Looking back on 2024, Morinville-St. Albert MLA and Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction Minister Dale Nally quickly pointed to his life lease legislation, the Consumer Protection (Life Lease Protection) Amendment Act, which came into action on May 16, 2024. The legislation, introduced by Nally, established new requirements for life lease agreements in Alberta.
Life lease agreements often see a reduction in monthly rent payments in exchange for a much larger upfront loan payment, called entrance fees. The money is meant to be paid back once the tenant moves or passes away.
The legislation came as a result of a controversy that saw some seniors waiting years for their payments to be returned to them after moving from retirement facilities owned and operated by Christenson Communities. Nally wanted to ensure that cases where seniors and families saw their payments withheld from them would be able to get their money back in the future.
"We put this legislation in in the hopes that what happened recently will never happen again. And I did get some positive feedback for some people who have provided their termination since the legislation has passed," Nally said. "And while they're still in this long lineup, they at least know that they are going to be getting interest on the money. So when they do eventually get paid back at least they'll get paid back interest."
Those who provided their notice of termination prior to the legislation being passed are not eligible. But Nally said that those who provided their termination notice after the legislation was passed should have their money returned "within six months. And if it hasn't been returned within six months then they will be paid interest on that."
With eyes forward on the new year, Nally hopes to continue work at the constituency level for the residents of Morinville-St. Albert in 2025.
"One of the most important things an MLA can do is to support schools and playgrounds and legions and charitable groups in their riding," he said. He brought up the $550,000 provincial grant for the St. Albert BMX Club from 2023 that allowed them to build a new track, which was unveiled in earlier in June 2024.
"I will continue to work on behalf of all the charities in my riding to represent them and to get them funds," he said.
Nally also alluded to a new process his office is putting forward. "A process for automatic approvals," he called it.
"We're going to come up with a process so that all permit approvals in this province will have an automatic approval associated with it," he said.
For simple permit approvals, ones where he said there may be a checklist associated with them, there would be an automatic approval once the checklist is provided.
"And then we're taking all those people that were working on those simple approvals and we're going to put them on the more complex approvals," he said. But those complex approvals will also have an automatic approval process associated with them, according to Nally.
"What we're going to do is put in a shot clock," he said. "If the approval time is — let's say 90 days for the approval process. Then if you haven't heard anything within 90 days, it's automatically approved."
Nally said his department is "working with other ministries, looking at all their permits to see which ones can be removed and which ones can fall under the shot clock approach."
"We have 16 departments in Alberta that have permits. And so every department that has permits is now subject to the automatic approval process," he said. "The intention is-- we're not even looking at having any exception to this. Every permit approval in this province will fall under either the simplified approach, or it'll have the shot clock attached to it."
Nally said that Albertans will learn more about this new process during Red Tape Reduction Week in January 2025.
