes for federal, provincial and municipal, number one lesson, vote carefully. Because it's the same thing, you elect a municipal council and they pass bylaws, you have to live by them for four years. I always say when I talk to grade six classes about civics, and I'll make this short, but the most important thing is if an ordinary person with an ordinary job does a good job of it, they can probably keep their job for as long as they want to. Unless the company goes broke. But generally speaking, they can keep their job. Being elected is not like that. No matter how bad a job I or a municipal councilor does, you're stuck with this for four years. No matter how good a job we do, we have to reapply for that job every four years. So that's why you need to vote carefully. Because when you give somebody that job, whether it's a federal member of parliament or a provincial member of the legislative Assembly or a municipal council or mayor or reeve, you're stuck with them for four years. And if they're doing a great job, that's a happy four years. And if they're doing a terrible job, that's a long four years. So after all the rest of the stuff, there is no substitute for voting carefully.
Munir Haque: [00:23:27] So is there anything in the proposed legislation that, if you had the foresight that another party comes in, either next election or the election after that, are there checks and balances built within that new legislation that would ensure that the province would continue to make the decisions based on the same kind of criteria.
Ric McIver: [00:23:49] I think the political phrase that I've heard before is, you can't rule from the grave politically. You can't bind the next municipal council. The last year of your term of office, you could pass a four year budget, but the new city council could change it the first day they're in. As a provincial government, we could pass legislation and say it's against the law to raise taxes, to do this for four years. But a new government, on the first day they're in, can repeal that law and then raise the taxes. So attempts to rule from the political grave, it largely can't be done. Because whoever is in authority at the time can use that authority. And that's why you got to vote carefully, because you want people that will use that authority responsibly.
Munir Haque: [00:24:37] I was curious about in terms of, you have this unique perspective to both sides of this. So the changes that came in, if you think of them from back when you were a city councilor, how would you feel about about some of the new conflict of interest rules and the disqualification rules. Maybe if you can go into those a little bit.
Ric McIver: [00:24:57] I don't know, I'd like to think I was fairly even minded about that. Let me say this, I raised heck a couple times when I was on council when some long bylaw came in with 130 page report, and I was the one that sat at home and read page 78, which no one was supposed to read, that gives the municipality the ability to tax everything that moves from vehicles to the property and everything. I think I called them, in those times things come up, I called the media on Sunday, raised hell, and by the time the city council meeting come on Monday, nobody was voting for it. When the city charters were talked about back then and city charters were put in place by the NDP. When I was on council, I remember being the only one that voted against it. Listen, I recognize the limitations on authority. We all have limitations. We all answer to somebody under the Constitution of our country. We all answer to the voters. I answer to my wife, to a certain degree. I certainly answer to the Premier as a member of cabinet. But my main bosses are the 5 million people in Alberta and the 53,000 or so in Calgary-Hays. Those are my bosses as an elected person. Within the government structure, the premier is my boss within cabinet. But the people of Alberta are her boss, too. So we should always be serving them. I'm not a huge philosopher, but I've never been a big fan of absolute power. I think it's a good thing when there's checks and balances.
Munir Haque: [00:26:30] If you're sitting on a council or you're a councilor that's been removed or one of your bylaws, they're contemplating repealing it, what's their process if they still disagree with you? What's their appeal process?
Ric McIver: [00:26:44] In the municipalities that they don't like what I've done in the legislature? They can tell me. They can tell the media, they can complain. Municipalities did this on a lot of these things. I am comfortable with what's in the legislation, or I wouldn't put it there. I've tried to illustrate to you through this, it's been a fairly lengthy conversation, we're going to go on for a little while now, but nothing was done without a reason. And there are no powers. The biggest thing that makes me crazy is when the media says 'sweeping new powers'. Well, the powers may be sweeping, but not one of them is new. All these powers have been as long as Alberta's been a province, they've had the power to do these things.
Munir Haque: [00:27:25] I'd say it was difficult doing the background research for this because all the reports are, usually they're not sensationalized. They're only focusing on the negative aspects of it. So it's hard to come into this.
Ric McIver: [00:27:37] Yeah, I know. And listen, there's still some municipal people out there, a bunch probably, that don't really love Bill 20, but I've talked to a bunch of other ones too, one on one. They say, I just tell my colleagues, if you want the government to stop passing new rules, stop doing things that don't make sense.
Munir Haque: [00:27:57] Sorry, is there back to this appeal process? Is there a formal arbitration process between the municipality and the province if these things come to light?
Ric McIver: [00:28:06] No, but we have regular communication with them both directly and through their organizations, the mid-sized city mayors in Alberta, Muniz in rural municipalities of Alberta. We talked to municipalities. I do, and my staff does pretty much constantly. If they really feel unhappy about something, they tell us. And there are many times, too, when they say something needs to change and we change it because we agree with them.
Munir Haque: [00:28:33] Thanks for that. I mean, there's a couple of other items I want to get to before we close this recording. But one of them is, and I've heard some criticisms about this, is about the manual vote count as opposed to electronic. So up until now, is it pretty much across the board that it's been electronic vote counting?
Ric McIver: [00:28:52] I think out of 330 municipalities, there's 41 or 42 that have used vote tabulators, vote counting machines. Probably for the last 10 or 20 years they've existed. I don't know exactly the time, but here's the problem. For whatever reason, many Albertans have come to a place where they don't trust machines to do this. I myself don't have a big problem with it. But here's the real issue, is that after you elect somebody, they get a municipal person. They get to be part of a council that passes bylaws that you have to live by and I have to live by. And those people need to be respected. According to a not too long ago poll, just short of 40% of Albertans don't trust ballots that are counted by machines. I don't want 40% of people disrespecting their locally elected mayor, reeve or councilor saying I don't have to obey this bylaw because the election was a sham, so I don't have to do anything, it's not how it is. They do have to do it. And I don't want people disrespecting duly elected municipal people. And I want them to understand, even if it's not the one they want, if it's not the person I voted for, I mostly need to know the vote is legitimate. I don't have a problem with that, about 40% of people do. So I thought I'd take that level of potential disrespect out of the mix and make it so that the day after the votes are counted and the winners are announced that everybody respects the people that want or respects the authority that they have. They don't have to agree with them, they don't have to have voted for them, but we all got to agree it's kind of the social contract and democracy that the majority rules and the ones that got the most votes get to make bylaws, and we all have to live by it.
Munir Haque: [00:30:39] Kind of further in that discussion is that, there's an upcoming generation here who probably rely on technology more so than previous generations. Is there any thought or had any discussion around how this may affect them and their trust in the voting system?
Ric McIver: [00:30:59] Well, I think people understand marking an X on a ballot beside the one you want to win and have somebody look where the X is and throwing them in a pile and then see who's got the higher pile and they're the winner. I think everybody understands that. Here's the thing, candidates are allowed and encouraged to have scrutineers to watch the process. So a candidate that, fully doing their job in my opinion, and they're not required to have scrutineers, but they should. And if I'm the candidate, you're my scrutineer, I feel good about the fact that you watched the votes being counted and you watched the pile with my name all being put on this side of the desk and the pile with the other person's name being put on the other side of the desk. And then they count the piles and see who's got more, and the one with the more wins. That's kind of hard to dispute.
Munir Haque: [00:31:45] But from an economic sustainability perspective, is that long term? I mean, there's costs, depending on the size of municipality, there's significant costs in hiring people to be going through that counting. And I don't know whether or not the electronic tabulation is, that's probably an industry in itself, whether or not that's their ability to streamline cost more effectively that way. That eventually the taxpayer pays for.
Ric McIver: [00:32:13] Of course they do. To whatever extent it's more expensive, it's one day out of four years it's a little more expensive. You know what, I know there's people trying to make it sound like it's the end of the world, but it isn't. It's one day out of four years. Ballots have been counted since 1905, in Alberta, and it works. I don't think the world's going to end if we count ballots in 2025. Honestly, one municipality telling me it was going to cost $160,000 more to count the votes in the last election, in that municipality 12,000 people voted. Somehow I doubt that it's going to cost them $12.50 or so to count every ballot. Boy, I'd love to have that contract and so would you. All I'm saying is there might be a little bit of political gamesmanship with people claiming how much it's going to cost. Because if you do the math about how many people vote in that municipality and divide it by what they say it's going to cost, there's a few examples that come pretty far north of ten bucks a ballot. So they're not happy, okay, the message to me as the minister is they're not happy. But part of my job also is to look at the complaint and evaluate it. And when the complaint includes a budget of between 10 to 20 bucks a ballot to count it, then maybe the complaint is just a little bit exaggerated.
Munir Haque: [00:33:36] Fair enough. One of the parts that I, basically being an executive coach myself and having that municipal background, one of the reasons that I got into the governance world is because of what I have seen at the municipal level in terms of how boards have been onboarded. Typically, or often with a new council, especially if there's a lot of new members to it, it's left to administration to do a lot of that onboarding. It puts you in an interesting bit of a dichotomy there in terms of, administration is onboarding the people who will be their boss, and that they will eventually be telling them what to be doing. It makes it a little bit challenging from both sides of that equation. One of the things that's in this new legislation is this mandatory training for municipal councilors. So like I said, I've seen instances where the onboarding is very difficult, and I've actually sat through some of the MGA training that the province has done here, done by the province. But I guess my question is, what's the process for that then? Is that once the election is a province, do it? Or do you have higher outside consultants?
Ric McIver: [00:34:49] Within a month or so after the election, I can't remember exactly the time frame within the election. So listen, first of all let me say thank you. I think firstly, you covered most of the things that not everybody necessarily agrees with, but this is something that is very popular amongst currently elected officials. That their new colleagues are going to get some basic training on what it actually means to be a municipal councilor. And actually, a lot of them said, why don't you actually make them take this training before they put their name in the ballot? Well, we could offer the training before they put the name on the ballot, but I don't think we can make them because the fact is, anybody can run, and we never want that to change. Anybody can run for office. But yeah, some people get elected and they have this, crazy is not the right word that's not fair, but they have this inaccurate idea of what they can do and what they can't. I always think it's great when people say, when I get elected, I'm going to cut your taxes in half. Okay, that sounds good. I want to pay less taxes, but I need the potholes in my roads fixed.
Ric McIver: [00:35:53] I want police and I want firefighters and I want social stuff. But just if they understand that it's always council decisions. People don't act independently, they act as a council. And what I used to say when I was on, and in fact the mayor of the day when I was on council in Calgary, we disagreed on a lot of things, but on the big stuff we agreed on. And one of the things we agreed on because there was 15 on council, what we do here isn't hard, all you got to do is be able to count to eight. So as an individual member of council, either me as a councilor or him as a mayor, by ourselves, very little power to none. But if you can get seven more people or the majority of council together, you have quite a bit of authority. And that's something a lot of people don't understand. They also, a lot of people don't understand that some decisions belong to the federal government, some belong to the provincial government and some belong to the municipality. And to whatever extent we can help people to understand that, we think we set them up for success.
Munir Haque: [00:36:47] And so with this training, that falls to the municipality to do it? Or does the province?
Ric McIver: [00:36:55] The municipality will do it, but we will have resources for the municipalities to use if they choose. Let's face it, to a certain degree they do it now. Ab Muniz has training modules for their members, I think rural municipalities have training modules for their members, but this is more basic training. This is what you need to know, and it's important. Again, if you elect people you got to set them up for success. I know there was one council, I don't want to embarrass anybody, but in the last election, all brand new people and they happen to get elected with a brand new chief administrative officer. So you got basically a small group of people responsible for the whole municipality, none of them with any experience in running a municipality. So after a little while, we caught up with that fact because reports weren't coming to us on time, and we sent somebody there and then, they were great people. They just didn't know. So we spent some time with them, now they're fantastic. I mean, they were fantastic before, they just didn't know what was required. Now that they know what's required, it's no problem. They're just doing it and they're doing an amazing job.
Munir Haque: [00:38:01] Fair enough. And I think there's some value in having a third party nonpartisan group looking at this. And I think I read some commentary about CEOs being on board with this, because the challenges they have with doing some of that onboarding of, essentially, their boss. Because the CAO reports to them.
Ric McIver: [00:38:28] It's hard for a CAO to say to a council, you have to do this, and you can't do that. Because the councilor or mayor or reeve is bound to say, wait a minute, you work for me. You're going to do what I say. And that's not wrong either, but generally speaking, the CAO, the chief administrative officer, is telling them what the legislation requires them to do and to make that clear that this isn't that, when you tell people what the legislation requires, you're actually helping them. And your point that if it doesn't have to be the person that works for you telling you that, there are instances where that might be good too.
Munir Haque: [00:39:35] One of the other areas that I'm quite interested in is, along with having a background in municipal government governance, I do have a background in real estate, and I was in planning and development as well as economic development. So from a planning and development perspective, the bill talks to streamlining the process for, presumably, approvals. Can you talk a little bit more about that, because I've been on the other side of it where we've streamlined it as much as we can. I'm just curious what other things legislation has in it.
Ric McIver: [00:40:10] Time limits for how long you can leave something out there. Listen, municipalities have the ability in the public hearing process to say yes or no to development. In my view, that's the main authority municipalities have, and we need them exercising that authority responsibly and skillfully. There can be some gamesmanship, where if you don't like something, you just find 100 reasons to delay it by six months, and let it die a slow, painful death. We're trying to say, if you're going to say no, say no. You have the authority to say no, say no. Because what happens then is that it triggers the appeal process. And those that said no, it may not stay no once it goes through the appeal process, which is why some people may choose to drag it out and call it gamesmanship. It's not, let it come to the end. And we say, you know what? If it's a good proposal, say yes. If it's a bad proposal, say no. Don't take forever doing it. And right now, it's actually more important than ever because, here's what we know. We're really short on homes in Alberta. We need about 100,000 more homes now and by the time they're built, we're going to need 100,000 more after that. So what we don't need, is development of files languishing for years when we could have shovels in the ground and someone's new home being under construction. So this is an attempt to deal with that during a time when it's really important to be timely.
Munir Haque: [00:41:30] So does the MGA, I think currently or previously there was a specification or time limit on when they had to get back or respond back to the applicant. But often that response was, we need more information. So they give them 20 days to find out that it's going to take it 20 more days. From a developer perspective, all you care about is how quick can I get this permit?
Ric McIver: [00:41:53] Yeah, I know, and there's a variety of levels of authority and responsibility. Developer's job is to do a good job, fill out the application in full and be accurate and follow the rules and the municipalities is to make a timely judgment about whether that actually happened. And again, if somebody doesn't want something to go ahead for whatever reason, rather than saying no, it's easier to keep saying, we need another report, we need a traffic impact assessment, we need an environmental impact assessment. These things could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months and months and months, and it basically dies by a thousand cuts. We're saying, look, don't do that. If it's a bad proposal, say no. That's what we're trying to encourage.
Munir Haque: [00:42:36] And from my developer hat, often you wouldn't even contemplate doing something unless the zoning was already approved for. So does this legislation also cover shorter timelines on going in for zoning changes, or is it just strictly on building permits?
Ric McIver: [00:42:56] No, it's on zoning changes, too. Zoning changes are important because it's kind of a permanent change to what happens. Like when you change the definition of a land use, definition that perhaps it might be, a footprint has to be 1000ft or more in order to have four bedrooms, whatever it is, whatever the rules are. And then they say, we want smaller homes, no we still want four bedrooms, so we'll take four bedrooms. And so that's a constantly evolving set of rules, the land use bylaw for each municipality. And council has the authority to change and update that, and the developers have a responsibility to either follow that or to convince council that it should be updated. But the point is, the process has to have an end point as well as a beginning point. And it shouldn't be forever.
Munir Haque: [00:43:48] Fair enough. The last thing that I want to ask about was whether or not this new proposed legislation, is it, what do you call it? A 'made in Alberta' solution? Or were there influences where you look at other municipalities or other provinces across Canada, or do you look south of the border or anywhere else?
Ric McIver: [00:44:05] All of the above. We compare our legislation to other provinces, to other jurisdictions where, maybe, where they're all caught up in housing because they think the approvals are so fast. And we also look at jurisdictions where housing is way more expensive than Alberta. And we look at it and say, why is that? And what can we take out of our legislation that's like that, that will stop our housing from being more expensive than it has to be. And yet we also need to have enough rules so that what gets built is safe and lasts a long time. So there's always that dynamic tension there, and through the legislative process, through the development process, through what municipalities do, it ends up being a group effort. But within our government, within our ministry, we have a role in trying to organize and regulate that. And we do the best we can, and we're not perfect, and someone's always there to tell us when we're not, and that's okay with me. Important thing is for me and our group to keep listening and learning. And if it turns out something can be done better, then it's kind of incumbent upon us to try to do that.
Munir Haque: [00:45:11] Thank you for that answer. And last, where I want to end up on here is I read, maybe it's old commentary, because of some of the opposition or pushback on this, that Premier Smith had indicated that there might be some changes forthcoming. And I guess the other thing is, if somebody wants to be involved in it or wants to stay up to date on it, where should they be following you or the process?
Ric McIver: [00:45:37] Alberta.ca, looking for Municipal Affairs Ministry and look at what we're doing under there. That's an obvious thing. If you got a specific question, you could contact the ministry and ask. We get correspondence every week and we answer it. Warn your listeners that if you send us a question on Monday, you're not likely to hear back on Wednesday of the same week. If you and I are best friends and I call you on Monday, I may well expect to hear today, tomorrow or Wednesday. But if you're putting it into the machine with 300 municipalities and a bunch of other stuff going on, it's reasonable a couple, four weeks to hear back. Just saying, it's not that we don't sit around saying, we can't answer because the four weeks haven't happened. But it's more, we're going very much. We got a lot of people that work real hard and they're going as fast as they can. And if you ask a question, lots of times there's some research involved. And sometimes that means asking somebody else and waiting for the answer to come back from them. And then comparing it back to the question and then formulating the answer and then getting it to me to sign and then getting it out the door. It's a process, and I know some people legitimately are in a hurry sometimes, and I'd like to think we're going as fast as we can, but I would say we're happy to hear from you, but it does take a little bit of time.
Munir Haque: [00:46:57] Sometimes I find that if you want a quick answer, that quick answer is often 'no'. But if you want somebody to think about it a little bit more and look at it from different angles, you have to have a little bit of patience with it, right?
Ric McIver: [00:47:07] It's kind of like the old saying, you're going to have good, fast and cheap. You can have two out of three. If you want it fast, it might not be as good, it might not be as cheap. If you want it really good and you want it at a fair price, then you might have to wait just a little bit for that. So anyways, that kind of holds true for a lot of things in life, just the way it is. You can hustle through something or you can take your time and really try to get it right. And sometimes speed is more important, in fairness, and other times nothing matters other than quality. So everybody needs to make their own judgment on what's more important about that stuff.
Munir Haque: [00:47:43] Well, thank you very much for spending the time with us this morning. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I think it gives our listeners a nice understanding of a bit of the background going into this. And that it's a little bit, not misleading, but from the media that you hear out there, they just focus on the negative so it's good to have you be able to give some of that background.
Ric McIver: [00:48:03] Well you know, Munir, thank you for that. And for your listeners, government can seem like a mystery, but there's a lot of information. Our website alberta.ca, once you get in there, man, there's a lot you can learn, a lot of information about a lot of things. If you got the time and you got the inclination, you can question us on that. But you could also just contact your local MLA, whether it's me or one of the other 86 across the province. That's what we're here for. And we will try to do the digging for you and try to get back to you, and that'll take you back to, maybe not within ten minutes, but we'll we'll get it done.
Munir Haque: [00:48:36] Okay. Well, thanks for your time today, Mr. McIver.
Ric McIver: [00:48:39] Thank you, Munir, nice talking to you. Thanks so much.
Munir Haque: [00:48:43] Thanks everyone, for listening to The Boardroom 180 Podcast. You can learn more about me and Action Edge Executive Development on our website at aeednow.com. Fill out the form if you want me to reach out to you, or if you have any thoughts for future subjects or guests on the podcast. We also have a free board self-evaluation that will be linked on our website. You and your board can fill this out either individually or together, and it gives you a bit of a quick temperature check on how your board health is. As always, don't forget to hit like and subscribe to The Boardroom 180 Podcast, it helps us grow and bring more governance insights. We're recording from the Pushysix Studios in Calgary, Alberta, with production assistance from Astronomic Audio. You can find their info and the links to the AEX forms in the show notes. We've come full circle to conclude this episode of The Boardroom 180 Podcast. Goodbye, and good governance.