TAMRMS#: B09
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Bylaw 24/2019 Municipal Public Utilities Bylaw
Presented by: David Leflar, Director, Legal & Legislative Services Department
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RECOMMENDATION:
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That the Governance, Priorities and Finance Committee recommend to Council that Bylaw 24/2019 receive second and third readings.
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PURPOSE OF REPORT
The purpose of this report is to present Administration’s recommendation that Bylaw 24/2019, the Municipal Public Utilities Bylaw, be passed.
ALIGNMENT TO COUNCIL STRATEGIC PRIORITY
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BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
The Municipal Government Act has for many years contained a section that allows a council to pass a bylaw prohibiting any person from providing the same or similar utility services as those provided by the municipality or by a subsidiary corporation of the municipality. Historically, municipalities whose utility services consisted only of traditional potable water supply, wastewater collection/treatment, stormwater management and garbage disposal, have not often taken advantage of this statutory power.1 This is because the financial and regulatory barriers to entry, and the “natural monopoly” nature of such utilities services, make it unlikely that a private sector corporation would emerge to challenge the exclusivity of municipalities in this economic space.
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1 Such bylaw provisions have however been enacted in other Alberta municipalities, although they are more often embedded within bylaws governing specific types of utility services (for example s. 5 of Edmonton’s EPCOR Water and Wastewater Bylaw or s. 32 of Medicine Hat’s Electric Utility Bylaw) as opposed to a stand-alone bylaw like proposed Bylaw 24/2009 that covers all possible utilities services, present and future. Wood Buffalo is an example of an Alberta municipality that has enacted a similar stand-alone bylaw to provide general protection for its monopoly position in utilities services. Also noteworthy is a recent (2017) ju...
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