ROB MURRAY: The Three Sisters Mountain Village Area Structure Plans have come forward and the public hearing is next week. I understand you’re looking at at least three days of public engagement around this right now just with the volume of submissions that you’ve received. A comment that I’ve heard is some people think Council shouldn’t have passed first reading of this and they should have just rejected it outright, but every single councilor, at the end of that very long ASP meeting, seemed to indicate the big reason to pass first reading was to get to this public hearing process to really hear from the community and get this on the record. This is a really important part of this whole process, isn’t it?

MAYOR JOHN BORROWMAN: You’re right. Council had the ability to defeat the ASPs, either one or both of them, at first reading. In fact, we did that in 2017.

TANYA FOUBERT: At that time the reasons were a lot around the application, not around the fact that people in the community were not happy that Three Sisters was developing. I’ve had a lot of people say that you rejected it at first reading because people didn’t want it, and I think that there were other far more critical factors in that decision.

JB: That’s right. Some of the discussion at first reading of that ASP was that Council didn’t feel it was meeting today’s vision and needs for our community. The new ASPs that have come forward for that same area have changed quite a bit since 2017. The bottom line is administration has a duty to process applications that are submitted for review. That’s their job, they have to do that. Council has to consider those applications and that arises under the common law duty of fair process; it’s not an explicit clause within the MGA. Every owner of private land has the legal opportunity to apply for a changes on their land, and then there’s the process that’s established under the Municipal Government Act with three readings of a bylaw and a public hearing. Council did, as you say, want to approve first reading so that we could hear from the public. These are community shaping Area Structure Plans and they’ll define what happens east of the current town site for probably the next 30, 40, maybe even 50 years, so it was important that we were able to hear from the public in a meaningful way. These are not the Town’s plans. It’s up to the developer to engage with the community and hear what the community says, and try to inform their plans to meet what they’re hearing from the community. The public hearing will allow the public to share with Council their thoughts on the ASPs, both of them. I really hope that people have at least read the ASPs before they speak to Council. I have a sense from people I’ve talked with on the street that they’re voicing opposition without even having looked at the ASPs.

RM: You have hundreds of submissions so far for this public hearing, you have two Area Structure Plans that are both quite complex and have a lot of different moving parts. As someone sitting on Council, how do you even begin to distill all that feedback and all this information into something resembling a decision and a vote that’s going to come at second and third reading?

JB: That’s the $64,000 question. How do we filter everything we’re hearing and include what we understand from our readings of the Area Structure Plans, and all of the informing documents including plans that the Town’s approved? Plans like the Human Wildlife Coexistence Report, that factors into our thinking, and the Bow Valley Housing Needs Assessment report which was approved less than two years ago. These are all needs of our community – to manage the human wildlife interaction we need to do much better at keeping humans out of the wildlife corridors and we need to do much better at keeping the animals out of our developed areas. We know that there’s a dire need for housing that’s affordable for people that live and work here and are keeping the community going. These are not easy issues for any community to deal with.

TF: The 1992 Natural Resources Conservation Board decision is a really important factor in all of this. After that decision, which approved development on the Three Sisters lands, there was an amendment made to the Municipal Government Act to give the NRCB decision priority over the development authority of a municipality. That’s at play here, but it also leads to the frustration that I think a lot of people feel, and felt then, that this isn’t a decision for our community of whether or not we should or shouldn’t develop. The decision that we get to make as a community is what gets developed.

JB: The NRCB decision and Section 6-19 of the Municipal Government Act haven’t been tested in court. They could be tested. It’s not certain where that would end up, but I’m far more focused on making decisions that are good for the future of our community and not responding to visions that were established 30 years ago. We have to think about the future of Canmore. When I look at something like an ASP, I tried to put my mind out 40 or 50 years at the community that will be here then and work backwards. Do these ASPs as they’re presented fit that vision, or would the ASPs fit that vision if they were amended? Council has the opportunity to make significant amendments to the ASPs if Council so chooses.

RM: For this public hearing coming up here next week, three days, let’s make it four! I mean, you don’t have anything better to do next week, do you Mayor Borrowman? How can people get their written submissions in?

JB: Send those to Municipal Clerk at the Town of Canmore. If you wish to speak at the public hearing you can register for that at any time, even during the public hearing, you can send a message to Municipal Clerk’s office and ask to be added to the speakers list. Council is fully determined to allow anybody that wants to speak to us on these issues to have that opportunity. That’s a part of how our democracy works.

Filed under: Canmore, Mayor John Borrowman, Mountain Insider, Three Sisters Mountain Village