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"NEB hearing process is a farce"
E-mail to Ezra Levant of Sun Media
From Stephanie Fradette
[Recently, Mr. Levant was kicked out of an NEB Hearing. Upon hearing this, Stephanie Fradette, a Saskatchewan landowner, e-mailed him to share her experience with the NEB hearing process and pipeline abandonment.]
Mr. Levant,
I am happy to hear that you think the NEB hearing process is a farce. I fully agree, but I think we are coming at it from different angles.
Click here to read the rest of the letter...
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"Dilbit"
The following is an updated commentary from 2011.
The Enbridge Alberta Clipper pipeline and the TransCanada Keystone pipeline both transport diluted Bitumen, the thick tarry substance produced at the oil sands, through to the United States. This is the same product that TransCanada wants to ship in the XL pipeline and Enbridge wants to ship west in one of the two Northern Gateway pipelines. The diluents, to be off loaded from ships at Kitimat then piped east in the second pipeline is another story. As if landowners have not been imposed upon enough, now it seems landowners will get two pipelines from now on, rather than one for refined products, and will also need to be much more vigilant in monitoring their land than ever before. Click here to read the rest of the commentary...
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CAEPLA Letter to CEAA Process Advisory Team - Re: Northern Gateway Joint Review Regulatory Process
Dear Ms. Spagnuolo,
In our conversation the other day, we talked about landowner issues and the compromise of their legitimate issues and stewardship responsibilities in the Northern Gateway Joint Review regulatory process.
Click here to read the rest of the letter...
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Dear NEB..."Thanks" for the liability!
An original letter to the National Energy Board
By Stephanie Fradette
January 25, 2012
The following is a letter to the NEB regarding their approval of Vantage Pipeline’s Tioga to Empress Pipeline.
Dear Ms. Habib, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Vergette:
In response to your decision to approve the Vantage pipeline, I am very disappointed. It is a decision that I should have been expecting, given your history of 100% approval, but it was disappointing nonetheless.
Click here to read the rest of the letter...
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CAEPLA Requests A Clear Explanation from the National Energy Board (Excerpt from Dave Core letter, written to NEB Boss Gaetan Caron)
I am writing to you on behalf of CAEPLA, pursuant to learning that the National Energy Board (NEB) is about to engage in a telephone survey of landowners whose lives and holdings are effected by NEB policy.
Being that the NEB does not require pipeline companies to inform individual landowners about the implications of policy changes upon them and their holdings—such as occurred during the jurisdictional changes on the Alberta NOVA system—and being that the NEB itself has a policy of deliberately not keeping landowners informed when it has had policies amended that imposed liability and risk upon landowners (as was the case when Section 112 of the National Energy Board Act was implemented), we are writing to enquire about the NEB’s objective via this recently announced telephone solicitation of landowners.
As you know, due to decisions by the NEB, thousands of Alberta landowners lost longstanding regulatory protections they had enjoyed for decades. From these landowners, the NEB removed—without telling them or consulting with them—the right to recover legal costs, meaning to be “made whole.” To this day, vast numbers of effected landowners are unaware of what you at the NEB did to them in this regard.
You also implemented changes, again without telling landowners, that dramatically altered the type of farming practices that could be legally engaged in over top of a pipeline easement.
When at the NOVA jurisdictional hearing, the NEB was presented with the specific request to ensure that affected landowners were informed, and thereby understood the implications of the [NOVA] jurisdictional shift, the request was immediately rebuffed and ignored by you and your NEB colleagues.
With regard to original amendments within Section 112 of the National Energy Board Act, which imposed legal obligations upon landowners related to driving across pipelines on their farms, you implemented these changes, imposing risk and legal liability, without even telling landowners.
These above statements all being true, I am writing to ask if you would kindly explain the process the NEB has walked through to determine exactly how the questions being asked of landowners in your upcoming survey, will generate a useful outcome?
In other words, if the NEB’s practice is to knowingly and quite deliberately keep landowners and their representative organizations in the dark—including by refusing to answer Access to Information inquiries—what useful information is the NEB now hoping to garner by means of this solicitation?
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Recently, I was interviewed by Andrew Nikiforuk...
Recently, I was interviewed by Andrew Nikiforuk. He is a well-known Calgary author and journalist. Each week he posts an energy column for a British Columbia news service. It’s called “The Tyee”. When we spoke, he explained that he was researching regulatory capture at the National Energy Board. Regulatory capture occurs when an industry that is supposed to be regulated by an impartial government body, has so much influence the regulator instead advances the commercial or special interests of the industry it is supposed to be regulating. Last week he posted the article. It is entitled, “National Energy Board: Captured Regulator?”
Nikiforuk’s article piqued the interest of Andrew Leach, an “environmental economist” at the Alberta School of Business. The two men ended up getting into an online discussion in the comments section of the Nikiforuk article. The original article and subsequent comments can be found at the Tyee website.
After reading the back and forth banter between the two men, I posted the following comments:
"Mr. Leach’s views on regulatory capture seem to be more an issue of perspective than they are a substantive disagreement with Mr. Nikiforuk. Even though these men have a different view of how they see particular aspects of the National Energy Board (NEB), both indicate there is a need to look more closely at the relationships between the NEB and those it regulates."
Leach thinks the issue “of regulatory revolving doors” is more significant than the regulatory cost recovery issue. In referring to regulatory revolving doors he highlights the fact that industry people end up acting as board members and employees. In saying it is a “revolving door,” he is also acknowledging the fact not just that ex-industry people will work for the NEB, but that ex-NEB staff end up working for industry—at times in important and influential positions. A prime example is the president of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA), Brenda Kenny, who worked at the NEB for years.
In reference to CAEPLA and landowners, Leach affirms that landowner rights are compromised by the regulatory process and that landowners are therefore left to bear costs and risks that should belong to pipeline companies. He states: “My intention was to point out that they represent those people who… bear the direct cost and risks [of] energy infrastructure. In other words, even a project which is in the broad public interest is not in the interest of the landowners directly affected, and the regulatory process is designed so that individual landowners don’t have the power to hold up projects.”
Leach also suggests that regulatory influence over the NEB extends to the oil and gas companies that utilize the NEB regulated pipelines. He states:
“I agree with your comment on abandonment standards and requirements – there is no question that those should be in place. That said, you have to ask who is capturing the Board to keep these at bay. If you believe it is the project proponents (Enbridge, TRP, etc.), they would be agnostic to abandonment costs as long as those costs are deemed into the rate base and are not sufficiently large as to make the project commercially non-viable. The proponents would bear the liability if the pipeline is not properly abandoned, so they want it in their rate base, or else it increases their risk which utility shareholders don’t want. Talk to anyone at a pipeline company and they will likely tell you the same thing. The shippers are interested in low rates, and so for them to have to pay abandonment costs is a bad thing. So, if you think the Board is captured by the proponents, I am not sure that supports your argument.”
In 1985, NEB staff created a discussion paper on this issue of abandonment and abandonment funding. It was entitled the “Background Paper on Negative Salvage Value”. The report essentially concluded that as long as the pipeline regulations require the companies to remove their facilities subsequent to abandonment, the companies can be expected to continue to seek the NEB’s views on what must be removed.
Under such circumstances, the pipeline companies would also continue to request higher tolls at toll hearings, that reflect the cost of abandonment. In other words, as long as the pipeline companies were responsible for the costs of pipeline abandonment, they wanted to charge tolls to cover those costs. This was a bone of contention at toll hearings between pipeline companies and their shippers, because as Leach infers, the oil and gas companies do not want to pay shipping fees that include the cost of remediation for abandoned pipelines.
To address the situation, rather than determining the true cost of abandonment and what would therefore need to be charged as part of the toll to cover these costs, the regulations were changed. The change allows the NEB to approve abandonment in place, leaving the risk of contamination, seepage, and the inevitable eventual collapse of pipelines, with landowners. The abandonment issue was then no longer a concern to pipeline companies, or to their shippers. During this same period, Section 112 of the NEB Act was created. It imposed crossing restrictions and land use restrictions upon property owners, which shifted company risks and liabilities to landowners. In light of all this, it is certainly appropriate for anyone to ask: “Who was in the room when these changes were drafted, and then implemented.” The NEB refuses to say.
With respect to regulatory recovery, Leach is quite correct in suggesting that it is standard practice in many regulatory jurisdictions. However, what he neglects to say is that there is a profound and important difference between cost recovery where many people or many businesses pay small amounts of money, and cost recovery where just a few pay huge sums of money.
It is certainly the case that the NEB regulates many pipeline companies, but it is also the case that just a handful of these companies cover the bulk of the NEB's budget. At the same time, the NEB is in a position to approve tariffs that apply to these same “contributors”.
In the case of the NOVA jurisdictional hearing, which decided whether the Alberta government or the NEB should regulate the 24,000 km NOVA pipeline network in the province, the NEB ruled that it should do so rather than Edmonton, even though Edmonton had been regulating the system quite successfully for 50 plus years. In this instance, the NEB was the judge and the beneficiary of its own decision. In one fell swoop, on the basis of its own decision, the NEB expanded the size of its regulatory portfolio by 50%. At the same time, it did not require that the pipeline company inform individual landowners of the negative and long term effects that such a shift would have upon them. As Leach will know, there are important differences between provincial and federal regulations. The overall result is a bigger budget and more employees for the NEB.
There isn't a credible court in the country where a judge would allow him- or her-self to render a verdict in which that judge would be the beneficiary of his or her own decision. That the NEB did exactly that, and saw absolutely no conflict of interest whatsoever, speaks so loudly about its corporate culture and disposition that little else needs to be said.
Leach may want to look into the inquiries made by CAEPLA under the provisions of the Access to Information Act that the NEB refuses to answer, or answer in a complete fashion. Perhaps he too might ask why, “who was in the room when NEB policy decisions were made” should be kept secret.
Additionally, when evaluating the NEB, Leach will want to consider the propriety and importance of the principle of ex parte. The NEB engages in ex parte as a matter of course. For he, or anyone else, to suggest that a regulator with the power of a bona fide court, can as matter of ongoing practice meet ex parte with one party to an adjudicated matter, and then later hold public hearings that are purported to be unbiased, is simply not a reasoned position to advance or defend.
With respect to Leach’s pooh-poohing the NEB's self-declared partnership with the companies that cover its budget, saying it doesn't matter, perhaps he might consider the fact that there is not a Highways Department Weights and Trucking Division in the country that would dream of referring to itself as being engaged in a “partnership” with the trucking companies and truck drivers that it monitors, and to whom it issues citations for infractions. The same would apply to health inspectors that evaluate restaurants, and to weights and measures regulators who evaluate the integrity of such things as fuel pump gauges at retail filling stations.
Real regulators know that they are not in a partnership with anybody, and that they are obligated to be unbiased agents that act in the public interest. That the NEB didn't know this, and doesn't know this, says about all that needs to be said about the corporate culture of Ottawa's National Energy Board.
- Dave Core
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Bill 50 Affected Landowners
One of the most important documents filed at the Heartland hearing was filed by Keith Wilson, as his closing arguments. The document is a good read that clearly spells out the details of all aspects of the issue.
The report begins by quoting Mayor Don Rigney of Sturgeon County. He said:
“I guess my concern is the socioeconomic impacts, . . . my biggest concern is that the lights may go out—will go out not in mass, as predicted by Alberta Energy, if we don't build the proposed [Heartland] line, but one by one as businesses in Alberta find they can no longer compete due to high fixed electricity costs that are far higher than in their competing jurisdictions. But unlike the lights which Alberta Energy warned will go out will shortly and come back on, the lights I just mentioned will be extinguished permanently.”
To read the full document filed by Keith Wilson click here.
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I Saw No Mention in the Article of the Directly Affected Landowners
I saw a news article the other day about the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline. The article was in the Globe and Mail and was entitled “Enbridge Short on Pipeline Support”. It said that Enbridge Inc is struggling to win aboriginal support for its project despite financial promises and efforts to curry support through sponsoring golf tournaments, powwows and rodeos. It went on to say that the company has pledged some $1-billion in financial sweeteners to first nations, including a 10 percent equity stake in the project and hiring guarantees and hundreds of millions in spending on aboriginal businesses.
I saw no mention in the article about the directly affected landowners who would be imposed upon by the pipeline, and who would bear the risks and liabilities that go with that imposition.
By coincidence, earlier in the week I had called a landowner friend who lives within the 1 km wide corridor proposed for the pipeline. It is almost a sure bet he will be on the final route of the pipeline, since he already has a pipeline corridor through his property. I asked him if he had been contacted by anyone about the coming pipeline. He said he had only heard rumours that Enbridge would be contacting him next year. I decided to do a little research, so I called the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) Process Advisory Team to find out why landowners were not being notified directly about the National Energy Board (NEB) Joint Hearing Process. Then I looked closely at the Enbridge Application. As a result, I forwarded the following letter on behalf of landowners to the powers that be within the federal government.
To read the CAEPLA letter sent to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency on behalf of landowners click here.
- Dave Core
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Province Missed the Boat with Land Bills...
Province Missed the Boat with Land Bills
- From the Lethbridge Herald
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"DilBit"
The Enbridge Alberta Clipper pipeline and the TransCanada Keystone pipeline both transport diluted Bitumen, the thick tarry substance produced at the oil sands, through to the United States. Now it seems landowners affected by these pipelines need to be much more vigilant in monitoring their land than ever before.
In a recent report from the U.S., which was co-sponsored by the Pipeline Safety Trust, it appears that diluted Bitumen, usually called “DilBit,” is highly corrosive causing increased internal damage to pipelines. Dilbit is a blend of 70% bitumen and 30% diluents (thinners). It contains high levels of acidity, sulphur, and abrasives, that can quickly wear the inside of a pipe. Additionally, because DilBit is so thick, it has to be pumped at a much higher pressure at a much higher temperature. The higher pressure and higher temperature has the affect of increasing the corrosive properties of the substance, and makes leak detection difficult.
The report states that conventional crude flows at less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 C) while Bitumen is pumped at temperatures of about 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 C). The report says that an accepted industry rule of thumb is that the rate of corrosion doubles, with every 20 degrees Fahrenheit increase in temperature.
In the Executive Summary of the report, a number of recommendations are made for increasing pipeline safety when DilBit is being transported. They include:
• Evaluate the need for new pipeline safety regulations.
• The oil pipeline industry should take especial precautions for pipelines that transport DilBit.
• Improve spill response planning for pipelines that move DilBit.
• No new DilBit pipeline construction or development should be considered until adequate safety regulations for DilBit pipelines are established and in place.
It is obvious that regulators in Canada—maintained by the National Energy Board—are delinquent in that they neglect to ensure that landowners are aware of these issues, before DilBit pipelines are approved and constructed. If landowners had known that these higher pressures, higher temperatures, and the high corrosiveness of DilBit more quickly diminish the effectiveness of the actual pipe, no doubt they would have called for thicker and higher tensile pipe to be used and made mandatory in such situations.
The document can be found at the Pipeline Safety Trust website.
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The US Pipeline Safety Trust is the only national (U.S.) non-profit that focuses exclusively on pipeline safety.
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The following text is an excerpt from a CAEPLA CONNECTIONS radio program that was aired in Alberta and Saskatchewan...
Dave Arnold: Dave Core, what is the National Energy Board?
Dave Core: …it’s a quasi-judicial regulator, so it acts like a court that’s supposed to make unbiased decisions on applications made by energy and pipeline companies. From a landowner perspective the NEB actually is intimidating to landowners; it’s hard for landowners to participate. When we take part in hearings, the National Energy Board will have open houses ahead of time where they try to explain how easy it is for landowners to take part in it.
In fact, they say they’ll help us take part in the process. They tend to tell us that there’s three ways to take part: through an oral application, a written application, or a full intervention; and they tell us all of those will be weighed the same, you can just make an oral presentation to it. But the fact is that in decisions they say that there is a burden of proof, so you actually do need to supply them with evidence so that they can make a decision. And yet they mislead landowners into thinking they can take part in a very simple process. So actually they compromise landowners, the situation, and compromise landowner rights from that perspective.
Dave Arnold: The National Energy Board… [tells] landowners… “OK, this is how you can make application, this is how you can be represented”, so it’s either oral, written, or a full connection to the NEB?
Dave Core: Yeah, a full intervention would include experts and legal counsel that you would have to hire at a very high cost. You know, it could cost you from hundred to half a million dollars to hire these experts.
Dave Arnold: For real?
John Goudy: I think that it’s important to note that the reason that there’s costs involved in an intervention is because from the landowner perspective, if you were going to challenge what is being said by the company, you’re going to have to put forward evidence that’s going to rebut the evidence that’s being put forward by the company, and you’re basically going to have to match expert for expert. And that’s a costly project for landowners.
A very good example would be at an abandonment hearing. At present, companies need to get permission from the National Energy Board to abandon a pipeline. You can imagine that if you receive an application from a company saying, "We want to abandon this pipeline and we’re just going to leave it in place, we’re just going to leave it there to rot," you might be concerned about that. At present, you would be entitled to participate in the hearing that would decide whether or not the pipeline could be left in place, but you would do so at your own cost. And if you were going to argue that that pipe should be taken out of the ground, you can imagine that you would need evidence of engineers, corrosion engineers, and other experts who could support the reasons that you put forward that the pipe needs to be removed. That’s going to cost money and at present, landowners have no way of recovering those costs, whereas the companies on the other hand, recover their costs of National Energy Board proceedings through the tolls that they charge to their customers. Those tolls are either set by or approved by the National Energy Board.
Kevin Avram: The thing that John is really touching on, I think putting his finger on, is the nature of the relationship between the National Energy Board as a regulator and the industry itself, is actually very convenient and although the National Energy Board is called a regulator, the fact is that the National Energy Board is actually a quasi-regulator. It’s not a real regulator, it’s actually a facilitator. The National Energy Board historically and today is an extension of the energy industry who perceives itself as a partner of these energy companies.
And I’m not saying that to be anti-development, so don’t misunderstand me or CAEPLA’s mandate, CAEPLA’s very pro-development. However, it’s imperative that the legitimate interests of landowners within the context of being pro-development are thoroughly and adequately and completely addressed. The challenge that we’re facing, is that in these kind of issues there’s a term called "regulatory capture," and what it means is that when a regulator is actually taken captive by an industry and then the regulator can actually be used by an industry as an extension or as a tool in order to achieve or help steer it’s agenda towards where it wants to go, and inevitably you end up with a regulator who’s backed by the power of government [in essence controlled by the industry].
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Hydraulic Fracturing
The American Petroleum Institute has an online video about horizontal drilling and fracing that may be of interest to some people who are unfamiliar with the process. It can be seen at the following link:
Natural Gas Horizontal Shale Drilling
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If Shale is a Game Changer, Why do Producers Seek Oil?
Jeff Rubin in the Globe and Mail, says it is is curious how some of the largest shale gas producers seem to be drilling more for oil these days. The entire article can be read at the Globe and Mail's website.
House of Commons Energy Committee
During the last week of November, CAEPLA Policy Advisor, John Goudy, and I, made our way to Ottawa to speak to the House of Commons Energy Committee. The remarks we presented focused on the role of Ottawa’s National Energy Board (NEB).
As a facilitator (enabler) and sort of big brother to the energy companies that it refers to as its “partners,” the NEB is a success. As a government regulator who is supposed to protect the public interest by supervising and monitoring Canada’s energy companies, the NEB maintains theoretical oversight. In reality, the NEB doesn’t pay much attention to the details of what its “partner” pipeline and energy companies do. It refers to this way of doing things as “goal-oriented regulation.”
Rather than setting minimum technical standards for the industry as would be the case in a prescriptive regulatory process, under goal-oriented regulation the NEB adopts industry standards as targets. The NEB sets soft targets and then allows the industry to choose how to meet those targets. This addresses the facilitation and economic interests of the industry but certainly does not address environmental responsibilities. In CAEPLA's view this creates harm to landowners and other directly affected parties. The NEB cannot play all sides without one or more of those sides suffering.
As a sometime ombudsman-type agency whose job is to give due regard to the legitimate interests of the people its policies displace, including landowners, the NEB is a failure.
To read the comments John and I made at the House of Commons, click on the following link:
CAEPLA's comments to the House of Commons Energy Committee
- Dave Core
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Asking the NEB to Provide Documentation
Click here to read the entire Caron letter.
Landowners familiar with the National Energy Board (NEB) know that the federal regulator stripped thousands of Alberta landowners of long standing property rights and regulatory provisions when it unilaterally transferred regulatory control of the 24,000 km NOVA pipeline system from Alberta to Ottawa.
It was a decision where the net beneficiary was the NEB itself. It was required to hire more people and expand its own budget after deciding that its own bureaucrats, rather than the Alberta government, should regulate the pipeline network that had been in place for decades.
As a result of the NEB's action, Alberta landowners lost the right to recover legal costs in the event of a dispute; the amount of land over which the pipeline company maintains a kind of jurisdictional control (on private land) was expanded; and severe penalties were imposed for non-compliance. (Up to two years in prison and $1 million fine.) There are additional regulatory amendments that leave landowners at a significant disadvantage.
On the heels of this NOVA process, to quell the growing landowner resentment targeted at the NEB, it set up something it called LMCI. Initially, CAEPLA agreed to participate in LMCI under two conditions—that landowners would be absolved of all liability for abandoned pipelines on their farms; and second, that landowners would not be obligated to pay the costs associated with hiring expert witnesses for NEB hearings—that is to say, engineers, soil specialists, etc.
(Landowners have pipelines imposed upon them by the NEB; and landowners hold no financial interest in the pipelines—none. As a result, the notion that landowners should be obligated to participate in NEB hearings and regulatory processes at their own expense, when they stand to gain absolutely nothing, is ridiculous. And to be effective at these technical hearings, it is essential for landowners to be there with people who know the technical aspects of what is being discussed. This is especially the case when issues such as pipeline abandonment and remediation are being discussed.)
As pertains to LMCI, the NEB said one thing to CAEPLA at the beginning of the process, and then half way through, said another thing. Essentially, what happened is that prior to LMCI, landowners were told policies would be implemented that would completely absolve landowners of liability for abandoned pipelines. Then, part way through the LMCI process, landowners were told that they would have to accept "some" liability. As a result, landowner associations pulled out of LMCI.
Thinking in terms of process, rather than problem resolution (as is the case with all genuinely bureaucratic cultures), the NEB went ahead with the process anyway.
I recently sent a letter to the NEB`s most senior bureaucrat, Gaétan Caron, asking him to explain how and why the NEB believes the outcome of such a skewed process is going to resolve these important issues, in light of the fact that the landowners and their representative associations that are most affected, were crowded out of any meaningful participation by the NEB’s own actions.
- Dave Core
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experience
experience
The "experience" is a documentary-style TV program from the Pittsburgh region. The program is part of WQED Multimedia, which was honoured with an Emmy Award for Station Excellence and twelve other Emmy Awards. The station creates, produces and distributes quality programs to engage the public.
In a recent edition of "experience", the program looked at the subject of fracking. Some say the process is the answer to energy needs, and that properly monitored it's a boon to the economy. People who live on or near Marcellus Shale drilling sites say the process has ruined their drinking water and decimated their property values.
The link below will take you to the video of the WQED episode, by Chris Moore, that examines the promise and heartbreak of Marcellus Shale drilling in the Pittsburgh region.
WQED TV Experience - Marcellus Shale: The Price of Progress
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Standard Procedure at BC's Oil & Gas Commission—Regulatory Secrecy and Excluding Landowners from Processes that
Should be Public
Many of us go through life thinking that things are the way they are supposed to be—the way they should be. We don’t question too many things, instead believing that others more important than us, or better educated than us, are looking after the store.
Landowners in the beautiful Peace River Region of British Columbia, when they saw the first gas and oil rigs pull into the area, expected that the provincial government and its regulatory bodies would protect the public interest and their own. When that didn’t happen, many thought something had been overlooked. Today a growing number of people understand that their interests weren’t so much overlooked, as it is the case that the regulatory system was never designed to even consider their interests.
It is glaringly obvious that the B.C. government’s priority is not publicly accessible processes, or the appropriate recognition and resolution of legitimate landowner grievances. The evidence points to the fact that the government of British Columbia has as a singular priority, the rapid expansion of the energy sector regardless of who or what gets trampled. To better facilitate that process, the B.C. government got together with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to create what they call a “regulatory system.” In fact, the system they created is not so much a bona fide impartial regulatory process as it is an extension of the partnership that puts money in both of their pockets.
Between the two of them they created the BC Oil and Gas Commission, which is an agency that has deliberately compromised landowner surface rights, effectively robbing them of the means to protect their property. The OGC has deliberately shut the public out of review processes. It denies landowners access to important review and evaluation processes that directly affect them, and to documents that directly affect them. As an agency it is steeped in secrecy—to date it has refused to answer important questions landowners have asked regarding how its internal approval and review processes function.
For example, when an energy company applies to the federal regulator for a license—say for a pipeline—the actual application is posted for public viewing along with the environmental assessment. Anyone can see it and review it. The British Columbia Oil & Gas Commission will not even reveal the details of an application to effected landowners.
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Burning Water
A few days ago, the Passionate Eye ran a documentary program on fracking in Alberta. Regardless of the view a person may or may not have on the issue, it is nevertheless true that the public debate over fracking is likely just getting started. As the public increasingly understands what fracking is and its possible implications, as well as the inadequacy of regulation in many jurisdictions regarding fracking, the debate will become ever more vibrant.
The program was called “Burning Water” and can be seen here.
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Miles Vass is an important member of CAEPLA’s Board of Policy Advisors. Miles farms in southeast Saskatchewan where he has been involved in landowner issues and surface rights processes for more than 30 years. A short while back, he sent a commentary about the state of landowner rights in Saskatchewan to the CAEPLA Landowner Journal. It is a thoughtful and pointed look into the state of affairs in Saskatchewan with regard to surface rights provisions and the rights of landowners. It appears below:
Saskatchewan Needs a New Surface Rights Act
Time has proven that whenever agriculture is forced to share land with the oil industry, situations will arise that need to be addressed and resolved. The Saskatchewan Surface Rights Acquisition and Compensation Act was brought in many years ago to do exactly that. Today this piece of legislation is outdated. There have been many changes in farming since it was passed, and in the oil patch.
Anybody familiar with this type of legislation will be quick to point out that the regulatory framework that defines the interaction between landowners and the energy sector in Saskatchewan is almost 50 years behind the times. There was a Royal Commission back in the 1960’s that at great expense, carefully looked into the issues. Key recommendations were made, but successive governments never acted upon them. Today that report sits on a shelf at the Legislative Library in Regina, collecting dust. It is not the only government-sponsored report in Saskatchewan that looked at the problems landowners face in light of energy development, and was never acted upon.
Some of the problems landowners have to deal with in Saskatchewan have been identified and addressed by neighbouring provinces. Alberta has had a forced taking fee for years that is over and above any annual rent, adverse effect, or compensation for damages.* It’s called an entry fee, and was established in the early 1980’s.
Alberta requires that to become an energy company land agent—a person who is attempting to obtain an interest in land—an individual must have post-secondary education, write and pass an exam, then purchase a license and renew it every two years. In Saskatchewan, anybody can work for an energy company as a land agent. There is no minimum standard of education or basic knowledge required when it comes to the person who shows up at a farmer’s door to get an easement agreement or surface lease signed.
What’s especially problematic in Saskatchewan is if a landowner receives notice that a right of entry application has been filed. When that happens, the farmer has only seven days to respond or the order will be automatically granted. And the seven days start counting the minute the notice receives a postmark from wherever it’s mailed.
(The landowner can lose any right to even reply to the situation if the mail doesn’t get through in a week, or if it does get through, and he or she happens to be away to a wedding or funeral somewhere and doesn’t pick up the mail.)
No reasonable person, including our elected MLA’s, can continue to ignore the inequalities that exist in this province when it comes to surface rights, and the legitimate need landowners have to engage in good stewardship practices. Saskatchewan needs new surface rights legislation, and a new unbiased provincial regulator that acts in the public interest.
If members of the Wall government blow the dust off the 1960’s Royal Commission on landowner rights, they’ll see that the proposals back then were way ahead of where Saskatchewan’s surface rights legislation is today.
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* The Alberta entry fee, for almost 30 years, has been $500 per acre, per contract, up to a maximum of $5,000. Today, there is general agreement in the province that it should be changed to $1,000, or even $1,500 per acre with no maximum. (This is compensation that is over and above annual rent, adverse effect, etc.)
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Gas Pipeline Explosion in San Bruno California
The picture below is a screenshot of the San Francisco Chronicle, where you can view several images showing the results of a gas pipeline explosion last week in San Bruno, California. To date four people have been reported killed, six missing, and 60 injured. There are reports that over 50 houses were destroyed. This pipeline is over 60 years old and was designated a high risk pipeline. In fact, it is reported that the risk of failure was “unacceptably high,” and yet it was still operating. I would like you to consider these pictures as you think about pipeline construction, operations, and safety from a human life perspective. How could this have been avoided, and who is really responsible.
To view the images and the complete story, click here.
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Protecting Legitimate Landowner Interests
Denis, called the other day. He is from one of the landowner associations CAEPLA is working with in Northern British Columbia. Denis’ group recently negotiated an easement and construction agreement with a pipeline company. In any negotiations of this sort, CAEPLA’s standard practice is to advise that a small committee of landowners undertake the task of being responsible for the monitoring pipeline construction. Their task is to make sure the company lives up to its commitments, and at the same time, to help resolve things if there happens to be a dispute between a landowner and the company.
This committee is usually referred to as the Joint Committee.
In the same way that landowners regularly hire accountants and lawyers for specialized knowledge, so it is that these Joint Committees hire knowledgeable people as construction monitors. The Construction Monitor is usually a professional pipeliner or other expert, who monitors the daily construction of the project, takes pictures, and then files regular reports to the Joint Committee. He or she will also send a copy of the reports to the pipeline company and even to the government regulator if needed. If the Construction Monitor has an issue with construction practices that can’t be resolved with the company, the job requires that the Joint Committee be notified. It is then the Joint Committee’s job to work with the Construction Monitor and the pipeline company to resolve the issue.
The Construction Monitor on Denis's project is exceptionally conscientious. He files pictures and reports daily. The more recent pictures the monitor sent show the contractor using high pressure air to blow soil off equipment when its being moved between properties. The pictures show soil flying 20 feet in the air, and then being blown by strong winds across the neighbouring fields. The affected landowners had understood that cleaning equipment between projects meant any contaminated soil and weed seeds would be contained, and prevented from spreading. What the pipeline construction guys were doing actually promoted the potential spread of weed seeds and disease.
One of the landowners affected by the project has an organic operation, so he has to be exceptionally careful about the spread of weeds—especially scentless chamomile and leafy spurge on pasture. There are more than a few ranches out there where leafy spurge has invaded a pipeline corridor on pastureland, after being brought in by pipeline construction equipment.
Many farmers affected by the pipeline project are anxious about the spread of Clubroot. Clubroot is a soil borne disease that can reduce canola and mustard yields by 80%, and force land to be taken out of production for years. It has infected many municipalities in central Alberta and is spreading.
In the Agricultural and Pests Act (APA), the Alberta Government declared that clubroot is a pest and has created Best Management Practices to control its spread. It suggests that equipment being moved from a severely infected area or field should be power washed with hot water or steam and then misted with a disinfectant. Obviously, if construction equipment is moving from municipality to municipality or province to province, it is critical that it be disinfected.
The APA further states and reinforces the need for vigilance when we allow others on our land;
"The owner or occupant of land has a responsibility of taking measures to prevent the establishment of any pest on land, property and livestock and to control or destroy all pests in the land or property".
The government fact sheet on the issue says the enforcement of the Agricultural and Pests Act is the responsibility of the provincial municipalities. Until now municipalities have seen pipelines as a cash cow but the awareness of municipal liabilities may begin to readjust that attitude.
The pipeline Denis is involved in crosses the Alberta border into some of the most productive farmland of the British Columbia Peace River area. BC landowners have not yet been infected by Clubroot and they would prefer to keep it that way.
As a result of the work by the landowner construction monitor and the Joint Committee, the pipeline company has promised to use proper containment of the blown off soil and make sure the equipment is clean before it moves from property to property.
Denis and the committee believe energy construction equipment should be monitored and tracked, much the same agricultural livestock is monitored. They also recommend that any future negotiated contract between landowners and pipeline companies requires that records of equipment movement and its decontamination must be presented before it is moved into a new region. They also think there should be penalties if those records are not provided.
Just as landowners have custodial and stewardship responsibilities to protect land for future generations so should pipeline and other energy companies.
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Stelmach Government Seeks to Extinguish Property Rights
Alberta is the one place in Canada, where at one time, many had a sense that the adults were in charge. There was something attractive and comforting about it, even for those of us who lived outside Alberta. Ottawa and the other provinces could be as irresponsible as they may, yet the reassuring presence of Alberta’s professional, adult-like political administrations, gave every Canadian a sense of stability.
Unfortunately, that’s all changed. The adults have moved on.
Now, in the same way that we used to instinctively sense Alberta as a place with a mature, business-like political administration, we now understand that the men and women who have taken over are the political equivalent of teenage boys who have been given car keys and whiskey.
In terms of respect for the principles of due process, individuals rights, and traditional Alberta values—what many would call conservative values—the Progressive Conservative Party of Edward Michael Stelmach is a shadow of the provincial party’s former prominence.
What the Stelmach government has done to its own traditional support base is hard to be believed.
Why the Stelmach crowd would be so stupid as to systematically and deliberately embark upon a legislative agenda that undermines the very people that put them in office, is irrational. Yet they are doing it, and not reluctantly. Their passion for centralizing power in the hands of cabinet, as they trample property rights and collude with federal regulators to strip Alberta landowners of longstanding provincially-regulated property rights, is giving new meaning to the word enthusiasm.
The Stelmach government spied on people solely because those people questioned some of its energy policies related to the development of hydro corridors, and the enormous costs that would subsequently be imposed upon all Albertans. Then, after getting caught spying on its own citizens, rather than admit the process it was trying to follow was wrong-headed, having the effect of isolating people, Stelmach and the knuckleheads surrounding him decided to pass a series of laws that would put the power of a court in the hands of cabinet. And what’s more, is that the power these guys want goes beyond the power of a court, because under the Stelmach government’s legislative agenda its decisions could not be appealed (even to a real court), after the politicians make a backroom decision about what you can or cannot do on your own property.
Alberta’s Bill 36 establishes an unimpeded easy access highway for politicians in cabinet to impose regional plans upon anyone in the province. Through these “plans,” the politicians could specify what your land could be used for, or not used for, depending on what they think. The Act is written in such a way that the decisions of cabinet about your property will trump every other piece of existing provincial legislation, and the courts. These are cabinet decisions that would apply to crown corporations, municipalities, boards, commissions, and private Alberta citizens.
The Bill gives a handful of politicians in a backroom the ability to amend or extinguish existing rights someone might hold as a result of any existing agreement, license, or contract, including land titles, mortgages, water licences, leases, well licenses, permits, etc. At the same time, it also restricts a landowner’s right to appropriate compensation for any damages that result.
Most importantly, under Bill 36, there is no way for anyone to appeal a decision made by cabinet. The Bill blocks a citizen’s right to seek judicial review or undertake legal action. Essentially, the Bill stops the courts from having anything to do with what the politicians might want to do to Alberta citizens, and to their property.
The Bill also enables a cabinet minister, at his or her sole discretion, to file a judgment against a landowner without there ever having been a trial or court hearing—and the cabinet minister’s judgment would be as binding on the citizen as if it were issued by a real judge in a real court.
What citizen in his or her right mind, living in a democracy, would want to identify with people who think this kind of policy reflects good government, let alone vote for them? These people are arrogant scoundrels and pompous asses who think they know better than ordinary people, exactly how those people should live, and what should or shouldn’t be done on their own private property.
- by Dave Core and CAEPLA Staff
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The Goon Commission
I think most of us know what a hockey goon does. You know the big brute that drops his gloves in an instant to protect the star player. Unfortunately, the British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission (OGC) is quite like one of these thugs.
When he played for the Edmonton Oilers, Dave Semenko protected Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier for years, allowing them to fire shot after shot on goal. As a regulator, the OGC is more lethal than Semenko ever dreamed of being. It does the same task for industry that Semenko performed for Gretzky, but in addition, it is also the referee.
The bureaucrats at the BC Oil and Gas Commission are so arrogant they don’t even try to hide their bullying ways and inappropriate relationship with the industry. Consider the fact that landowners along the proposed Spectra Energy (Bissette) Pipeline, south of Dawson Creek, recently decided to work together to ensure that construction, operational, and all related issues, are directly addressed during negotiations with the pipeline company.
To facilitate the process, each landowner signed legal documents authorizing the South Dawson Landowner Committee (SDLC) and CAEPLA to represent their interests in all discussions, negotiations, and correspondence with respect to the project. CAEPLA, on behalf of SDLC, notified the company of the formal legal structure and the intention of the affected individuals.
In response, the pipeline company stated: “... the Oil and Gas Commission (“OGC”) will be dealing with each of the landowners on an individual basis in an effort to resolve any issues. Accordingly, to the extent there are specific concerns, Spectra proposes to address those with the landowners and the OGC.”
In response, I contacted the BC regulator to inquire if it intended to ignore the legal implications, and the will of the affected landowners, in order to visit individual landowners one by one on behalf of the energy company.
The gentleman that answered my phone call laughed when I told him who I was. He said my call was a coincidence because he had just started to read some CAEPLA correspondence, as well as the regulations. He said the people working at the OGC thought they should study the regulations to see if the legislation allowed the employees to visit each landowner in the fashion the pipeline company had advised.
I mentioned it appeared this was normal practice for the OGC, and asked if OGC employees had visited landowners in this fashion before on behalf of energy companies. The man replied that yes they had, quite often, but because CAEPLA was involved this time they thought they had better check the regulations to see if they had the authority to do that.
In response, I asked for clarity: “Are you telling me that OCG employees have visited landowners on other projects on behalf of energy companies without knowing if the regulations allowed such a thing?” He replied with a muffled, “Yes”.
That the bureaucrats at the OGC have decided they can reject the expressed will of affected landowners and run interference for the industry yet one more time is rather obvious. Just recently, I received an email from one of the SDLC landowners affected by the proposed project. It seems the BC regulator called, wanting to talk directly to her — in essence, on behalf of the pipeline company.
It seems the goons are out and the gloves are off.
- Dave Core
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Goodbye MMS: Oil Regulating Agency Gets Makeover
Associated Press writer Frederic Frommer recently wrote about the makeover at the MMS, which is the US regulator responsible for overseeing the process that led to the BP disaster in the Gulf.
WASHINGTON – The Minerals Management Service — well, the name anyway — now sits on the scrap heap of discarded monikers alongside ValuJet, Blackwater and Enron Field. Not that a new name makes it any easier for the Obama administration to convince a skeptical Congress that the agency will be any better at policing offshore drilling.
The new name, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — or BOE for short — is designed to emphasize regulatory and enforcement responsibilities of the troubled agency, which is part of the Interior Department. The change comes in the wake of the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
MMS had been panned for its lax oversight of offshore drilling. A recent report by the department's inspector general said that its drilling regulators have been so close to the industry that they've accepted gifts from oil and gas companies and even negotiated to go work for the companies.
To read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100629/ap_on_bi_ge/us_oil_regulators_rebranding
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The MMS and the Mess in the Gulf
In a way like never before, the mess caused by the BP gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is forcing people to consider the implications of regulatory capture on federal regulators. At NOLA.com, (NOLA is short for “New Orleans Louisiana”) the Times-Picayune, which is a New Orleans daily newspaper, reports on the US Mineral Management Service (MMS), the US federal regulator responsible for the BP Project.
Alleged Ethical Lapses in Lake Charles MMS Office Targeted
Gulf Region MMS Employees Accepted Gifts, Food, Tickets at Oil and Gas Company Expense
BP Says MMS Never Enforced Blowout Preventer Law
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Professor Smil and Info-Kibble
I enjoy the Saturday “papers”. I always manage to find some interesting tidbit that challenges my thinking. As I flipped through the paper this past Saturday, I came across an article by Margaret Wente. It’s about a professor from the University of Manitoba. His name is Vaclav Smil.
Smil, who is a well informed individual, says Al Gore’s notion that we can wean ourselves from fossil fuel in just a few years is unrealistic. Neither Gore nor the general public, are willing to give up the lifestyle that relatively inexpensive fossil fuel provides. He says true technological change of that magnitude will take decades.
Smil also thinks we are a society of scientific ignoramuses. He says too many people have a tendency to believe almost anything. For that reason, he has no desire to participate in media interviews. He says the sound bite culture shrinks important and complex issues into meaningless bits of what he calls “info-kibbles.”
Info-Kibbles
“Info-kibble” is a great term, and one that I am going to start using when I refer to the selective bits of information landowners are sometimes given by certain industry interests and regulators. Info-kibble is exactly what landowners were fed when the National Energy Board shifted regulatory control of the NOVA gas pipeline system from Alberta to Ottawa. At the time, industry insiders even argued that landowners didn’t need to know anything about the implications of the shift until after it had already been approved! They wanted landowners to settle for info-kibbles, rather than substantive participation.
“Info-kibble” also applies to the letter that was sent to landowners by the big pipeline lobby group, CEPA, concerning the NOVA jurisdictional change. The letter was full of info-kibbles that were intended to reassure landowners on the NOVA system that nothing would change as a result of the switch (which is simply not true—lots of things changed). See this link for starters: landownerassociation.ca/nova.html
As a result of CEPA’s info-kibble filled letter, not only did many landowners initially believe what the big lobby group was peddling, so did a good many members of the provincial legislature and Parliament. Even some bureaucrats at the National Energy Board bought into CEPA’s info-kibble, but then again, that may have had more to do with the fruit of regulatory capture than info-kibble.
Even today, after CAEPLA has clearly demonstrated that the CEPA document was misleading, there are still government people who believe the info-kibble they were fed. One government MP, to defend his intransigence on the issue, recently sent a copy of one of these info-kibble filled letters to a constituent, claiming the content of the letter was the reason he defended the actions of the National Energy Board bureaucrats.
That this MP didn’t understand the non-relationship between industry-spawned info-kibble and the overall context of a serious situation being faced by his own constituents—and is still being faced by his constituents—speaks decisively about his competence as an MP. He would do well to take a lesson from Manitoba’s Professor Smil, a gentleman who recognizes that info-kibble and the overall context of a situation do not necessarily share the same DNA.
- Dave Core
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Roche Percee Couple Concerned About Oil Drilling Rig
Too Close for Comfort by Sylvia McBean, for the Leader Post - Read More
Kara Adams and her husband, Sheldon, were awakened early on Mother's Day by the sounds of construction equipment. "We looked out our front window and an oil drilling rig was being set up 300 metres in front of our house," said Kara Adams.
An oil well was being drilled on their neighbour's land.
Kara and Sheldon, along with their son, Tristen, live on an acreage south of the village of Roche Percee in southeastern Saskatchewan. Their 10 acres is located in the middle of a quarter section that has been subdivided. A farmer owns and farms the land surrounding them. Other oil wells have been drilled in the area.
"We found out that, legally, in this province an oil company can drill an oil well 100 metres from your house and you can't stop them," said Adams.
"We don't think they should drill an oil well so close to a home. There is the dust, the fumes and the noise. I don't want a pump jack operating in front of my home. I talked to a real estate company and they said our property value has drastically decreased.
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About Regulatory Conferences, Free Liquor, and Doing Favours
I was in Montreal last month at a conference. It was a three-day event.
The conference was sponsored by CAMPUT, which stands for Canadian Association of Members of Public Utility Tribunal. CAMPUT is made up of federal, provincial and territorial boards or commissions that regulate the energy sector. Even so, it is Ottawa’s National Energy Board that often sets the standard, and who provides CAMPUT with staff support in the form of information provision and assistance in organizing the conference. (See: http://www.neb-one.gc.ca/clf-nsi/rthnb/whwrndrgvrnnc/rhstry-eng.html)
There were two of us there from CAEPLA. We managed to get one of our registration fees waived ($1500 each), plus a $500 allowance to help cover the cost of rooms at the hotel where the event was staged. (Counting tax, the rooms were more than $200 per night.)
It was good for us to be there because in a firsthand way we were able to see the relationship that exists between energy regulators and many of the most senior people in the energy industry, when they are together in a casual setting.
The first session on the first day was about, “sustainable regulation.” I mentioned that as a landowner group CAEPLA is pro-development, and then suggested that within the context of development, when it comes to long-term sustainable regulation, landowners bring an important perspective to the table, because they have legitimate long-term interests to consider.
In an absolute kneejerk response to what I said, a panel member at the front of the room representing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), literally curled his upper lip. In the presence of all, he immediately shot back for everyone to hear, that “landowners will not hold the energy industry hostage.” That this man figured it was his job at a regulatory event, rather than the job of the regulators, to determine what landowners should and shouldn’t participate in when it comes to regulatory discussions, spoke louder to me than anything he could possibly have said. That none of the regulators in the room even thought to point out to the guy that it isn’t up to him and the people he works for to tell regulators what they can and cannot do, spoke even louder.
The fellow also suggested that “all landowners are ever interested in is money (compensation).”
That the main reason the organization this man works for even exists, is to ensure its member companies make money, seems to have escaped his notice.
That when it comes to regulation, landowners have legitimate long-term interests to consider such as ongoing stewardship and liability after facilities or pipelines are abandoned, was equally elusive to this guy’s way of looking at things.
From my perspective, and I think the perspective of anyone attending the event that functions outside the very familiar and comfortable regulator-industry partnership, the conference seemed a bit peculiar, even surreal in some ways.
For example, at the evening reception on Monday the regulators in attendance were invited to belly up to the bar where they could knock back as many free whiskeys, highballs, or beers as they could possibly contain, all at the expense of the energy companies they are supposed to impartially monitor, and where necessary, adjudicate in an unbiased fashion.
That a roomful of government regulators didn’t understand how completely inappropriate it is to sit around sucking back industry-funded booze, helps explain what landowners face every time they are forced to step into a regulatory hearing or interact with these bureaucrats and boards.
Entertained by Those They Must Render Verdicts About
Interestingly, in light of the boondoggle in the Gulf of Mexico, there are a whole lot of heads that will roll at the office of the US regulator (Minerals Management Service or MMS), which is a kind of counterpart to Ottawa’s NEB. This is the same federal regulator that in the past has been characterized by scandal, as people started learning that the US regulator has been characterized by a culture of “ethical failure.” Regulatory bureaucrats were accepting free gifts, expense paid holidays, and even the exchange of sexual “favours.” (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Management_Service)
NEB boss Gaetan Caron was at the Montreal event too. I found it interesting that even he, the most senior regulator in Canada, didn’t understand how inappropriate and unprofessional it is for regulators who must be impartial and unbiased, to sit around getting liquored up and entertained (there was an industry funded jazz band there) by the very people they must render far reaching verdicts about in future hearings—many of these verdicts involve tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
Surely there were some useful things achieved at the conference. Yet as I sat there thinking about who was buying the drinks and paying the musicians, I couldn’t help but think of the $300,000 CAEPLA spent in order to participate in the NOVA jurisdictional hearing. That was the hearing where the NEB later suggested that because the people who presented the pro-landowner evidence at that hearing didn’t represent very many people, it could ignore the information.
In essence, the NEB openly suggested that right and wrong don’t matter nearly as much as the fruits of regulatory capture, and the way it can spin its decisions in the press and elsewhere.
If nothing else, the conference gave landowners a clear and definitive understanding of how far reaching regulatory capture can be, as well as the attitudes of Canada’s most senior regulatory bureaucrats.
Dave Core
(with notes from Kevin Avram)
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The Dilemma of a Responsible Man
A man I will call “Big Bill,” the President of a Federal Constituency Riding Association in Alberta, called our office the other day. He and a number of his colleagues are concerned about the way their MP is behaving. They’re growing increasingly angry because their MP, a member of the Conservative Party, refuses to acknowledge the severe and negative consequences being imposed upon Alberta landowners because of Ottawa’s decision to shift regulatory control of the Nova gas pipeline system.
Just in case you hadn’t heard, the bureaucrats at Ottawa’s regulator, the National Energy Board (NEB), supported by Parliament, decided to take responsibility away from the Alberta government for regulating the 24,000 km TransCanada NOVA gas pipeline system in the province.
As a result, because federal regulations are very different than long established Alberta regulations, Alberta landowners lost big time. In many situations they no longer have the ability to recover legal costs if they end up in a dispute with the pipeline company; if farmers drive equipment across the pipeline easement without first formally obtaining permission, and something should ever happen, they now hold legal and financial liability; and under the new federal rules, the pipeline company, without having paid a dime, gets to control a much wider strip of land along each side of existing easements.
There are also new rules regarding how deep a farmer can legally cultivate or rip soil, and if a landowner should ever disobey an NEB order, he can now face up to five years in prison and a $1 million fine. Under the previous Alberta rules, the maximum penalty a farmer could face would have been a $5,000 fine.
“Big Bill” is not the kind of man to complain, preferring instead to find solutions, but like a lot of Alberta landowners he isn’t happy about the way farmers and ranchers are being treated. He told me he had been thinking about how to fix what the NEB has done, as well as how to fix the NEB. That the federal regulator is broken, in need of repair, is pretty obvious.
In response, I suggested that the federal government, because it is the federal government, has the power to undo hasty and inappropriate decisions pushed through by arrogant federal bureaucrats at the NEB.
Interestingly, when asked to rule on a policy decision with very similar implications, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) said that transferring regulatory control over an already existing easement agreement from the province to Ottawa shouldn’t be allowed. The Ontario project the regulator ruled on was different in size and scope from what happened in Alberta, but the policy principle, and its effect upon landowners, was exactly the same.
Ontario pointed out that landowners would suffer severe harm if the transfer of regulatory control from the province to Ottawa was allowed, and then explained why this was true. (For details on the OEB judgment, click here and here.)
Unlike the Ontario regulatory tribunal which paid careful attention to the implications of such a decision upon the people most affected (landowners), and then acted with integrity, the Stelmach government in Alberta wimped out, not speaking even a single word in favour of landowners, even as the NEB bureaucrats were imposing ever more severe controls upon the province’s landowners.
*For a detailed explanation of regulatory capture, what it is, how it works, and the manner in which regulatory capture influences Ottawa’s NEB, click here.
- Dave Core
Economist Walter Williams on the Economics of Liberty and How the Market Permits Free Choice While Serving our Fellow Man:
Walter Williams
As an economist, Williams is a proponent of the free market and opposes socialist systems. He praises capitalism as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised, because prior to capitalism the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man by engaging in commercial transactions that are mutually beneficial. Williams is perhaps best known for his rigorous, fact-based argument that the free market is a force for racial equality.
(Nine Minute Video -- Click Here to Watch)
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Global Warming?
Lorne Gunter is a well known journalist who writes for the National Post. In a recent column he posted, he explores the fact that for people who think in terms of genuine science, the jury is still out on the role human action has and doesn't have on global warming. His column is below:
Unsettling Science
New research suggests mankind's effects on climate have been vastly overblown
By Lorne Gunter, National Post September 2, 2011
Suppose an ossuary - an ancient burial box - containing the skeletal remains of Jesus of Nazareth was discovered. Its contents would prove a challenge to the central fact of Christianity, that Jesus was God made man who ascended to Heaven whole - bones and all - after his crucifixion.
That would be big news, right? The significance of it would be debated in religious circles around the world, as well as in newspapers and on 24/7 news channels. Or, it would be if the remains didn't come under the control of some Christian organization whose leaders had a vested interest in suppressing reports about the discovery. One way or the other, though, some faithful Christians would deny the find was real. Then when that position was no longer defensible, they would continue to insist the bones were immaterial.
Something similar may be happening in the climate change debate, whose basic premise - that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous climate change - has become religious dogma to many scientists, politicians, activists and fundraisers.
Last week, 63 scientists from CERN, the unimpeachable European Organization for Nuclear Research, published a paper in the journal Nature that would seem to prove that the sun, and not humans, is the main "driver" of climate on Earth.
In short, cloud cover is the most important determinant of global warming or cooling. Tiny changes in the percentage of the Earth shielded by clouds (or not) can cause a variation in global temperatures of several degrees, down or up. Cosmic rays are the main cause of cloud formation - the more rays from outer space reaching our planet's atmosphere, the more clouds form and the cooler the surface becomes. In turn, the amount of cosmic rays penetrating our atmosphere is determined by the sun's activity. When our sun is particularly active, its magnetic field diverts cosmic rays away from our atmosphere. This reduces cloud formation, permits more solar rays to reach Earth and increases global temperatures. By comparison, the CERN team found human CO 2 emissions have little or no impact, or at the very least their impact as been greatly overestimated in the computer models that global-warming alarmists rely on to show dangerous future climate changes.
So why hasn't this been headline news around the world? After all, global warming and what to do about it has been perhaps the biggest public policy issue of the past decade, with the possible exception of the worldwide financial crisis. (Both revolve around whether more government intervention and spending is the best way to solve large-scale problems.)
In part, the lack of attention is due to the lead author's inherent caution. Like all good scientists, Jasper Kirkby, the British experimental particle physicist who heads up CERN's CLOUD project, is reluctant to run ahead of his data. At present, he is only prepared to assert that the CLOUD results are "a very important first step" to demonstrating the sun's impact on global climate.
But even that assertion is a major challenge to the climate orthodoxy promoted by the UN's IPCC and much of the eco-science establishment. For years, warming alarmists in the environmental science community pressured CERN not to fund the CLOUD experiment, which recreated the Earth's atmosphere in a controlled chamber, then tested various theories about the sources of clouds. Beyond Kirkby's modesty and prudence, CERN director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer ordered the scientists who worked on the project to "present the results clearly, but not to interpret them." Interpretation of the results - i.e. explaining how the experiment indicates that the sun and not mankind causes global warming - "would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate." He instructed them in all public statements "to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters."
It's hard to imagine, though, the CERN scientists being similarly gagged if their experiment had supported the politically correct belief that human activity is the main cause of climate change. Scientists whose work backs the alleged scientific consensus feel free to interpret their results all the time. They frequently claim their findings prove the need for urgent, expensive and intrusive government regulation of private decisions and actions. So why the muzzle on the CERN crew?
If nothing else, the CERN study demonstrates that claims that climate-change science is "settled" are premature.
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Thomas Sowell - An Epidemic of Irresponsibility
Dr. Sowell explains how blaming society is an attempt to relieve individuals of personal responsibility so they can be rescued by government. Click here to watch the video.
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Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, explaining the connection between human rights, and the fact that each person is his or her own person, not the property of a master or even of the government...
Frederick Douglass
“I appear this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.”
— Frederick Douglass, explaining the connection between human rights, and the fact that each person is his or her own property, not the property of a master or even of the government.
Douglass was an ex-slave who escaped to the North. By the time he was 8 years old, Douglass was sent to work at a slave plantation for the Auld family. Despite a state law forbidding that a slave be taught to read and write, Ms. Auld taught Frederick to read. Her husband, Mr. Auld, was less kind, and often beat and abused his slaves, including Frederick.
“He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped. . .”
About himself, Douglass said: Auld called in a “slavebreaker” named Mr. Covey… he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself. Upon this he rushed at me with the fierceness of a tiger, tore off my clothes, and lashed me till he had worn out his switches, cutting me so savagely as to leave the marks visible for a long time after. After several whippings, Douglass turned on Covey, knocked him to the ground and grabbed his throat. He chose not kill him.
Douglass escaped to the North using the papers of a freed, black seaman. He did odd jobs for 3 years then became involved with the anti-slavery movement and founded a newspaper.
Read Douglas' Biography at PBS
Read “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”
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Milton Friedman — Lesson of the Pencil
Milton Friedman uses a pencil to illustrate how the free market price system promotes cooperation and harmony among those with no common interest.
The video is available to watch on YouTube.
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Land Patent Grants
There is a CTV News story running about Land Patent Grants. A portion of
the main body of the story is below. Click here to read the entire story at the CTV website.
"The problem with the argument that individual property rights are preserved by Crown patent grants is that it misunderstands what such grants stand for legally," wrote Michael Lamb, a University of Western Ontario law professor and an expert on real estate law...
"They do not transfer ownership of land but only grant the use and possession of the land."
The Crown technically owns all land in Canada, said Lamb. This legal underpinning gives governments the right to assert a certain level of control over people's private property.
In at least one case, a defence using a Crown patent failed to convince the court.
Robert Mackie, a Niagara region man charged with operating an archery range without a permit, argued that his grant superseded all provincial legislation. The court rejected the argument and convicted Mackie, who has appealed the decision.
Regardless of what legal rights the owner of a Crown patent has, there is little doubt the organization has whipped up a frenzy of interest among landowners hoping to get the grant that pertains to their property.
The Ontario government department responsible for processing requests for patent grants has noticed a huge spike in the number of applications in the past year, creating large backlogs and forcing the department to direct more employees to the area.
The department currently has about a thousand open patent grant applications -- a far higher number than they would have had five years ago, said Neil Hayward, co-ordinator of the land, business unit for the Ministry of Natural Resources.
The service used to be mainly a tool for lawyers and government officials, said Hayward. He attributed the increase in applications from ordinary people to the Ontario Landowners Association campaign.
Processing the applications is now taking about six months.
"Typically our turn-around time in the past, before this higher level of interest through the OLA, would have been a couple of weeks," he said, adding that the backlog was previously "nowhere near a thousand."
It's not just rural landowners who are making use of the historical documents as a legal means of stopping government intervention on their property.
Terry Green, an Ottawa lawyer, has applied for a patent on behalf of one of his clients in downtown Toronto. The city is taking his client to court to seek an injunction to tear down an addition she made to her home.
"If it says what I expect it's going to say, I may bring a constitutional challenge to strike down the portions of the Toronto building bylaw that basically infringe my client's rights," he said.
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Armen A. Alchian in the Library on Economics and Liberty points out that human rights and property rights are the same thing...
Property Rights are Human Rights
Armen A. Alchian is an emeritus professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Most of his major scientific contributions are in the economics of property rights.
For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that “property” rights too often take precedence over “human” rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage. Property rights are human rights.
The definition, allocation, and protection of property rights comprise one of the most complex and difficult sets of issues that any society has to resolve, but one that must be resolved in some fashion. For the most part, social critics of “property” rights do not want to abolish those rights. Rather, they want to transfer them from private ownership to government ownership...
A property right is the exclusive authority to determine how a resource is used…
Private property rights have two other attributes in addition to determining the use of a resource. One is the exclusive right to the services of the resource… for example, the owner of an apartment with complete property rights to the apartment has the right to determine whether to rent it out… live in it himself… or to use it in any other peaceful way… If the owner rents out the apartment, he also has the right to all the rental income from the property…
Finally, a private property right includes the right to delegate, rent, or sell any portion of the rights by exchange, or [give as a] gift, at whatever price the owner determines… If I am not allowed to buy some rights from you and you therefore are not allowed to sell rights to me, private property rights are reduced. Thus, the three basic elements of private property are:
- Exclusivity of rights to choose the use of a resource,
- Exclusivity of rights to the services of a resource, and
- Rights to exchange the resource at mutually agreeable terms.
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Lining Up...
"So long as the government has the power to dispose of the property of the
citizenry, lines will form in an attempt to influence legislators and
bureaucrats. Individuals, special interest groups, and businesses will clamor
for exemptions to existing law, controls on others, or some other form of
political favoritism." - Brian Phillips
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Royal Commission Calls for Annual Payments to Landowners for Pipelines and Powerlines
The issues addressed in the Royal Commission, though considered in Saskatchewan, could easily apply to any province or jurisdiction in the country. The issues and considerations tend to be fairly standard, and therefore the concepts are transferable. Similarly, there are issues confronting landowners that are constant, in the sense that whether the consideration occurred in 1966 or 2006, the basic principles being examined tend to be the same---i.e. loss of use, adverse effect, noise, abandonment and remediation issues, duty of care, potential liability, etc.
Key recommendations made by the Sask. 1966 Royal Commission on Surface Rights and Pipeline Easements were never acted upon. For example, chapter 11 of the Royal Commission starts out by saying:
“It is strongly urged...that the principle of payment of annual rent for land acquired for a well site or roadway, should also be applied to land required for pipelines in all its classifications, including flow lines, gathering lines, service lines, and tank and tank batteries and surface reservoirs, and also to power lines.”
To read/see the entire copy of the Royal Commission Report click here:
Royal Commission on Surface Rights and Pipeline Easements Part 1 of 3
Royal Commission on Surface Rights and Pipeline Easements Part 2 of 3
Royal Commission on Surface Rights and Pipeline Easements Part 3 of 3
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From the Rocky View Weekly: PCs Have Chosen Hill to Die On
Often times it’s not what you choose to support that comes to define you, it’s what you choose to oppose.
In its white-knuckle embrace of controversial bills 19, 36, and 50, the Progressive Conservative party has chosen its hill to die on.
Bill 50 - The Electric Statutes Amendment Act, Bill 19 - The Land Assemble Project Act and Bill 36 - The Alberta Land Stewardship Act have been largely rejected by a rural populace unwilling to have their property rights eroded and stripped away.
The government had a chance, this spring, to gauge public opinion. It had a chance to ease rural fears, admit a mistake and make amends. The government half-heartedly attempted to do this with Bill 10. However, in using selective language meant to muddy the waters and confuse the public, the bill fell short. It was lipstick on a pig, and didn’t fool anyone.
This time, rather than admit defeat and go back to the drawing board, the government chose the worst possible time to grow a spine.
This government, which has caved into multiple unions’ demands for outrageous wage increases in the midst of a global recession, which has chosen deficits over spending control, decided to pick a fight with rural Alberta. The government invoked closure to halt debate on Bill 10 and ram the legislation through.
In short, the government that has tried to be all things to all people has finally chosen something to oppose - and it’s you.
A provincial general election is not far away.The PC party may hold onto some urban seats, for now.
The PCs may even hold on to government, for now.But, in choosing this hill to die on, the PC party looks to have sealed its demise in rural Alberta.
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Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire...AltaLink Publicly Apologizes for Land Agent's Behaviour
This past week in Edmonton, it appears that a liar-liar-pants-on-fire land agent got caught cold turkey. From where this writer is sitting, what’s needed when land agents are caught telling lies is not an apology but a jail sentence. Land agents who do this kind of stuff are engaged in fraud. They should be thrown in the slammer.
Here’s the article from the Edmonton Journal and Regina Leader Post about the Alberta situation:
EDMONTON - AltaLink publicly apologized at the Heartland transmission project hearing Friday for the appalling conduct of a land agent it hired to make deals with landowners in the path of the transmission line.
Len Kozak, whose mother owns a farm near Gibbons, said a land agent visited the family farm on April 16 at their invitation to discuss a possible offer. The project team, consisting of AltaLink and Epcor, wants to put five towers on their land as part of a 500 kilovolt, double-circuit transmission line between south Edmonton and the industrial heartland northeast of the capital.
Kozak said his mother, who is 76, has poor hearing and won’t wear a hearing aid. She asked him to tape the conversation.
The project team has sent land agents out to landowners along the preferred route running east of Edmonton to try to reach tentative agreements. The alternate route runs around the western outskirts of Edmonton. Landowners in the preferred route were offered $10,000 if they signed an early access agreement, which would also prohibit them from intervening at the hearing.
“The statements and the things this employee said were nothing more than intimidation tactics to get us to sign our rights away,” Kozak said. “He said things like AltaLink had the support of the premier, had the support of the Progressive Conservative party, that the AUC had already made their minds up that this thing was going ahead. That the western route was nothing more than a bureaucratic optics show, that it was only a requirement that AltaLink had to fulfil and that ultimately if we didn’t sign and take this $10,000, it wouldn’t be available to us when the (Alberta Utilities Commission) made their decision.”
The conversation between the land agent and the Kozaks was professionally transcribed and submitted as evidence to the commission panel currently reviewing the project application.
Kozak and his mother didn’t take the money. Instead, Kozak on Friday cross-examined Darin Watson, AltaLinkVicePresident, Major Projects.
Read more: Edmonton Journal
Read more: Regina Leader Post
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Doug Malsbury at the Alberta Surface Rights Group Society
Doug Malsbury of the Alberta Surface Rights Group Society maintains a website that is worth taking a look at:
Alberta Surface Rights Group
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Either You Have the Right to Property, Or You Are Property
"Either you have the right to property, or you are property…"
- Wayne Hage
(Wayne Hage was a property rights advocate and cattle rancher who passed away in 2006.)
It is the Option You Have, Not the Physical Thing,
Which is Your "Property"
"Neither property, nor the value of property, is a physical thing. Property is a set of defined options... It is that set of options which has economic value... It is the options, and not the physical things, which are the "property" – economically as well as legally...but because the public tends to think of property as tangible, physical things, this opens the way, politically, for government confiscation of property by forcibly taking away options, while leaving the physical objects untouched."
- Thomas Sowell
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Fredrich Hayek - The Road to Serfdom
"Private property [rights are] the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not."
The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for over half a century. First published by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000 copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold.
In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the U.S. and has been translated into more than twenty languages. It is considered by many to be one of the most important and influential books of the 20th century.
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Landowners Against Bills
Landowners Against Bills is an informative site that addresses the Alberta Land Bills. The following link will take you to the site where there are podcasts, articles, interviews, and much more.
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If the Alberta PC MLAs think it's alright to steal your property rights with Bills 19, 24, and 36, should anyone be surprised that these people would move against civil liberties too...
In today’s National Post, Kevin Libin writes about what he calls “Alberta’s Dangerous Database.” It is a central database the province wants to assemble and then use to keep track of citizens…. not just technical information, like who was charged and convicted of such and such a crime. This database will even track speculations about people, unproven allegations meaning gossip, theories, and the like. An excerpted paragraph from Libin’s piece is below.
The province [of Alberta] is quietly putting together a database for police that is every bit as dangerous to citizens’ liberties as giving police the unwarranted right to destroy private property. The project is called, rather ominously, TALON — as in The Alberta Law Officers’ Network — and it will, according to the solicitor general’s department, allow police quick access to information about “persons of interest.” The trouble is, TALON is designed to keep track not just of Albertans’ criminal records, but also, according to the Calgary Herald, any “speculations, unproven allegations, investigation theories, details of 911 calls — virtually any record of a citizen’s contacts with the police” anywhere in the province. Any officer will be able to dial it up without a supervisor’s permission, warrant, or cause. It is, in other words, a record of any old thing that authorities consider worthwhile keeping track of that can be accessed at any time for any reason by any officer. That kind of police-state-style record keeping might be otherwise ruled unlawful because it is so plainly an unjust violation of citizens’ privacy. To get around that, the province appears to be prepared to simply make gross intrusions perfectly legitimate.
The full article can be read at the National Post’s website.
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Derrick Penner of the Vancouver Sun reports that PetroChina plans to spend more than $5 billion to buy a half stake in Encana’s Cutback Ridge project in northern B.C. The question B.C. landowners can now ask, is since the B.C. provincial regulator (Oil and Gas Commission or OGC) has openly declared itself to CAEPLA as having a mandate to be a kind of frontman for the energy industry, does this mean situations will arise where the OGC becomes frontman for a foreign government. Here’s what Penner had to say:
PetroChina, Encana, and the Eventual Export of B.C. Natural Gas
Wednesday was the blockbuster announcement: PetroChina, one of China's biggest energy companies, plans to spend $5.4 billion to buy a half stake in Encana Corp.'s Cutbank Ridge natural gas project in northeast British Columbia.
Today it was time for the hold-your-breath moment: federal Industry Minister Tony Clement announced that the government will review the proposed transaction under Canadian foreign-investment rules.
Granted, it was an expected moment: government reviews all foreign investments over a certain amount to determine if they are in the best interest in Canadians.
And given that we're talking about foreign investment in the extraction of Canadian non-renewable resources, the transaction should get careful review, notwithstanding the giddy excitement of the company and provincial government about the injection of capital into the industry.
Tangentially, however, PetroChina's investment points to a bigger issue, that of developing an export market for B.C.'s natural gas.
That is a prospect that would satisfy multiple wants, lets say. Encana wants capital to help develop the resource at a time when low natural gas prices don't provide the cash flow to do it at a pace that it wants.
PetroChina has capital it wants to put to work in the North American energy industry. Then theoretically, the deal also gives gas resources that China really might want to import, via a liquified natural gas terminal being developed at Kitimat.
An export is something that Encana, and the B.C. government, really want as well. North America is awash in natural gas, and that outlet would help boost prices, which would help profits for Encana as well as bolster gas royalties for the province.
Being still new to the resources beat, I'm working on a bit of a story about this for our Monday newspaper to begin learning about the issues.There are many, and I'm sure this will just be the start.
The original article can be read on Derrick Penner's blog at The Vancouver Sun's website.
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Kelly McParland at the National Post: Ontario quietly reverses field on wind, solar energy
Times of international turmoil are great moments for domestic governments to make important announcements they don’t want to be noticed. Especially if the announcement involves a sudden reversal in policy that could seriously embarrass the government.
So Friday afternoon was an ideal time for Ontario’s Liberal government to take a big chunk of its alternative energy program and chuck it overboard. Attention was riveted on Egypt, where spectacular events were unfolding. The perfect opportunity for Premier Dalton McGuinty to engineer yet another major reversal, while paying a minimal price among voters.
After years of touting wind projects as a critical piece of the alternative energy puzzle, the government let slip — very quietly — that offshore wind projects are no longer part of the game plan. Turns out there just isn’t enough scientific evidence that offshore wind projects do a lick of good, said Brad Duguid, the energy minister.
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Pipeline Companies are Warned About a Flaw in the NEB’s Regulatory Provisions that Could have the Effect of Compromising Safety
Bob Vergette of the National Energy Board (NEB), recently warned the pipeline industry at a national conference, about flaws in the NEB’s regulatory system. Vergette stated that a vulnerable spot in the NEB’s system is created by its policy of accepting negotiated cost-of-service settlements, also known as “incentive tolling agreements.”
The deals include provisions for cutting expenses and divvying up the benefits in the forms of toll savings for shippers and increased earnings for pipeline companies.
The article, which was printed in Alberta Oil magazine, said the tolling agreements can blur lines between costs of ensuring the “integrity” of pipelines, and routine operations and maintenance (O & M) expenses.
The entire article, entitled SAFETY CHECK, can be read by clicking here.
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Private Property Rights: The Moral and Economic Foundation of a Free Society
Dr. Edward W. Younkins is a professor at Wheeling University. He is also the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Capitalism and Morality. In an article on property and morality he stated:
The means of maintaining one's life is property, and the loss of these [rights], results in the loss of the power of self-determination. When government acts to downplay the importance of property rights, the result will be the opposite –- property rights will become more important to individuals. More and more will [people] realize that property rights are foundational to a free society –- there can be no political or personal freedom without the right to [property].
'Ten Times the Expertise'
An issue that CAEPLA has been constantly addressing this past couple of years is how government regulators are always responding to the energy industry, rather than setting standards that the industry must consider and follow. Now, employees of the US Mineral Management Services (MMS), the US federal regulator that was charged with overseeing BP activities in the Gulf, have spoken out in a way that confirms what CAEPLA has been saying all along. Interestingly, the MMS was a kind of cousin to Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB).
Recently, Nick Snow, the Washington Editor of the Oil and Gas Journal, wrote a piece in which he quotes a former MMS employ as saying that the industry had ten times as much expertise as the regulator. He writes:
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WASHINGTON, DC, Nov. 24 -- The federal response to crude oil spilling from BP PLC’s Macondo well in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico involved more experts from the oil and gas industry and from government departments and agencies once it became apparent the US Minerals Management Service’s scientific knowledge was limited, according to a new staff working paper prepared for US President Barack Obama’s independent oil spill commission.
BP started discussing drilling a relief well as early as Apr. 21, a day after the Macondo well blew out and the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible rig exploded, killing 11 workers, because initial efforts to actuate the well’s blowout preventer (BOP) stack did not succeed and two separate leaks from the riser were identified, the working paper said. Within days, the company mobilized two rigs to drill a primary relief well and a back-up insisted upon by US Department of the Interior Sec. Ken Salazar.
“Other than the lengthy process of drilling a relief well, BP had no available, tested technique to stop a deepwater blowout,” the staff working paper said. “Less than a week after the explosion, it embarked on what would become a massive effort to develop containment options, either by adapting shallow-water technology to the deepwater environment or by designing entirely new devices.”
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Surface Rights in Saskatchewan: A 1966 Royal Commission Called for Annual Payments on Pipelines and Powerlines
This week, in preparation for a winter project CAEPLA will be working on, I have been looking at the history of property rights and surface rights in Saskatchewan. It’s rather a grim history.
Minerals rights were passed to the province from Ottawa in 1930. A year later the first provincial legislation was established. It sought to address the clash between the rights of the landowner and the interests of the mineral owner.
Interestingly, in law, the term “surface rights” doesn’t mean what a lot of landowners think it means. Most farmers think it is a reference to the rights they possess to surface of the earth. Actually, what it refers to (in law) is the supposed right the mineral owner has to the surface of the land, which belongs to the farmer.
More correctly, legislation that defines how a mineral owner gains access to a farmer’s land to dig or drill, should be called “A Surface Access Act” rather than a Surface Rights Act.
The 1931 legislation was amended during the War, in 1940, and then again in 1943.
Under the 1943 regulations, if a mineral owner applied to the Minister for arbitration because he and the farmer couldn’t agree to terms, he was required to serve notice on the surface owner clearly stating the exact location of the “surface rights” he wanted, and the amount of compensation being offered to the landowner.
Then the surface owner was required to appoint an arbitrator, who along with an arbitrator appointed by the mineral owner, were obligated to determine the outcome.
The decision of the arbitrators was filed with the government, and the Minister was then authorized to issue an order making the award binding on both parties. No terms or conditions other than those set out in the arbitrators’ report were required, and the term or period of occupation was indefinite.
There were a number of small changes after 1943, then in 1966, a Saskatchewan Royal Commission carefully and fully looked into the whole matter of landowner rights. The Commission was overseen by Judge J. E. Friesen, and its report was released in November of that year.
By and large, key recommendations made by the Royal Commission were never acted upon. For example, chapter 11 of the Royal Commission starts out by saying:
“It is strongly urged… that the principle of payment of annual rent for land acquired for a well site or roadway, should also be applied to land required for pipelines in all its classifications, including flow lines, gathering lines, service lines, and tank and tank batteries and surface reservoirs, and also to power lines.”
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The NEB Finally Puts in Writing What It and the Energy Industry Have Been Misrepresenting for Years
When the NOVA jurisdictional hearing and debate were taking place in Alberta last year and earlier this year, CAEPLA kept pointing out that the minute regulatory jurisdiction of the 24,000 km NOVA Gas Pipeline changed from Alberta to Ottawa, landowners were legally and financially liable every time they drove farm equipment over a pipeline easement without first getting permission from the pipeline company.
The energy industry claimed CAEPLA's statements were false, insisting that it allowed “normal” farming practices over the pipeline. CAEPLA ignored its claims, pointing out that what the industry kept saying was propaganda and nonsense because the law specifically says otherwise.
Alberta MLAs in the Stelmach government went around repeating the industry's false and misleading statements to landowners, even after CAEPLA carefully pointed out exactly how and why what was being said was false. We also demonstrated how the NEB bureaucrats were negligent, in that they failed to ensure the truth was being told to those most effected by the change.
The bureaucrats at the NEB sat on their hands, fearful that if they spoke the truth about the situation it might alert landowners, stall the industry’s agenda to transfer jurisdiction, and offend the companies that NEB bureaucrat boss Gaétan Caron refers to as his “partners.”
Now, because it has taken so much heat for its obvious negligence, the NEB has put in writing what CAEPLA has been saying all along. The NEB has issued a statement which refutes what TransCanada Pipelines and its big lobby group CEPA have been telling landowners about the crossing issue. It also refutes what Stelmach MLAs had been falsely telling their effected constituents. In other words, the federal regulator has come clean and admitted that what CAEPLA has been saying all along is absolutely true, while what the industry has been telling landowners is false.
A direct quote from the recent NEB letter confirming that landowners are liable, even for low-risk crossings over federally regulated pipelines, is below.
Section 112(2) of the NEB Act...indicates that no person shall operate a vehicle or mobile equipment across a pipeline unless leave is first obtained from the pipeline company. In other words, land users must obtain leave from pipeline companies, even in low-risk conditions, prior to crossing a NEB-regulated pipeline with a vehicle or mobile equipment... (Click here to read the entire letter.)
(This issue was also raised by CAEPLA Policy Advisor John Goudy in his blog entry on September 23rd.)
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Quotes by William Pitt
"The poorest man may in his cottage, bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England may not enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement."
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
About William Pitt
William Pitt the Younger (28 May 1759 – 23 January 1806) became the youngest British Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 (although at this period the term Prime Minister was not used). He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806.
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"All men are created equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights… among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing the obtaining of happiness and safety."
-- George Mason
About George Mason
Born in 1725, George Mason became active in efforts to promote the westward expansion of the British colonies in North America. In 1774 he helped his neighbour George Washington draft what became known as the Fairfax Resolves. These “resolves” were a group of resolutions adopted by a local committee in the early stages of the American Revolution. Written primarily by Mason, the resolutions rejected the British Parliament's claim of supreme authority over the North American colonies. More than thirty counties passed similar resolutions that same year, but the Fairfax Resolves, written by Mason, were the most detailed and the most influential.
In 1776, Mason drafted the Declaration of Rights, which influenced Thomas Jefferson and was used as a model by other British colonies when they became independent states. A member of the Virginia House of Delegates (1776 – 88), he attended the Constitutional Convention but did not sign the Constitution of the United States, which he believed granted large and indefinite powers to a central government. George Mason University was named in his honour.
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The Word Property Refers to More than Tangible Objects Such as Farmland or the Contents of Our Houses and Bank Accounts
For most people, upon hearing the word property they more readily think of houses, farmland, and real estate than they do real property or intellectual property. Real property would include cars, trucks, furniture, and bank accounts. Intellectual property would be an authored book, software program, or maybe a patent on how to make something, or facilitate some kind of useful process.
While the term property definitely applies to farmland, real estate, and other things a person might own, the word itself refers to an idea as much as it does to objects, or things tangible.
The word property is derived from a Greek phrase that means “one’s own,” or “special to that one person.” It was a term that didn’t just describe the item or thing a person owned. The concept carries with it an understanding of the rightful claim a person has to that thing, or things, that are his. It refers to the claim, as much as it does to the object.
To say it another way: The notion of property, and the word property, also affirms the unalterable and inalienable right an individual has to that which is his or hers.
English philosopher Gilbert Chesterton, the very insightful and humorous journalist and writer, pointed out that even thieves instinctively respect the rightful claim of property owners.
"Thieves respect property,” Chesterton quipped. “They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." (For more information about Chesterton see: www.chesterton.org). And for additional quotes by Chesterton and other great thinkers, view the CAEPLA Quotes page.
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Civilization
"If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization." – Ludwig von Mises
In the course of a long and highly productive life, one of the most notable economists and social philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig von Mises developed an integrated science of economics. Based on the idea that individual human beings act deliberately in order to achieve desired goals, his explanation of economics as a science was an eloquent and articulate voice of reason. Mises’ said that the socialist notion of communal property would lead to no competition for goods and services, no market prices, and no profit and loss system. This meant there would be massive economic waste, bad investments, production bottlenecks, surpluses of some things and shortages of others. He argued that without property rights and private ownership, there could be no rational allocation of resources within an economy.