Editor:
Yes, we’re screwed!
Canmore residents who want to know what the bum’s rush and certain approval of Three Sisters’ latest development scheme might look like have only to look to Tuesday’s council meeting for a disturbing preview.
In a 6-1 vote, Town council approved a Framework Agreement that shapes the process – and prescribes certain outcomes – as Three Sisters attempts, yet again, to claw its way back from reckless management and insolvency.
Regardless of one’s objections to specific elements of the agreement, and irrespective of a long list of unanswered questions and preposterous assumptions, it is clear that this stage of the process was contrived to minimize public scrutiny, hide disturbing details, make a mockery of government transparency and accountability, and stonewall public participation.
Consider this. On Tuesday (Nov. 13) the Town held an information session on the proposed framework agreement intended to rescue Three Sisters from receivership. But there was very little information. The overflow crowd who came to participate could not read an actual copy of the agreement, but had to rely on a staff-prepared summary and on a verbal/visual presentation made byTown staff.
As you might imagine, there were a lot of generic questions and cautions, but little discussion of details (where the devil is, after all).
Just two days later, the Framework Agreement and attendant documents were posted on the Town’s website and emailed to some interested parties. It contained more than 50 pages of maps, procedures, references, prescribed outcomes, whereases, assurances and now therefores. And a hasty timeline requiring adoption of the ASP by April 1, 2013.
Are we to believe that this document was not ready for review 48 hours earlier? Why wasn’t staff ready? What is the Town trying to hide? What master does council serve? Why the secrecy?
And, at the Nov. 20 council meeting – after we finally had a few days to examine the documents – no public questions or comments were allowed. There was no opportunity for Canmore residents to say or ask anything (Unless, of course, one’s righteous outrage overcame hoped-for graciousness). Why the secrecy? Did this brilliant idea come from council or staff? Why such disdain for community conversation?
At least three substantive sections of the Framework Agreement might be of particular interest to Canmore residents who have participated in this drama for more than two decades. First, the Area Structure Plan (ASP) must be approved by the Town no later than April Fool’s Day, 2013. So we have a little over four months to complete the environmental assessment(s), prepare the ASP, hold public consultation, and go through required readings and council votes. Previous processes took up to four years. Looks like a lot of Canmore caffeine, especially with holidays on the horizon. Hardly thoughtful deliberation. Why the big rush all of a sudden?
Second, the agreement stipulates that the Town will give up – among other things – the 200-400 metre setbacks that once prescribed the golf course’s contribution to narrow wildlife corridors found insufficient for wildlife movement. Maps show resurrected residential development hard up against the wildlife corridor, in locations that Canmore residents and previous council firmly and repeatedly rejected.
The framework agreements strictly limits what the Town can do: there will be “no additional setbacks or easements onto the Resort Centre Lands or any other Three Sisters lands …” None. Why constrain an environmental assessment that hasn’t even begun? Why did council – with staff encouragement – agree to tie its own hands? Whose interests are being served?
And finally – the real kicker – council and staff agreed to consider the critical path-and outcome-setting Framework Agreement with this stunning proviso: “there is no formal requirement for public engagement …” And, except for the no-information-available-until-the-day-after-tomorrow “information” session on Nov. 13, Council has done its best to avoid any public engagement in this critical first step. Knowingly and deliberately.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, babysitters for defunct Three Sisters, already has demonstrated its eagerness to sue the Town of Canmore and its councillors to get what it wants. Now the Town is legally obligated to every word, every permission, and every constraint in the Framework Agreement.
So, for example, if the environmental assessment should find that the wildlife corridors require “additional setbacks” to ensure functionality, there is no question that PricewaterhouseCoopers’ extensive legal army will pounce on Town council like a coyote on a South Canmore bunny should council even think of additional measures to strengthen wildlife corridors.
And, if the last legal bullying is any indication, council will fold like a flower in frost.
Can this disgusting mess get worse? Just watch.
Jim and Valerie Pissot,
Canmore
