The sustainability of Saskatchewan municipalities

Abstract

Although the municipal government is considered closest to the people, municipalities are not referenced in the Canadian constitution. Recognizing this gap, soon after joining the Confederation of Canada in 1905, Saskatchewan enacted a municipal act to regulate its rural and urban sectors. The province sought to ensure that citizens in urban municipalities were provided with municipal services such as water and sewage treatment, medical services, and recreation and that rural municipalities served agricultural land with roads, bridges, and other necessary infrastructure. The critical difference between urban and rural municipalities lies in population density, governance structure, and the types of services and infrastructure provided. Urban municipalities serve more densely populated areas with a range of services, while rural municipalities serve less populated, often agricultural regions focusing on maintaining roads and supporting agriculture. That said, in their role in supporting agriculture and industry, urban municipalities became regional economic hubs. With technological advancements in the agriculture industry and urbanization rates, the average farm size went from 160 acres under the 1872 Dominion Lands Claim Act to approximately 1,700 acres by 2021. The result has left many communities with shrinking populations. Roughly 166 of the existing 775 communities in Saskatchewan have more than 1,000 people, while 130 have less than 100 people. How sustainable are communities with such small populations? Given that the municipal legislative framework belongs to the provincial government, the research questions in this project seek to investigate why the provincial government refused to consolidate municipal governments despite data-supported arguments, including the recent Taskforce on Legislative Renewal led by Dr. Joe Garcea in 2000. This research aims to understand why the provincial government has forced the amalgamation of the school board system but has yet to restructure municipal governments despite previous attempts. This study develops a single case study using qualitative methods to analyze municipal governments in Saskatchewan. I collected and analyzed interviews with current and past municipal leaders, examining the data against the veto players' power theory developed by Dr. George Tsebelis, which employs historical institutionalism for its explanatory power to illustrate the resistance to change. The interview data are analyzed using the NVivo analytical platform, which allowed me to produce trend lines based on assigned attributes and codes. A total of 40 interviews were conducted and analyzed. During the data analysis phase of this project, several trends emerged. Veto players, such as the government of Saskatchewan and municipal leaders, have generally been far apart in their respective public policy positions regarding amalgamations. Municipal government leaders have historically demonstrated a strong status quo bias, resisted change, and, over time, produced path-dependent institutional processes. Municipal leaders have recognized that, eventually, there will be a need for amalgamations, but a bottom-up approach must drive this process. Three significant themes surfaced during the analysis of the data collected. First, the influence of historical institutional patterns leads decision-making processes down a path-dependent trajectory. A second theme based upon historical institutional introduced institutional change inertia by introducing status quo biases. Third, because municipal government leaders have varying opinions about amalgamation, MLAs are concerned about disturbing their voting base by forcing any modernization of the municipal sector. As the constitutional veto player governing the municipal sector, the provincial government will only foster sector modernization by incentivizing incremental change.