At the Annual Meeting of the BC Municipal Finance Authority in Victoria in March, AIMS President Brian Lee Crowley was one of the speakers on a panel about the Canadian and international experience with municipal amalgamations. In his talk, which is reproduced here, he reviews the impressive quantities of research now documenting the failure of municipal amalgamations to achieve most of the benefits their advocates claim for them. He looks in particular at the results of a recently completed study of the Halifax Regional Municipality’s experience, and relates the lessons learned there to the similar experiences elsewhere in Canada, the US and in Europe. Amalgamation emerges as yesterday’s solution to the problems of local government.
