Cold Lake's proposal to redraw municipal boundaries in order to receive tax assessment from the Air Weapons Range has received a lot of heat recently.
The tax assessment from the range, which includes money from oilsands operations, presently goes to the County of Lac La Biche, who would need to be compensated if Cold Lake received a share.
The provincial government has been working to see if a deal can be reached. According to reports in the Fort McMurray Today, a discussed solution entailed Lac La Biche receiving land currently in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. The local council voted to send a letter to Minister of Finance Lloyd Snelgrove expressing it disagreed with the government changing any boundaries.
Wood Buffalo MLA Guy Boutilier was quoted in the paper as saying, “Why don't they demonstrate the leadership we showed 15 years ago by formulating the kind of regional government we formed? So one has to ask the question, why isn't the province forcing them to do that? Seems to me it'd be a logical course of action to solve this resolution.”
Boutilier is obviously looking out for his constituency and is justified in his concerns. However, alluding to the idea that council needs to show some leadership is a low blow. Cold Lake council has the right to be upset.
Boutilier also seems to have slipped up here when he questioned why the province isn't forcing Cold Lake to form a regional government with the MD of Bonnyville. This prompted council to question whether forced amalgamation is a Wildrose policy, as Boutilier belongs to this party. He later sent Cold Lake council a letter stating he does not support force amalgamation.
Local Wildrose candidate Chuck Farrer also went to bat for Boutilier saying he does not support forced amalgamation and this is not a party policy.
This incident can probably be chalked up to a PR flub on the part of the Wildrose that was dealt with pretty quickly. It likely won't have much of an impact on local support for the Wildrose, although it probably taught a lesson or two.
The provincial government now has the difficult task of trying to come up with a solution to the issue of redrawing boundaries so involved municipalities will each get their fair share of revenue. It seems hard to imagine a solution in which all parties will be satisfied, but time will tell if it's possible.
In the meantime, those involved would be wise to cool off and consider the effects their public actions could have.
