Rural landowners from throughout the province are joining forces to strike down provincial laws affecting their property rights.
Roughly 50 people from as far away as Vegreville, Brooks and Black Diamond met with Rimbey-area activists Joe Anglin and Jan Slomp in Red Deer on Tuesday afternoon to create a plan attacking four different bills the provincial government has passed recently.
Amendments created under Bills 19, 36, 46 and 50 affect the government’s ability to expropriate land for transportation and utility corridors and reduce or eliminate landowners’ ability to appeal decisions affecting their property, say Anglin and Slomp.
Particularly irksome is that, along with eroding property rights, the new bills make the general public pay for construction of electrical generation facilities that bring profit to private enterprise, said Terry Osko, one of seven people who drove from Vegreville to attend the meeting.
The power transmission issue has become contentious as power transmission companies lay plans to build two new sets of power lines, including Calgary-based AltaLink’s plan to build a line from the Genesee plant, west of Edmonton, to Langdon, east of Calgary.
Using the term corporate socialism to describe the plan through which the construction will be financed, Anglin said Tuesday’s meeting set in motion a plan for landowners to fight back through the courts and in the political forum.
“If people can see that they can make a difference, they will get more action,” said Anglin.
Politically, Albertans need to vote for anyone but the Progressive Conservatives next time there’s an election in the province, he said.
A big part of the problem is that Albertans tend to elect dynasties whose leaderships have been quite smug about their ability to continue winning voter support, said Anglin, who ran under the Alberta Green Party banner in the last provincial election.
“I think we need to chose a government that’s not going to stick around for 40 years,” he said.
Osko said his group has invited leaders of the Progressive Conservative, Liberal, New Democratic and Wildrose Alliance Parties to attend a conference in Vegreville addressing the contentious laws. So far, only the Wildrose Alliance has confirmed that it will attend, he said.
On the legal front, Slomp said the people and groups who want to fight back need to generate a legal challenge that will bring the government’s actions to task.
Specifically, he is planning a major protest at the site when construction is set to start on the power line that has been at the centre of the debate.
“When that first pole goes in the ground, I’m going out.”
Slomp said he hopes to take 1,000 people with him and create a stir that will drag the province’s actions into the courts and carry the issue all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Morningside residents Geoff and Dorothy Broadbent said they attended the meeting because amendments that resulted from the four new bills are already affecting their ability to manage their quarter section of farm land, located west of the Wolf Creek Golf Course.
In their efforts to subdivide the land, the Broadbents have been told that the right of way for a power transmission line running across the centre will need to be widened.
They don’t understand the reasoning and they are powerless to fight back, said the couple.
“The acts . . . are taking away landowners’ rights. They’re very scary,” said Dorothy.
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com