Second Reading

Bill 23, Land Assembly Project Area Amendment Act, 2011

November 28, 2011

Mr. Anderson: On the bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, that was a riveting debate there. I thought there were some good points shared there.

I’m going to take a little bit of a different tack with regard to speaking in second reading on Bill 23.

[Mr. Zwozdesky in the chair]

I heard this mentioned earlier. There’s a real habit and pattern developing here where the government really feels the need to ram bills through so quickly that I really don’t think – and there was some cheering to that on the opposite side, that they like to ram bills through quickly. I don’t think that they understand that in order to pass truly effective and solid legislation, there really does need to be a lot of very sober second thought given to every bill that’s introduced. It’s very important that we as a Legislature have that opportunity.

The example is these three land bills or four land bills if you include Bill 24: Bill 36, Bill 19, and Bill 50. They got rammed through so fast and so quickly that there were some pretty glaring, gaping holes that were there that didn’t get addressed. I don’t blame actually in any way, shape, or form, nor should I, having voted for one of these land bills – the Minister of Education was earlier incorrect. He was mentioning that I had spoken in favour of Bill 19. I think he meant Bill 36, which I absolutely did the first time speak in favour of.

What’s not understood on that side yet I think is the reason for that, and I think they should all relate to it. These bills are often essentially delivered to caucus with a couple of days’ notice to read over them. No time – oh, don’t give me the puzzled look. Unbelievable. The final draft of Bill 36 was given to caucus two days before it was introduced in the Legislature. You know that. Don’t look confused. Two days before.

We have no time to go to the public . . .

The Acting Speaker: Through the chair, please.

Mr. Anderson: . . . to our constituents and actually go through the bill and say: “Look, this is what’s in there. These are the points that are in there. Here, take a look.” There’s no time to go to, you know, people that we trust, lawyers that we trust to go and say, “Take a look at this bill, and see if you’re seeing anything untoward in here or a problem in that, to go to someone like a Keith Wilson or like a Stan Church or someone like that who has some background in these land bills and go through it with them top to bottom and make sure that the people of Alberta have an opportunity to look through these things and to give us feedback, to put it to a committee and let that committee bring in stakeholders and bring in experts so that we can make sure that we get the right piece of legislation passed at the end.

We didn’t do this with bills 36, 19, 50. Bill 24: I was on this side of the House for that one. For those first three there was no time to do that, so mistakes are made. Obviously, mistakes are made. Clearly, with regard to Bill 36 I made a mistake. Clearly, I did not fully understand the legislation. Thankfully I was able to go to actually two seminars by two different individuals about Bill 36 and these property rights bills. I was able to talk to people in my constituency about them after the fact, and it became very clear very quickly that my judgment was completely wrong with regard to voting for and speaking for Bill 36. As I’ve said in this House many times, I apologized to my constituents for being hoodwinked, so to speak, for not reading that bill as carefully as I should have, and for voting for it and speaking for it.

I guess that’s where the difference between myself and some of the other folks in this room is. I was able to make that clear decision that I’d made a mistake. There seems to be a problem with many members in this House who still to this day don’t seem to think that they’ve made a huge mistake with regard to these land bills, including Bill 19. They still think that all these land bills were perfectly fine and perfectly necessary. The only thing was that there was a little bit of a communication problem. You know, it was always: the bills were fine; it was just that they were being misunderstood. Incredible.

When you make a mistake, admit you made a mistake. It’s okay. People don’t expect perfection from their politicians. Good grief, that’s for sure. They do expect that when a mistake is pointed out to them and it’s clearly a mistake, admit it, move on, and make the correction. Make the correction. I think that was the real problem with this government.

Now, I will say that with regard to this bill they did eventually make a correction. It has come a couple of years later, and that’s fine, but they did make a correction. Better late than never is the adage. Boy, oh boy, think of what it took to get through those two years. Think of the slagging, of the character assassination that occurred by many of the members opposite on an individual, Keith Wilson, who went all over the province talking to thousands of people around the province about these bills, pointing out all four of the bills’ flaws – why they were wrong, why they needed to be changed, how they needed to be changed – again and again and again, did all this work, and his character was repeatedly assassinated by this government for just stating what his opinion was on Bill 19. It is just incredible.

I mean, this individual, as much as – you know, obviously the Wildrose was speaking strongly against these bills as were the NDP and others. Had this individual not been able to go around and raise such a kerfuffle in rural Alberta, there is no doubt in my mind that none of the changes that have occurred to these land bills would have been done. Frankly, this province and every landowner in it owe a huge debt of gratitude to that individual, Keith Wilson, and that government opposite really should give that individual an apology, a sincere apology for the way that he was treated and maligned and harassed frankly by this government.

If you were at the Eckville debate, I use harassment for a reason. He was literally harassed by certain people on the other side while giving his speech, just totally disrespectful. Yet here we are. All those things have been taken and changed. Most of the things that he pointed out about Bill 19 have been changed. That’s good, and it’s good that their listening. Why the character assassination? Why the assassination of character and judgment of members on this side of the House?

You know, if we could go through all the different quotes – and I’m sure one day we will – talking about how members on this side of the House were out of their minds, that we were misinterpreting every single clause, taking it out of context, fear-mongering, all these different things, for simply . . . [interjections] The member says that it’s all true. Still he thinks that all of those mistakes in the legislation that were being pointed out – and, really, we were just looking at the reports with regard to Bill 50 from the University of Calgary and from IPCCAA, with regard to Bill 36 from folks such as Keith Wilson, and just repeating those criticisms. We were called just absolutely the worst names for it. It really is quite something to watch a government of 40 years. The arrogance is just breathtaking in that regard.

We were just doing our jobs, and that was to represent the landowners in our constituency and around Alberta, trying our best, trying everything we could to stop a 70-seat majority government. We did everything we could to do it, and frankly with the help of many good friends and landowners we were able to stop that government. That’s a huge accomplishment for every opposition party in this House, for Keith Wilson, and for others. We were able to turn this legislation around, this piece of legislation.

Now, unfortunately, we still have a couple of other outstanding pieces, Bill 50 and Bill 36, that are still unacceptably poor pieces of legislation, that we will hopefully get to work on in the future and try to fix or, in the case of Bill 50 and Bill 36, repeal and start afresh, but at least we’ve slowed down the process. I think that’s a huge testament to fighting tooth and nail against all odds in sup-port of something that you believe in. So we’re very happy with that, and we’re grateful to have had that opportunity to defend landowners in that way.

I do have one issue with this, and it is that I think the government has basically – you know, I still would like to see us go back to the drawing board on Bill 19, go to a special committee, meet with some of the stakeholders and so forth on this and come up with a truly good piece of legislation, but if this is the way we’re going to go, they’ve got it pretty close here.

The one issue that is still outstanding for me is section 5 of the Land Assembly Project Area Act. I’m still not understanding this, and perhaps someone can clarify it for me. It is an honest question. I’m trying to figure this out. This is after a piece of land is frozen, et cetera, whatever.

5(1) The Minister . . .

(b) shall file a notice of the project area order and its associated regulation, together with a certified copy of the order and a certified copy of the associated regulation, with the Registrar . . .

And registrar is defined as the registrar at the land titles office.

. . . and, on its being filed, the Registrar shall endorse a memorandum of the notice on each certificate of title pertaining to land within the Project Area.

That would seem to suggest to me that that will go on that specific land title, so on a person’s land title. If that’s the case – and this is an honest question – it would seem that that would be a situation where if someone wanted to use that land as collateral or wanted to sell it, it would devalue the property because it would be very limited in what it could be used for, and a bank wouldn’t take it as collateral in some cases. I don’t know.

I’m not an expert in this particular area, but I do have some worry on that end, and in full disclosure I think that that has been brought up in this House. It’s been brought up by several lawyers, including Mr. Wilson, as kind of the only deficiency remaining in this bill. I would really like to see an explanation on that, perhaps an amendment on that so that we can make sure that this piece of legislation is as good as it can be prior to moving forward. That’s really the only question I have with regard to a specific clause in the bill.

Again, I would like to personally and on behalf of the Wildrose Party commend Mr. Wilson. He is a fine gentleman. He truly believes in the province of Alberta and the values of liberty, the values of property ownership and respect for property ownership and how important that is to our entire system, to the rule of law, to a functioning democracy and one that respects people’s rights. Although I do not believe for a second that the folks across the way were interested in using this as a way to subvert democracy or anything like that, I do think that there is a slippery slope, and the people that are in those chairs right now won’t always be in those chairs. The problem is that we always have to be looking forward into the future to make sure that the laws we pass now, as well intentioned as they might be, are not used as a sword in the hands of people in the future who aren’t as committed to democracy and property rights and things like that principle. So I do thank Mr. Wilson for that.

Respectfully we ask that question, and hopefully the Minister of Human Services will answer my question with regard to section 5 in the assembly project area act. I look forward to his answers.