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House Hansard - 45

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 24, 2022 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 45 - Mar/24/22
Mr. Martin Shields (Bow River, CPC)
  • Mar/24/22 8:08:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to speak in the House, and tonight I am speaking about something I asked in question period and statements I made in the House. It has to do with the RCMP. Outside of Ontario and Quebec, many municipalities have the RCMP with a municipal contract. We respect the RCMP, and I have worked with it as a municipal leader and a mayor in my community. It is a fantastic community force within our municipal structures. However, it had been without a contract for almost five years, and then the federal government settled the contract, which means it had a huge retroactive piece to it. The municipalities were not part of that negotiation. The federal government was. This is a huge retroactive settlement that the RCMP deserves. It deserves this settlement. However, the municipalities that contract with the police were not part of this. I had somebody remind me it was sort of like something that happened in the Boston Harbor in 1774 or 1775, the Boston Tea Party, where the people living in Boston were upset about taxation without representation. That is what the municipalities feel like. I heard from the mayor and city council in Brooks, Strathmore, Acme, Kneehill County and many more who have spoken to me. St. Mary's in Nova Scotia is also very concerned, so this is countrywide. How would this affect the taxpayers? We are talking about a 5% to 10% tax increase. The St. Mary's community said 11% is what it would cost as a tax increase. We are talking about property tax and business property tax. It is one of the most regressive taxes we have. We have communities that have been suffering with COVID and businesses that have endured lockdowns and supply disruptions. Now business and property owners are facing anywhere from a 5% to an 11% tax increase. This is brutal on our small businesses. These is an extreme challenge for homeowners. We talk about the number of economic challenges we have in our communities coming out of COVID, and they are facing a retroactive pay increase that was negotiated by the federal government. The federal government negotiated this agreement. That is great. It is deserved, but the federal government should pay for this retroactive pay. It should not come back to the municipalities that were not involved in this negotiation. It should not come back to the property owners and the small business owners at this extremely frustrating time to be in a small business and survive. The federal government negotiated it. The municipalities were not part of that process. They should not get the bill for this.
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Context: House Hansard - 45 - Mar/24/22
Mr. Martin Shields
  • Mar/24/22 8:14:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are many parts of what I heard from the parliamentary secretary that I absolutely agree with. It is a tremendous force, and the negotiations for the settlement needed to happen. It was deserved, absolutely. The part that I would disagree with was the piece about communication with partners. When I talked to municipality leaders, mayors and reeves in my area, they said they not a part of it. The organizations that represent the municipalities in Alberta, which I used to be the vice president of, were not involved in the process or in communication with the federal government. Municipalities were saying they were not part of this organization in the sense of communication. If the federal government was communicating, it was not to the organizations in the province of Alberta and other provinces. It was not the municipalities themselves. We look to the federal government to deal with this retroactive pay and pay for it.
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