BANCA PERSONAL
5.2 GRUPO MERCANTIL COLPATRIA (Banco Colpatria)
Four provinces in Canada have experienced major changes in the number and type of associations formed by their municipalities: New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba. They are natural case studies for testing how restructuring shapes the behaviour of municipal associations. Quebec’s municipal associations – La Fédération québécoise des municipalités (FQM) and l’Union des municipalités du Québec – do not make their full records publicly available. There is insufficient evidence to test how restructuring has affect their behaviour. The historical records of associations in New Brunswick, Ontario, and Manitoba are not complete, but the majority of them are available. Their restructurings are discussed at length in Appendix D, and are summarized in Figures 4-1, 4-2, and 4-3.
Figure 4-1. Municipal Association Restructuring in Manitoba7
Note: Blue denotes a unified association; green denotes a rural or urban association – whether primary or explicit. A dashed line indicates than an association formed after its members broke away from another association.
7 Manitoba uses four classifications of municipalities: city, town, village, and rural municipalities. The
province classifies cities, towns, and villages as urban municipalities. Government of Manitoba, The Municipal Act, 427(1) and 427(2), web2.gov.mb.ca.
Figure 4-2. Municipal Association Restructuring in New Brunswick8
Note: Blue denotes a unified association. Purple denotes a rural, urban, or section association that has complete membership overlap with a unified association. NBRMA required its members to belong to UNBM. CNBA did not. The membership requirements in the Union of New Brunswick Towns are unknown. Green denotes a rural, urban, or section association without full membership overlap in a unified association. Pink denotes an association formed on a linguistic basis. A green or purple arrow indicates than an association formed from the fragmentation of another association.
8 Prior to 1966, counties in New Brunswick were classified as rural municipalities. Cities and towns
were urban. After counties were dissolved in 1966, many rural areas became unincorporated, but incorporated villages were established.
Figure 4-3. Municipal Association Restructuring in Ontario9
Note: Blue denotes a unified association; green denotes a rural, urban, or section association. A dashed line indicates that an association formed after its members left broke away from another association.
9 Ontario employs less clear-cut definitions of rural and urban municipalities than Manitoba or New
Brunswick. In this chapter, the associations’ own definitions are employed to categorize membership compositions. Although there was some membership overlap between OMA when it was primarily urban and OARM, the majority of OMA members were cities, towns, and villages and the majority of OARM members were townships. The membership of counties in organization was near parity. Ontario Municipal Association, Proceedings: Sixty-First Annual Convention (Toronto: Ontario Municipal Association, 1959), 83-85. Ontario Association of Rural Municipalities, Proceedings of the Twenty-Eighth Annual Convention of Ontario Association of Rural Municipalities (Toronto: Ontario Association of Rural Municipalities, 1960), 83-85.
The complex histories of municipal association restructuring in Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario stand in stark contrast to the remarkable stability of associations in the other provinces. Four provinces – British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador have only ever had had one unified municipal association. The Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) was founded in 1905, the Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities (UNSM) in 1906, Municipalities Newfoundland and Labrador (MNL) in 1951 and the Federation of Prince Edward Island Municipalities (FPEIM) in 1957. Two provinces have had separate rural and urban associations since their formation. The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) was founded in 1905, the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) in 1906, the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association (AUMA) in 1905 and the Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties (AAMDC) in 1909.10
Stable cases afford less analytical leverage because there is no longitudinal variation, but they offer insights into how membership composition affects issue representation. In particular, the permanently split associations can be used to examine the issues pursued by rural and urban associations when they do not have an overlap in membership. The changes in associations in Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario
10As discussed in Chapter Three, Saskatchewan does have two “section associations,” which represent
small subsections of municipalities within the province. They are the Provincial Association of Resort Communities of Saskatchewan (PARCS), New North – Saskatchewan Association of Northern Communities (SANC), and l'Association des municipalités bilingues du Manitoba (AMBM) – have overlapping memberships with larger municipal associations. The majority of their members belong to SUMA. Although AUMA was called the Union of Alberta Municipalities until 1966, it excluded rural municipalities from membership starting in at least 1918. Records from 1905-1918 are unavailable. As discussed in Chapter Three, MNL, SARM, SUMA, and AAMDC also underwent name changes after they were founded.
never resulted in complete breaks in memberships. Some overlap of rural and urban members persisted, although associational memberships were predominantly rural or predominantly urban.
One unified association and one set of rural and urban associations are used to evaluate the issues pursued by stable associations. The Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities is used as the stable unified association. UNSM and UNBM shared the same legal types of city, town, and county; referred to themselves as “sister organizations;” and attended one another’s annual conventions.11 Yet UNBM saw the formation of separate cities, towns, and rural associations between 1949 and 1951, whereas UNSM remained stable as one unified association. UNSM can be used to evaluate the issues pursued within a unified association where restructuring has not occurred. The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities and the Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association are used as the case studies for stable separate associations. Saskatchewan and Manitoba share the legal types of city, town, village, and rural municipality. Unlike in Manitoba, as discussed in Appendix D, rural municipalities in Saskatchewan have never shared an association with other legal types. There is also no membership overlap between Saskatchewan’s rural and urban associations. This provides insights on how separate rural and urban associations when their membership bases are completely separated.
The associations of municipalities in Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario have undergone complex restructurings. All have had at least one association split and
11 The New Brunswick Equal Opportunity Program dissolved the province’s county governments, but
one merger. New Brunswick and Ontario have experienced numerous splits and mergers. The history of associations in these provinces can become convoluted. This chapter tests whether there is a question that cut through the complexity of the individual cases. Are there patterns in the behaviour of associations across the diversity of restructurings, the overlapping memberships, and provincial conditions? Are there commonalities in how mergers and divisions affect issue representation in associations?