Comparisons are a fact of life.
The next great young hockey player comes along and he's compared to Sidney Crosby or Claude Giroux or another of the NHL's top stars. Every hockey writer always loves to say the next big rangy defenceman who plays physical hockey is the next Chris Pronger.
Estevan is often the subject of comparisons too. The comparisons to Weyburn and vice versa are endless.
In recent years, due to the oil boom, Estevan has often been called the Fort McMurray of Saskatchewan, an allusion to the economic prosperity each community is enjoying and the issues that come with that success.
Further to that, a lot of people have suggested Estevan should look to Fort McMurray for solutions on matters such as housing which remains one of the biggest issues facing the entire region.
Lately I've been wondering if Estevan, and our region, should look to Fort McMurray for another idea.
What a lot of people don't realize unless they have lived or done business there is that Fort McMurray isn't really recognized as a city. I came across this weird little fact one day while looking at census numbers. Fort McMurray is actually part of the Rural Municipality of Wood Buffalo and it's the RM that comes up when you look for data on such things as population.
According to information on the government of Alberta website and the RM of Wood Buffalo's site, the city and something called improvement district No. 143 amalgamated in 1995 to form a specialized municipality called the RM of Wood Buffalo.
In talking to a friend who lives in Fort McMurray, a big reason the area amalgamated was to do with taxation. As a prosperous region, they were obviously putting a lot of money into the provincial government's bank account but felt they weren't getting a whole lot back in return. (Where have you heard that before?)
With a much larger base to draw from, the amalgamated RM presumably gets more in terms of grants and payments from the two upper levels of government and has more money to take care of their operations.
The RM operations and council are based out of Fort McMurray. As for the government, there is a 12 person council and mayor that presides over the RM. Six council members are from Fort McMurray and the remaining six are from the other hamlets.
I might be suffering from some heat exhaustion, but I think that is something the City of Estevan and RMs of this area should look into.
Admittedly, I haven't researched the matter to death, but I don't think it's a huge stretch to suggest there are a lot of reasons why this might work. With so many of the RMs in the area already dealing with similar issues, perhaps by pooling resources, equipment, manpower and brainpower, more can be accomplished as one large RM instead of five to six separate ones.
And, conveniently, there is already a template in place locally for such an idea. The City of Estevan and RMs of Estevan, Cambria, Benson, Bienfait and Browning banded together in 2011 to form the South East Community Health Committee.
With a serious lack of doctors in Estevan, and little to no help coming to them from the Sun Country Health Region, the committee took charge of the situation and went to work recruiting doctors. Each of the six groups instituted a health levy on property taxes and that money is pooled together to improve the situation for the entire region.
Along with successfully recruiting doctors to Estevan, the group also bought a new ultrasound machine for St. Joseph's Hospital.
Could that concept not be expanded further to something resembling the Wood Buffalo model? If it works for health care, might it work for something like infrastructure?
I am well aware that messing with RMs is considered sacrilege to some. Many years ago I went to a meeting in Bienfait held by the NDP government of the day where the topic was amalgamating RMs in the province in an effort to reduce the number of them.
That meeting went over like a fart in church and I honestly thought the poor guy the government sent down from Regina was going to be lynched on the spot. I had my camera ready just in case. But that meeting was over 10 years ago and I think as a province, we are a little more open to big ideas.
I'm sure someone much smarter than me could poke a lot of holes in the idea, but I can't help but think this is something worth exploring. There's really nothing to lose. If someone takes an honest look and finds it won't work, then so be it. But if it did work, it could be one of the best things to happen to our area.
