We as residents of the City of Chestermere would like to express our outrage of your actions as the members of the provincial government to totally disregard the outcome of my constitutional right to vote for the democratically elected governmental officials that represent my best interests.

Your government’s recent actions to eliminate Chestermere’s elected officials and senior management and replace them with two unelected, non-local political appointees only demonstrate your disregard for our democracy. As a result, our city is currently operating under the resemblance of a dictatorship. Which is demonstrated during Council meetings, by the two political appointees making long-term policy decisions with little or no understanding of our local issues. Resulting in irreparable harm without any public explanations or discussions, and additionally undoing any recent progress made on our city’s outstanding issues.

In a functioning democracy, elected officials serve their full term unless there are exceptional circumstances. As we understand, at the beginning of their term, a few disgruntled employees, a minority of residents, and both current and previously elected officials, supported Municipal Affairs efforts to remove the duly elected council through the inspection process. As requested by the provincial government, the process to remove elected official was provided in a public Brownlee LLP letter dated November 8th, 2021 (File 71920-0181/MSS). This letter outlined the steps required to remove elected officials from office. However, it also stated it must be done with a high degree of procedural fairness, not simply by decree. (https://www.alberta.ca/external/news/brownlee-llp-summary-letter.pdf

In September of 2023, Our city’s representatives filed a successful application for a judicial review of the inspection process on the grounds that natural justice and procedural fairness guidelines were not followed. Resulting in the provincial government’s decreed dismissals and attempts to terminate the Judicial review court proceedings.

These actions lead us to believe that a high degree of natural justice and procedural fairness were neither considered or followed during the process. It is our opinion that the courts should be determining the validity of the process with the utmost urgency.

We demand your government recognize this crisis and take immediate action by rescinding these decrees and restoring our city governance as well as expediting the judicial review process. Any further actions or corrective measures should only be based on the court rulings. We demand that Administrator Doug Lagore be removed from any involvement with the City of Chestermere and that Minister McIver & Municipal Affairs leave our City and Council alone and stop interfering in our City governance and that a full investigation be conducted into Minister McIver conflict of interest breach and alleged wrongdoings during this inspection and period after involving our City.