Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to present to your committee. My name is Lisa Holmes. I am the current mayor of the Town of Morinville, Alberta, and the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association. I'm joined by our CEO, Sue Bohaichuk. The Alberta Urban Municipaliti

Finance committee  That's no problem. I do speak quickly. The Government of Canada's budget is of significant interest to our organization in terms of the budget's impact at a local level. Canada is facing challenging economic times. Alberta is particularly vulnerable, given our natural resource

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I want to say that we are very supportive, obviously, of the platform projects that you guys have put through with increasing infrastructure funding. The current federal Minister of Infrastructure is a former vice-president of AUMA, so obviously we ha

Finance committee  Absolutely. The agreement was only signed a couple of weeks ago, so the complete construction season, in my opinion, has been missed for Alberta for 2016. We are also still awaiting word on the previous infrastructure funding. The construction season for phase one of this new inf

Finance committee  Absolutely. I appreciate that, and I will start off by just saying that it's interesting, because although we are the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, the majority of our members are rural. One of the gaps is the definition of what “rural” means. According to the Federat

Finance committee  Well, actually, the changes to the Alberta Municipal Government Act are going to help that, for sure. Obviously, it does depend on local councils. I think what's happening with yours is the exception, not the rule. One thing we're seeing is a lot more focus on intra-municipal c

Finance committee  Yes, and I'll give you a specific example. The town of Daysland is a small town in central Alberta. They have a detachment that is in another municipality and has the RCMP coverage for their area. I believe they have five officers allocated in their budget. Two to three are on ma

Finance committee  It is improved regulation, and I'll give you four bullet points. The CRTC needs to make broadband a basic service. The marijuana conversation needs to have very good consultation with municipalities. We need very clear regulations in regard to the homegrown aspect of its distri

Health committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to address your committee today. My name is Lisa Holmes. I am the mayor of Morinville, Alberta, and the president of the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association, which is also known as AUMA. AUMA is an association of all urban

Health committee  To be honest, I don't see myself as an expert in the number of cases that would be before a criminal court in Alberta, so I can't say whether or not there would be a significant cost. On the concern that we have, we have addressed that we think there will be costs when it comes t

Health committee  The way that I look at it when it comes to impaired driving, yes, we do have an issue with it now, but right now, the average person considers that cannabis is illegal. When it's legalized, the public education campaign in regard to impaired driving is going to be key, because th

Health committee  At this point, specifically to the Town of Morinville, we have not received public education funds or any sort of tools. That being said, I know AUMA has been working hard at developing tool kits, and so has the FCM, in order to support municipalities in these areas, as we feel i

Health committee  As it stands today, the municipalities in Alberta are not responsible in essence for that type of issue, because it is health related. That being said, every issue is a local issue and everything will lie at our feet when it comes to the end. We will have to work through our FCSS

Health committee  Sure. As it stands right now, as Bill was saying, we don't know the details around what we will be able to do. We're hoping, working with the province, that we will be able to establish the municipality with some autonomy with regard to where the facilities will be located, where

Health committee  I would concur with Councillor Karsten. I think there is a significant difference between sitting at the table as a partner versus being asked for information as a stakeholder, which is what I consider municipalities are doing. In regard to our invitation here or the meetings w