Amalgamation, the longer everyone diddles around, it will just get more costly. But it must be done – even though the civic employees will ramp up the complexities into a circus. It must be done.
Why am I so adamant? It’s in our family: A.G. Smith was my grandfather. A lawyer, he was register of land titles at the Vancouver Land Titles Office. He drafted B.C.’s first Town Planning Act, and is known as the father of town planning in B.C., retiring in February, 1934. He promoted a formal third party study of the Lower Mainland that recommended amalgamations and which was rejected by all. Chaos was predicted in the plan and chaos is what they got. His son, my father, A. Rhys Smith, earned his masters in urban planning at UBC after WWII and in the dead of winter in 1952 he started a regional planning service in the basement of Calgary’s City Hall. It became the Calgary Regional Planning Commission with a staff of 65. Dad convinced the City of Calgary to ask the Alberta Legislature to amend Calgary’s charter to allow Calgary to annex lands as it grew so it could have a 30 year supply of land within its boundaries so they could plan. Edmonton declined to do the same thing and civic affairs are more complex there. But nothing like here.
I took law at UBC including municipal law. When I first started to practice in Vancouver in the fall of 1973, Vancouver City Police either had to stop and challenge potential impaired drivers and other suspects within the Vancouver city limits or give up the chase at the civic border (e.g. Burnaby, West Vancouver, whatever) as they had no jurisdiction outside the city. Impaired driving defences were fun and easy. It was a stupid and unnecessary mess.
I have not done the math myself, but I believe that from Schwartz Bay to Sooke there are 13 municipalities and a total of at least 71 mayors and councillors. The City of New York manages somehow with 56.
When I lived in Kelowna from 1977 to 1988, the province compelled the amalgamation of Kelowna and Rutland, maybe one or two others, and of some of the municipalities on the West Shore. I don’t remember the details but the fact is it was simply ordered to be done and it was.
Amalgamation can be done and it’s outrageous to continue with the pride-full, and, to me, immature culture of these 13 little councils continually trumpeting how wonderful each of them is and how much tax savings they take credit for.
It’s time to mature.
Rod Smith
View Royal
