Premier Danielle Smith’s government is very clear about who rules the cities.

The UCP does. Every municipal council knows it.

Smith brought in a law prohibiting municipalities from dealing directly with Ottawa. The province can now fire elected councillors and cancel municipal bylaws.

The premier and her ministers halted city hall’s Green Line by withdrawing funding, then took over design of the truncated project.

That was a breathtaking intrusion into the longstanding right of cities to manage their own transit projects. The UCP didn’t hesitate to jump in when the whole Green Line was in trouble.

For better or worse, Smith and her cabinet are the civic powerhouses across Alberta.

Then why, you might ask, does the province suddenly need city hall approval to shut down the Safeworks supervised drug consumption site at the Chumir urgent care centre?

The simple answer is, they do not. This is an AHS facility, owned, staffed and operated by the province under the authority of Health Minister Adriana LaGrange and Addictions sub-minister Dan Williams.

People can disagree about supervised drug use, but there’s no question whatever about who’s providing it, and who could stop it cold with one quick decision.

The concerted effort to draw city hall into the closure debate is entirely political.

Councillor Dan McLean, one of the conservative minority,........

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