Editor:
In its unanimous memorandum of judgment filed on Oct. 3, 2023 in the appeal of the Town of Canmore against Three Sisters Mountain Village Properties Ltd (TSMV), the Alberta Court of Appeal clearly and unemotionally applied the rule of law over populist sentiment.
While Greg Colgan’s reporting of the judgment in the Outlook was balanced and accurate reporting, after reading the judgment I am left asking myself why Town council continued to roll the dice throughout the litigation over the past three years at taxpayers’ expense, with resulting increased costs for construction of housing units as interest rates and inflation have sky-rocketed during the period of litigation.
The dice it rolled turned up snake eyes on each roll. The Town ended up with a much worse outcome than it could have achieved if it had worked constructively with TSMV and stayed within its legal runway rather than veering off into areas of provincial jurisdiction. The Town is not a city state, it is a creature of and subject to provincial legislation, including the provisions of the Municipal Government Act (MGA).
The judgment of the Court of Appeal showed the Town’s legal arguments were incredibly weak and the Town engaged in “resiling” (abandonment) from the position it took in the 2018 terms of reference regarding the applicability of Subsections 619 (1) and (2) of the MGA, the key failed legal argument of the Town.
In my view, this “resiling” constituted “sandbagging” of TSMV by the Town and, unfortunately, was a key plank in the political platform of many members of the current Town council who committed themselves to litigate this issue up to the Court of Appeal.
The abject failure of the Town’s strategy is now a matter of historical record.
Jim Bell,
Canmore
