The City and County of Grande Prairie are moving forward with mandated arbitration in order to reach an agreement on the Intermunicipal Collaboration Framework (ICF).

Since 2019, the City and County have been working towards the development of the ICF. While many areas of further collaboration to support the region have been identified, differing views on the regional sharing of municipal costs has delayed a final resolution.

The original deadline to complete the ICF was March 31, 2021, although the municipalities were granted a one-month extension by the Minister of Municipal Affairs. As no consensus could be found by April 30th, the City and County are now bringing the issues of dispute to an arbitrator as per Municipal Government Act (MGA) requirements.

The goal of arbitration is to seek a fair and equitable resolution on matters related to shared services and costs to continue to maximize value for our residents. The City and County will present their cases to an arbitrator in order to bring final resolution to their ICF.

Background

In 2017, the Province introduced legislation requiring neighbouring municipalities to negotiate frameworks which are intended to:

• provide for integrated planning, delivery and funding of intermunicipal services
• allocate scarce resources efficiently to provide local services
• ensure municipalities contribute funding to services that benefit their residents

While the City and County identified several potential areas to work together through facilitated and mediated sessions over the last few years, the municipalities were not able to reach an agreement within the specified timeline.