Dear FoSTRA members, Enclosed please find FoSTRA’s submission regarding Bill 39, the “Better Municipal Governance Act”. The timelines for public consultations and Bill 39 submissions were even more unreasonable than for Bill 23: 1) a “quiet” announcement sent out on Friday, 25 November, 2) applications deadline for presentations by noon Monday, 28 November, and 3) written submissions by end of day Thursday, 1 December. This, after the presentation of a 20-page written submission and deputation on Bill 23 the previous week. Normally, our process has been to prepare a first draft, circulate for input, amend, and then present to the AAC for review and approval. Following that, the edited version is passed on to the Board for final review. Bill 23, with a three-week window, was challenging enough. We were simply lucky there was an AAC meeting scheduled in the middle of the preparation cycle. With timelines like the one for Bill 39, the document was only completed by noon on Thursday, 1 December, which left no time to realistically solicit input, amend, as well as place it into the required format before the submission deadline at 7:00 p.m. that day. Every effort was made to assemble a document that stuck to facts, rather than offer opinion and conjecture. It may well have been the ultimate intent of the provincial government to discourage engagement with stakeholders by setting such farcical timeframes, which made it all the more compelling to speak out on the contentious issues contained within this legislation. Moving forward, we will need to develop strategies that will deal with extreme short-term consultation cycles. A “thank you” to Don for assembling and revising this document. Regards, Rick Green Chair
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