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Finding the secrets of the ESRD

People are mystified that Environment-Sustainable Resource Development led all other government departments in the Progressive Conservative search and destroy rush to shred immediately following the recent NDP election win.
RichardsHarleyMugMay23jer
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People are mystified that Environment-Sustainable Resource Development led all other government departments in the Progressive Conservative search and destroy rush to shred immediately following the recent NDP election win.

Perhaps most puzzled of all was Premier Rachel Notley, but she did issue an immediate Stop Shredding! order anyway. Her people, particularly new Environment-Sustainable Resource Development Minister Shannon Phillips, MLA for Lethbridge-West, should immediately get in there and have a hard look at what remains and try to identify what has disappeared. Let me explain.

Outdoors people have many derisive names for the SRD Department: “Unsustainable Resource Destruction,” for one. My preference is “Sweet Resource Deals Done.” For example, prior to the shredding bee, there should have been several files relating to the great “Potatogate” boondoggle of 2010-11.

At issue was the top-secret proposed sale of almost 100 quarter sections, 16,000 acres, of public land near Bow Island to SLM Spud Farms 1317748 Ltd., a devout PC supporter, much of it to be plowed up, allegedly to grow spuds for potato chips.

The Alberta Wilderness Association blew the whistle, pointing out that this large tract of native prairie grassland is known to be crucial habitat for a number of birds listed under the federal Species at Risk Act, including the burrowing owl, the sage grouse, ferruginous hawk and the long-billed curlew.

Amid the uproar, SLM Spud Farms backed off and bailed out, but came back in when, in 2011, the worst SRD minister we’ve ever had, Mel Knight, opened the land to sale, but by public tender this time. More uproar. Then Alison Redford announced she’d kibosh the deal if she became premier. But did she? Potatogate just will not stay shut: the word is parts of it are still in play, but complicated by existing public land grazing leases and Cowboy Welfare surface disturbance payments on some of the land.

Speaking of which, there might just be a scrap of paper left around their old office shedding light on why, a little over a year ago, former ESRD ministers Diana McQueen and Robin Campbell were reliably reported to be gravely concerned with the magnitude of oil and gas surface disturbance payments, Cowboy Welfare paid to public land grazing leaseholders instead of to the people of Alberta, the owners of the damaged land.

Could that concern have oozed from the Calgary ring road file and the efforts of Ted Morton, one of the few good recent SRD ministers, to assemble public land to trade for Sarcee Nation land needed for the ring road? That involved cancelling public land grazing leases held by some of the historic, pure-bred herd bulls of Alberta ranching and allegedly paying these millionaires astronomical sums to compensate them for the future loss of oil and gas surface disturbance payments on the leases, which they should never have been given in the first place. The people deserve to know the details.

Last Halloween, citizen Morton, no longer in government, but still very much an insider, excitedly told an Alberta Wilderness Association meeting that, before Christmas, a plan would be announced to stop letting public land grazing leaseholders have the oil and gas surface disturbance payments to the leased public land, and instead have them paid into a trust fund for the management, protection and rehabilitation, etc., of public land. The plan was never announced and Morton has not responded to tell me why. Maybe something left in the SRD offices holds the answer.

Alberta conservationists, such as Alberta Fish and Game Association president Wayne Lowry, who works in Lethbridge, have high hopes for the new ESRD minister, Shannon Phillips. Back in the early 1970s when I was AFGA president, we had similarly high hopes for young Dr. Allan Warrack, appointed minister of Lands and Forests (as ESRD once was) in Peter Lougheed’s first cabinet.

Warrack, the best minister we’ve ever had in the position, noticed a very good idea repeated over and over (and ignored by tired old Social Credit) in the annual resolutions submitted to government by the AFGA, and promptly adopted it as his own idea; thus was the Fish and Wildlife Habitat Trust Fund created, which funded and inspired so many superb Bucks For Wildlife habitat projects in Alberta.

That best-ever conservation idea of the PC government continues today in the form of the Alberta Conservation Association, funded largely from levies on hunting and fishing licences, The public trust for public land spoken of by Morton on Halloween is an even better idea, particularly for restoring big money to where it should go … repairing the environmental surface damage to public land caused by big oil and gas.

Traditionally, in Canada, everyone steals good ideas from the “socialists.”

Phillips should return the favour, salvage this one from the PC shredding pile, and bring a very good idea into force before our public land is totally shredded and beyond repair.

Bob Scammell is an award-winning columnist who lives in Red Deer. He can be reached at bscam@telusplanet.net.