By Hayley Ferguson

AUMA will not boycott conference in Quebec

May 8, 2019 | 4:40 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Mayor Ted Clugston and the Medicine Hat City council have been making headlines across Alberta after they voted unanimously that they would be boycotting the upcoming Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference at the end of the month.

The council decided that they didn’t want to spend any Medicine Hat tax dollars in the province of Quebec where the event is being held, due to the provincial government’s stance on oil pipelines.

Clugston said that he approached the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association’s (AUMA) president Barry Morishita, who is also the Mayor of Brooks, about all of Alberta boycotting the event.

Morishita says that the AUMA did consider the boycott but felt that attending the conference and having dialogue between municipalities from across Canada was a better solution in the long term.

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“I certainly understand their reasoning for it,” he said. “But AUMA’s view is that the better method would have been to, for them to come out, talk to their fellow municipalities that don’t understand responsible resource development is. How it impact individual communities and how it impacts their community going forward.And we think that conversation is long overdue. And needs to be led by municipalities leaders like the Mayor in Medicine Hat and the councillors there as well as other members of AUMA.”

Morishita also said that Medicine Hat will not face any retribution from AUMA and doesn’t feel that they will from the FCM either.