Wildrose: PCs mistake Indiana for Alberta while promising to protect property rights

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Vauxhall Advance

Jim Prentice has been scrambling through rural Alberta spouting empty promises to landowners, but “Team Prentice” doesn’t even know what Rural Alberta looks like: the tall oaks and narrow driveway in his fundraiser picture was taken in Indiana, not Alberta!

And in this fundraising letter, he is asking PC supporters to donate money to his campaign so he can protect them from a PC government enforcing PC laws.
In this campaign, Wildrose is the only party with the track record to protect the rights of all landowners.

Here are the FACTS:

· Prentice’s PC’s redundant claims to follow expropriation laws for full expropriation dodge the biggest issue with Bill 36: unprecedented new government powers to arbitrarily take away the licences and permits people need to operate businesses, develop resources, and make a living on their land—the foundations of our economy.

· Section 11 of Bill 36/ALSA gives Cabinet unrestricted power to rescind licences and permits whenever the Cabinet feels like it without cause, without legislative oversight, and without any recourse to the courts. As it stands, the Cabinet can take away any of the licences or permits a person’s business needs, essentially gutting their business and rendering their land worthless, for any arbitrary reason and without compensation or recourse to the courts.

· Expropriation is not and has never been the issue. The issue is after 44 years, the PC don’t respect the rule of law, property rights, or ensuring fair treatment of Albertans.

· The PC approach radically undermines the balanced, rights-based approach that is the hallmark of modern Parliamentary democracy, and Prentice needs to come clean on whether he is going to do anything about the truly offensive parts of Bill 36, or keep hiding behind the expropriation façade.

· Prentice has also made no mention of Bill 24, where the government confiscated landowners’ ownership of the pore space under their land so the PC’s experimental carbon capture scheme could go ahead without having to compensate landowners for the use of their storage space.

· Prentice’s record speaks for itself: his much touted “Property Rights Preservation Act” only repealed Bill 19, which was never even proclaimed, never mind used. And when Wildrose put forward Motion 501 last fall to entrench property rights in Canada’s Constitution, Prentice and his PC caucus voted it down.

Wildrose is the only party landowners can trust to stand up for their property rights.

A redundant promise to use the expropriation act for expropriation is just more Prentice PC smoke and mirrors.

Not only does Wildrose respect your right to own land, but when government policy or other decisions adversely affect your ability to make a living on that land you have a right to a hearing, an independent appeal, and fast, fair, and timely compensation.

When talking to a supporter of “Team Prentice” ask them why Bill 36 doesn’t respect property rights and why Jim is still skirting the real issues.