St. Albert's Mayor Cathy Heron will be an eligible candidate for the upcoming Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) board of directors election this summer after her fellow councillors approved a resolution endorsing her candidacy on April 2.
FCM is a non-profit organization based in Ottawa that represents municipalities across the country by advocating on municipal issues to the federal government. The organization has a 74-person board of directors made up of municipal leaders, and besides a couple of exceptions, each board member serves a one-year term.
Heron previously served on the FCM's board of directors from 2021-2023 as she automatically earned a seat on the board by virtue of serving as the president of Alberta Municipalities, a similar organization that focuses its advocacy on the provincial level. When Heron's term as president of Alberta Municipalities came to an end late last year, so did her time as a FCM board member.
“It's a place for me to go to get ideas to bring back to Alberta,” Heron said when asked why she was looking to rejoin the board. “FCM is huge, and I found that Alberta Municipalities represented a diverse group of people, and FCM is even more diverse [by representing] rural municipalities across Canada too.”
Heron also said that working with municipal officials in eastern Canada was another benefit because eastern and western Canada are quite different.
Another benefit of joining the board, she said, was being able to work directly with members of parliament, or MPs.
“Once a year in December we meet with MPs to talk about how do we solve climate finance problems, which is obviously a big issue right now,” she said. “Tackling the infrastructure deficit [is another point of concern.]”
“We never meet as sort of collective with MPs and ministers across the country, so I think that would be beneficial to talk about what works and what doesn't work and how they can help.”
Coun. Ken MacKay, who put forward the resolution endorsing Heron's bid for a seat on FCM's board, said he thinks Heron serving on FCM's board of directors is timely as many current members of the board from Alberta represent either Edmonton or Calgary or rural municipalities, and mid-sized cities like St. Albert should be represented as well.
“I think there's an opportunity for us to actually have a little bit more representation for a mid-sized city like ourselves,” he said. “This is just an opportunity to have our voice heard at federal tables as well.”
MacKay also said it would be beneficial for St. Albert to have a representative on the board because it would provide greater and more immediate access to FCM's programs and grants, such as the Community Building Retrofit program, which provided St. Albert with a $1.25 million grant in 2023 that technically went towards the rehabilitation work completed on Fountain Park Pool earlier in the year.
“If you actually have somebody that sits on the board of directors, and is involved in committee work, they have a bit more access to not only what other community representatives have, but also the inventory of programs of the entire FCM body has,” he said.
“[FCM has] a large staff working out of Ottawa and they have a large library of information that is available, and it's available to all all municipal councillors, but it certainly helps if you have a representative on the board of directors.”
Likewise, Coun. Wes Brodhead said St. Albert having a representative on the board will help the community have a better say on federal priorities.
“If you're at the table, you have a voice when decisions are being made,” Brodhead said. “If you're not there then others define the direction and the priorities for what is essentially a very important organization in Canada representing municipalities.”
“Anytime, I think, that we can have a representative on the board, it's a good thing for St. Albert.”
The resolution, which passed with only Coun. Shelley Biermanski opposed on April 2, also provides Heron, if elected to the board, with a $10,000 budget to cover costs associated with attending FCM's board meetings, which occur three to four times per year in Ottawa or online.
The election is slated to occur between June 6-9 in Calgary during FCM's annual general meeting and trade show, and eligible voters are limited to municipal officials in Alberta.
If elected, Heron will serve a one-year term ending in June of 2025.
