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Freeholders hope more funding on way

A group seeking fairer compensation for subsurface mineral rights is hoping the re-elected Progressive Conservative government will come through on a promise to give more sustainable funding to non-profit organizations.

A group seeking fairer compensation for subsurface mineral rights is hoping the re-elected Progressive Conservative government will come through on a promise to give more sustainable funding to non-profit organizations.

The Freehold Owners Association, which held its annual general meeting at Red Deer’s CrossRoads Church on Saturday, and other volunteer-based, non-profit organizations say they greatly need long-term funding.

“Premier (Alison) Redford’s campaign promise was to better fund not-for-profits, which we found to be quite encouraging,” said association president Else Pedersen.

In its Election Platform 2012 document, Redford said she believed in the importance of Alberta’s vibrant nonprofit/voluntary sector and actively supports its work through targeted programs and capacity-building initiatives.

She has also said in the past she’d like to bring salaries up to par with public sector social services. Redford easily won a majority government on April 23. Pedersen said the group runs a budget of around $180,000.

The organization recently updated its website, which will be unveiled on June 1, after receiving a one-time provincial grant of $250,000 over two years.

“That’s been spent, so that’s it,” said Pedersen. “So unless we can hold enough seminars to fill our coffers, we could be in financial difficulty. The annual general meeting we hold and the seminars we hold through the province are pretty important to us, so we get the support of mineral owners in the province.”

Many donations that come in are then used to help owners in court proceedings.

“That’s the only way we can challenge some of unfairness issues out there,” said Pedersen.

Freehold owners are descendants of Alberta pioneers who bought mineral rights along with surface rights to their land in the early 1900s — before provincial laws gave the Crown all mineral rights. The association includes 4,200 members.

There used to be 50,000 titles of freehold mineral land scattered through Alberta.

Pedersen said the owners are required to pay a mineral tax, which can run up to 6.9 per cent depending on the volume of production.

“And we don’t get anything back from that,” said Pedersen.

The association would like to see the government to return one-half of one per cent of this tax back to the association. It would help the association’s efforts and continue its education programs.

“It’s a benefit to both industry and government, and industry has received a lot of incentives,” said Pedersen.

“But we as a landowner haven’t received anything other than that one-time grant.”

The Liberals, New Democrats and the Wildrose support sustainable funding for the association, Pedersen said.

Pedersen said another primary concern centres around Bill 24, which relates to carbon capture and storage. The bill allows the government to claim the pore space within subsurface reservoir rocks, without any compensation to freehold owners.

“We support the technology, but the way they went about it was not good,” said Pedersen. “We had no consultation that this was coming down.”

Doug Malsbury, part of the Alberta Surface Rights Group and Wildrose Party supporter, said that Bill 24 set a precedent to take the rest of the oil and gas minerals from landowners.

“For me it was not a good outcome provincewide,” said Malsbury, regarding the April 23 election results. “I believe the Redford government has taken minerals and they’ll take these (oil and gas) minerals too and I’ll get no compensation.”

ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com