Premier Smith pitches autonomy for Alberta cities at municipal leaders convention in Edmonton

Premier Danielle Smith told Alberta's municipal leaders Wednesday that the province has fundamentally reshaped its relationship with cities, framing it as a shift from adversarial to collaborative.

"As much as we have a great and constructive and productive relationship with the municipalities, I can say that increasingly we're having that same relationship with the federal government," Smith said at the Alberta Municipalities' Convention and Trade Show in Edmonton. "It's almost like night and day from where we were about 18 months ago."

Smith touted provincial investments in education, health care, and infrastructure. She reiterated her support for Alberta remaining in Canada while urging Albertans to vote yes on October referendum questions around provincial control over immigration and access to public services.

Municipal leaders raised persistent local challenges. Gerald Aalbers, mayor of Lloydminster — which sits on the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary — warned that separating from Canada would create complexity for his tripartite jurisdiction. "I live in a tripartite world today, two provinces and a federal government. I don't wanna imagine what it would be like two nations and a province," Aalbers said.

Aalbers highlighted infrastructure funding gaps. "It's always usually a zero that separates us," he explained. "From a village that needs a lagoon for $800,000; we recently built a wastewater treatment plant for $81 million; you go to a major city, it's $800 million or more."

Smith highlighted investments made over the summer to create more treatment beds and addiction spaces in Edmonton. In Medicine Hat, councilor Brian Varga warned of urgent homelessness ahead of the cold season. "It's gonna get cold here in a couple months and we've got a few people that are out in the cold all the time," Varga said. "It's always a NIMBY — not in my backyard — proposition all the time with the homeless people, so we're trying to find out a solution where we can have a permanent residence for them."

Smith said Alberta's towns and cities could face changes in how they're governed by the province, including ending councillors' private deliberations. Dylan Bressey, head of the Alberta Municipalities Association and a Grand Prairie city councillor, cautioned that most councils operate ethically. "The vast majority of councillors are running well because our people are here for the right reasons," Bressey said. "But on the rare instances where something gets..." — his comment was cut off in the source material.