Letter to PC Candidate Wade Bearchell
Transcription
Letter to PC Candidate Wade Bearchell
DORIN LAND AND OILFIELD MANAGEMENT INC. 9760 60 Ave, Edmonton Alberta, Canada T6E 0C5 Telephone (780) 430-0840 Fax (780) 430-0367 [email protected] April 14, 2015 Mr. Wade Bearchell PC Party Candidate Olds / Didsbury VIA E-MAIL Dear Sir: Re: Surface Rights Issues in Your Riding Our firm has its roots in Didsbury. We note you are in the local golf business. Our family land was sold in 2008 to a developer who planned to build two Gary Player world class golf courses. The sale did not occur, in part because of one of the most scandalous takings of surface rights in Alberta, on the very land granted by Queen Victoria to the founder of Didsbury. Land agents, many who contribute significantly to the injustices I write about, are trained at Olds College. Ethics training is a part of the curriculum. The assumed effectiveness of ethics training is a critical assumption in the overall statutory scheme, which needs to be examined. An oil company managed to illegally gain a right of entry to the surface of our Didsbury land, and to do so cheaply, by way of employing unethical land agents. Had I not forced the former ERCB to cause the operator to re-abandon the well next to the Bethany seniors facility in Didsbury, the seniors housed there would have lived next to an unsafe oil well indefinitely. What the irresponsible oil company did in the town of Didsbury, was illegally vent large quantities of natural gas to atmosphere – a highly unsafe activity. Only luck prevented a massive explosion. The same occurred at no less than 18 other wells in the Olds / Didsbury area. The surface rights issues Premier Prentice spoke of yesterday in Three Hills, while concerning, are nothing compared to the far more serious issues of illegal entries in the riding you are running in. The Didsbury landowners, my family, did not receive what virtually all other landowners in the Province receive – annual compensation for the surface taking (an expropriation by the Surface Rights Board, involving alarming facts, errors of law, jurisdiction, and unfair process). The irresponsible operator is busy trying to have all annual compensation payments put to an end, and to pass responsibility for land contamination to the surface owners. The electorate owning surface rights throughout the province have a right to know the entirety of what is at stake in your riding as I write this, and what your party’s intentions are. Since you are a candidate of the incumbent government, which created the new Alberta Energy Regulator, and which undertook to amend the Surface Rights Act but has yet to do so, we feel it is your responsibility to raise these issues with your party leader, to address the problems during the campaign in a meaningful way, and to debate the matters in any event. RESIDENTAL AND OIL AND GAS DEVELOPMENT CAN CO-EXIST