All this week, municipal bylaw enforcement officers from around the province gathered in the Sheraton Hotel in Red Deer to discuss strategies, and listen to expects talk about how better to keep our communities safe here in Alberta.

Everything from how to deal with illegal homeless camps, to dealing with vicious dogs, to fentanyl prevention was discussed during this weeklong event.

On Thursday evening, an awards ceremony and banquet was held to honor a few officers who went above and beyond the call of duty.

Greg Scarborough of the Wood Buffalo region won the Leadership Award for his actions during the Fort.McMurray wildfire last year.

Greg was in charge of pets, making sure any pet who was left behind was cared for, and reunited with their owner.

And fellow bylaw enforcement officer Chris Terry was honored with an Award of Excellence for training methods which were praised by his fellow officers.

Minister of Justice and Solicitor General Kathleen Ganley was on hand to open the banquet, and she talked about Bill 9, the amendment designed to simplify and streamline how minor offences are enforced, and how it is a prime example of how to better enforce laws and hold people accountable for their actions.

"What it does is, it actually deals with the enforcement mechanism... on tickets under a thousand dollars, other than traffic tickets, which were already under the civil enforcement scheme, and it moves them from the warrant enforcement scheme to the civil enforcement scheme. So essentially what that means is, first of all we catch a lot more people, because there is actually a lot more people coming forward to register their car, than otherwise wouldn’t be located. And I actually think right now there are a huge number of outstanding warrants...failure to shovel your walks, failure to shovel your walks, failure to pay your C train tickets, something like that...it's never really a good idea to take someone who is unable to pay and simply throw them in jail, so this will move into a more effective system".

About 45% of the 200,000 warrants that are still outstanding in our province are for minor things like not shoveling your walks or paying your C train ticket, and Ganley says this new strategy will more effectively deal with them, as the warrants will show up when they go to register a vehicle, instead of the next time they get pulled over.