This is an excerpt from an Alberta Wilderness Association publication on a speech that Bob Scammell recently gave to their organization. As many of you know, Bob Scammell is a Red Deer lawyer that has devoted his life to angling and hunting issues in Alberta.
The full article can be found by Googling the PDF
Alberta’s Public Land Crisis:The Fourth Annual Martha Kostuch Lecture
- or through the link
http://albertawilderness.ca/issues/w...ostuch-lecture
The final object of this financial critique
was the Government of Alberta. Bob used
the phrase “gross negligence” at one point
in his talk. That characterization must have
been aimed at the provincial government.
The government apparently has no solid
estimate of how much money is exchanged
between the petroleum industry and grazing
leaseholders. At a time when the provincial
government is running multi-billion dollar
deficits and is threatening to cut public
services such ignorance may strike some
readers as especially scandalous.
Potatogate testified to the government’s
blindness on this matter. Dave Ealey,
spokesperson for Sustainable Resource
Development, told Bob he could not tell
him how much money grazing leaseholders
received from resource companies on
the 16,000 acres of land the government
proposed to sell. He simply didn’t know.
The information Bob sought is private; it’s
between the leaseholder and the companies.
This exchange buttressed the charge that
our government has no idea how much
money is lost annually to provincial coffers
by allowing grazing leaseholders to keep
surface disturbance payments…” Based
on data compiled some years ago by the
Association of Professional Landmen the
province was likely losing tens of millions
of dollars…then…years ago.
Bob then tried to estimate what the
government’s refusal to collect these
compensation payments might mean today
to the provincial treasury. The estimate
came from data published by the 5,500
acre Antelope Creek Ranch located 18
kilometres west of Brooks and the Eastern
Irrigation District that sprawls roughly
through southeastern Alberta from Bassano
in the west to the Saskatchewan border and
between the Red Deer River to the north
and the Bow River to the south. Using the
per acre petroleum compensation payments
received by these institutions Bob estimated
that this practice alone could be costing the
people of Alberta $130 million per year. This
estimate is nearly 30 percent greater than the
$107 million in education funding Premier
Redford restored after becoming lead