It may have been completely by accident, but Athabasca town councillor George Hawryluk performed a great service for residents of all three area municipalities last Tuesday.
He revealed that at the March 28 joint council meeting, the subject of municipal amalgamation was discussed. That’s believed to be the first time the subject has been addressed politically since the ill-fated amalgamation plebiscite of 2004.
But disclosing the amalgamation discussion wasn’t Hawryluk’s good deed for the day; more important was the fact that in doing so, he inadvertently revealed that some councillors are attempting to use joint council meetings to hide issues from the public.
Joint council meetings have been held about every three months for close to a decade, if not more. Originally they were presented as social gatherings where councillors from the Town of Athabasca, the County and the Village of Boyle would meet over dinner, build rapport and informally discuss topics of shared interest.
From the outset, local media expressed interest in covering these joint council meetings. But all three councils have, at various times, rejected these requests, using the argument that they’re not ‘official’ meetings since no decisions are made there; anything of substance would come back as agenda items at subsequent ‘official’ meetings of the respective councils. Furthermore, it was argued that media presence at the joint council meetings would detract from their intent as social, get-to-know-you gatherings. Local media somewhat begrudgingly accepted those arguments and didn’t push the issue.
But as the years rolled on, it became apparent that much more was going on around the joint council table than small talk. The first round of amalgamation discussions originated there, and future regional initiatives like the Athabasca Regional Multiplex and the Aspen Regional Water System were moved forward from that forum as well.
Occasionally, local media would again request access to joint council meetings, sometimes with the support of individual councillors who recognized their increasing importance. However, support was never sufficient to sway the councils, individually or collectively, from abandoning their closed-door stance.
Then came last Tuesday. In open council, Hawryluk asked who put the amalgamation item on the joint council meeting agenda. Immediately, councillor Lionel Cherniwchan tried to move the discussion in-camera, but the motion failed. There are certain subjects which can be legitimately moved in-camera; council correctly concluded that questioning who set an agenda item isn’t one of them.
Making matters worse, Cherniwchan then chided Hawryluk for bringing up the subject after the point was made “very clearly and succinctly” at the joint council meeting that the amalgamation discussion should not be mentioned publicly. Councillor Tim Verhaeghe countered that it was merely a suggestion from an unnamed county councillor, but that’s beside the point.
The point is, last Tuesday’s exchange leaves no doubt that joint council meetings are not just social gatherings, and they’re not just regional discussions of local councils’ agenda items.
Any councillor from any jurisdiction who would attempt to impose a ‘code of silence’ on a joint council topic that falls outside the scope of legitimate in-camera items is committing an affront to political transparency that all citizens should take very seriously. Whether he meant to or not, Hawryluk did us all a great service by exposing this disgraceful, subversive practice.
The councils, therefore, have two options. They can immediately open all joint council meetings to the media and the public. Or they can stop keeping secrets and officially reopen amalgamation discussions, which would make joint council meetings pointless.
