Community Commentary

The Municipality Act is written to guide local governments and gives them a set of laws to ensure they govern lawfully.

Each councillor is given a copy of the act and are made aware of the responsibilities it entails. When you elect us and we sign our Oath we are promising to serve our community and to also follow the Act.

We are an aging society and as everyone is aware serving on council is both an honour and a privilege. But we are also human and life happens.

It was a portion of the Act that has brought us to this point today. Very recently the Act greatly impacted this council and one of our town’s own.

Council along with the affected individual held numerous meetings and discussions. Asked hard questions but, unfortunately, had no ability to resolve the outcome.

It is due to the inflexibility of this portion of the Act that we witnessed firsthand the impact it has on people. It also made us realize it must be changed.

Recently, the Act was revised but the portion that impacted our council member was not updated to meet modern times. We as a council know it has to be reviewed and changed.

It is an archaic law, while on paper sounded good, and made sense at the time of its writing. In fact it is all too similar to the Three Strikes You’re Out law in the USA. It worked until it didn’t. It worked until people were hurt by it. People lost their freedoms because of it.

People got hurt.

As your council, we will be submitting a Resolution to MNL to lobby for a review and a change to the wording whereby our fellow council member and our friend was deeply impacted by it.

This part of the Act will be challenged and hopefully amended so no one else can be harmed by it.

Deputy Mayor Della DeMoss