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The Saskatchewan Surface Rights Project
Listen to the audioStarting next Monday (June 20th), every morning in southern Saskatchewan, CAEPLA’s first radio ads related to the Landowner Legacy/Surface Rights Project will begin airing. Throughout the entire summer, and on into the fall, every morning on the John Gormley program CAEPLA's ads will be talking about landowner issues. The first ads are exclusively about property and the role of property rights within a free society. The first two ads that will air are below:
RADIO AD #1
The great English philosopher, John Locke, argued that the foundation of a free and prosperous society is the right to own and control property.
And when he spoke of property, he didn’t mean just real estate or farmland.
Your property includes the contents of your house, your bank account, and your investments. It also includes all the experience, knowledge, and expertise you possess that you can offer your boss or a prospective employer. If you write a book or invent some handy gadget that makes life easier for everyone, they’ll be your property too.
When people know that their right to own and control property is secure, they invest their time, labour, and money, in a way that will improve their lives. They know the reward for their effort belongs to them. They make wise decisions, which in turn, brings about a more prosperous society for everyone.
In order to have a free and prosperous society then, the right to own and control property has to be respected, and protected by law. It’s a simple, basic, foundational principle.
This Landowner Legacy message is sponsored by CAEPLA. For more information see landownerassociation.ca.
RADIO AD #2
If you’re looking for evidence that the right to property is a key ingredient for a prosperous society, take a look at Hong Kong and India. Hong Kong is a special administrative district of China. India is the world’s largest democracy.
In a recent Wall Street Journal Report, more than 150 countries were rated on their level of respect for economic freedom, including a citizens’ right to property. Hong Kong was rated number one in the world. India was rated 124th.
Like Hong Kong, India is experiencing economic growth, especially in the area of information technology, but because of its poor regard for property rights and other economic freedoms, it is shackled by a cumbersome bureaucracy. As a result, India is far behind where it could be, economically.
An important lesson from the study is that living in a democracy and being able to vote, does not automatically result in an enhanced standard of living, or greater national wealth. For that to occur, a country must have laws that protect the property rights of its citizens.
This Landowner Legacy message is sponsored by CAEPLA. For more information see landownerassociation.ca.
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Posters and Billboards
Somebody asked about the dimensions of the NEB Regulatory Capture billboards that will be popping up throughout the summer, fall, and especially throughout the winter of 2010-2011. The posters that are available through this website are 22 inches by 17 inches (56 cm x 43 cm). The smaller billboards which will be sitting along roadsides and highways in communities like Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie, Calgary, etc. are five feet by ten feet. The big billboards on average are 10 feet high and 24 feet wide. In situations where old reefer trailers will be decked out with a sign on the side, and then parked in a farmer’s field along a major highway, the sizes will obviously vary somewhat.
Incidentally, in addition to the free 22 x 17 posters that are folded because they have to be mailed, we also have a quantity of them that have never been folded (no crease) and are pasted on hardback so they can be hung on the wall. We are in the process of having more of them made, one for every federal cabinet minister for example, plus cabinet ministers in most of the provinces. If you would like one of these hardbacks, simply send an email to the admin office [admin(at)caepla.org], and our staff will take care of your request. You will likely have to pay a small charge for the hardbacks. If I recall correctly, they cost about ten bucks to mail, and I think about $10 or $12 to have made.
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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.
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On Being Pro-Development and Pro-Landowner at the Same Time
One of the more puzzling scenarios CAEPLA encounters from both regulatory bureaucrats and certain energy industry insiders, is how so many assume we are anti-development, anti-industry, or out to stop economic progress when we make an effort to call particular regulatory or industry practices into question, or otherwise point out the negative effects of an existing policy upon landowners.
My first encounter with the attitude was a few years ago when I took the Land Agent Course through Olds College.
The way some of these guys talked about landowners was disgusting. There is no other way to describe it. A lot of my classmates had worked in the industry for some time, as had the instructor. At one point, even the instructor was saying ridiculous stuff about landowners. It wasn’t that he was trying to be mean or condescending. He was simply conveying an attitude that was part of the industry culture he knew, understood, and had previously been part of.
In discussions with industry people and regulators, CAEPLA directors and staff regularly encounter people who with a look of triumphant arrogance – as if they have some kind of secret inside information – will say something like, “landowners are only interested in money.”
Some time ago, two of our CAEPLA directors stopped in at the Kindersley office of the Saskatchewan Surface Rights Board. They were chatty with the individual behind the counter, who didn’t even know who they were. No one else was in the office that day so the three of them talked briefly about the industry/landowner relationship. Then, without in any way being prompted, the person behind the counter volunteered that, “all landowners are ever interested in is money.”
This was frontline staff at the provincial government’s regulatory office, talking to a couple of strangers who just walked in the door! No one even knew who they were. Try to imagine how any landowner can anticipate getting a fair shake in that kind of place.
In Dave’s blog, he wrote about a spokesman for CAPP (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) who was in attendance at the recent regulatory conference in Montreal. At that conference the CAPP representative in attendance spoke up in a roomful of regulators and said essentially the same thing, vehemently claiming that landowners would not hold the energy industry hostage, and assuring everyone that “all landowners are ever interested in is money.”
Rather than telling the guy that he was unprofessional and full of *&%$, the regulatory conference organizers (bureaucrats) just moved on to what they thought should come next.
What is wrong with these people?
Think about it: The men and women who work for CAPP – all of them – are in it for the money. If they didn’t get paid for what they do, they wouldn’t be doing it. The land agents who pull into a farmer’s yard to get contracts signed, every single last one of them, are in it for the money. If they didn’t get paid, they wouldn’t be doing what they do. The government regulators, every one of them, without any exception at all, are all in it for the money. If these bureaucrats didn’t get paid to do what they do they’d find a new and different favourite thing to do – one that did pay them.
These people are not benevolent priest-like benefactors who bring good to the masses by trampling the legitimate interests of landowners. They are only in it for the money. The industry guys are business people who are out to make a profit, and can readily use the power of legislation to impose their interests upon landowners. (In law, the term “surface rights” doesn’t mean the right of the landowner to his or her property. It means the right of an energy company to the farmer’s property.)
I am not, even for a minute, suggesting that profit-taking and money-making are reprehensible. Wealth is a measure of creativity, commerce, and stewardship. Let’s just be honest here about why everybody is doing what they are doing and why they are doing it. That many landowners recognize this reality and respond on the same basis that the industry is approaching them, is not what any reasonable person could construe as “intransigent hostage taking.”
From the landowner perspective, the more immediate or acute problem is that the person who is their point of contact with the industry, be it a land agent or a regulatory bureaucrat, often has a prejudice toward landowners, and because of that prejudice, will view bona fide landowner interests as unnecessary obstacles.
In the past, rather than address these “obstacles” in a structural and regulatory fashion, the industry’s solution has been to throw more money at the landowner, thinking the “issues” will go away. When they don’t, the most convenient explanation is to point fingers at landowners, and claim all they are ever interested in is the very thing that drives the industry and its shareholders – as if that should be some kind of shame-on-you kind of situation.
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Setting the Price
Expropriation is what happens when an energy company, government minister, or crown corporation, uses the power of legislation to take away someone’s property. When it happens, the person or company taking the property is obligated to pay for it, but when it comes to expropriation, the key question is how much.
It’s usually assumed that expropriated land is worth market value. But market value is the price of something when you have a willing seller and a willing buyer—when both walk away from a deal feeling they will get more value from what they receive, than from what they give.
If I have a toaster and you have twenty dollars, and if you think my toaster is worth more to you than your twenty, and I think the twenty is worth more to me than my toaster, the two of us can trade and both walk away happy.
Market prices are always set by willing buyers and willing sellers. The minute you remove the “willing” from the buyer or the seller, you no longer have a market price, or even a fair price. Several years ago, as a gift, one of my uncle’s gave me an ounce of gold. It wasn’t worth all that much at the time, a few hundred dollars I suppose. He said to me, “Kevin, when gold prices hit $1,000 an ounce, sell it.”
From the day he gave me that gold, in my mind, it was worth $1,000. If someone would have come to me when gold prices were $500 or $600, and told me they were going to expropriate my gold and pay me the market price, I would have gotten ripped off.
Regardless of the market price of the day, it was always worth $1,000 to me. This same principle holds true for antique cars, real estate, farmland, etc.
A man sitting on a piece of farm land that has been in his family for four or five generations, likely doesn’t care about market prices if he gets expropriated. For personal and sentimental reasons, his land is worth more to him than what any otherwise willing seller or willing buyer might consider.
A good source for more information about expropriation is the Expropriation Law Centre (www.expropriationlaw.ca).
We Called Him Melfort - The Land Agent Culture Clashes with the Landowner Culture
We called him Melfort, I don’t remember why. It wasn’t his name.
Melfort had been born and raised in Canada, on a farm in central Saskatchewan. Yet he spoke with a slight foreign accent. He was an incredibly hard worker and I am sure had grown up under the watchful eye of a demanding father. He once said to me, “Avram, I did more work before I was 21 than you will do all your life.” I laughed at the time, but somehow knew he was telling the truth.
I was sixteen years old when I met Melfort. It was my first real job. We were building houses. Melfort was part of the construction crew.
I quite liked Melfort. But one thing about him puzzled me—the way he viewed women, and the way he talked about women. He was married to a girl who was absolutely stunning. I mean drop-dead-oh-my-goodness kind of stunning. She was an absolute knockout. Yet as soon as she turned her back, Melfort was chasing skirts. And the skirts he chased always belonged to women who were easy, and usually ugly.
Around the men on the work crew Melfort spoke about other women and his adultery in the most cavalier of terms. When he was in an actual social setting, or when his wife was around, Melfort was Mr. Congenial. He was two different people depending on who was in the room at the time.
My First Exposure to the Land Agent Culture
When I enrolled in the Olds Land Agent course a few years ago, I hadn’t thought of Melfort in years—even decades. After I got part way through the Land Agent course I couldn`t think about anything but Melfort. Why?
The Olds College course consists mostly of industry people whose job is, or will be, to interact with landowners, getting them to sign easement agreements and surface leases. Most of the students already work for energy companies. Several work as land agents in provinces where land agent licensing is not required. They’re taking the Olds course to be better informed on Alberta issues so they can write the exam and get licensed in Alberta.
The course instructor was a guy who used to work as a land agent, whose job at one time had been to get landowners to sign surface leases and easement agreements. He even told a story about how at one point during his land agent career, he used a legal principle called estoppel to get a landowner to back down on a particular claim for which the energy company was clearly responsible.
The instructor seemed to think it had been a clever ploy on his part. All I could see was how the legitimate interest of the landowner had been violated.
One especially contemptuous attitude toward landowners, I thought, was expressed by a guy who worked in Saskatchewan, and who had been involved in the province’s energy industry for years.
Being new to the industry at the time, and not having told any of my fellow students that I had no intention of working for the industry, but for landowners, they didn’t know who I was or how I might feel about certain issues. Being a fly on the wall, I quickly realized that the way some land agents might speak to a landowner when face to face, is very different from what they say when surrounded by other land agents or by industry people. That’s when Melfort started coming to mind.
No One Should be Opposed to Safety; The Legitimate Beef Landowners Have Concerns Imposed Duty of Care and Liability
The arrogance of the land agent culture also came to mind when I read an article about CAEPLA that was written in a recent land agent publication. It was written by a guy named Sullivan, whom I have never met. The article suggests that landowners have no right to seek legitimate consideration for the duty of care and potential liability that energy companies and the federal regulator impose upon them. Sullivan’s article says:
“For years, Dave Core and CAEPLA have been seeking compensation for the 30 metre Safety Zone, which was introduced by subsection 112.(1) of the National Energy Board Act in 1990. Mr. Core and CAEPLA have said, and will tell anyone who will listen, that the Safety Zone is akin to the ‘additional taking of land’ and is essentially equivalent to having additional right of way on their land; and therefore, landowners should be compensated for it.
“Think again.
“The NEB, CEPA, and countless individuals (including myself ‐ Mike Sullivan) have repeatedly stated that the 30 metre Safety Zone ‘holds no interest’ in the land. Rather, it is simply what the name implies – a ‘safety zone’; or, to further clarify, a ‘call before you dig’ zone.”
For starters, the beef that most landowners have with the 30 metre control zone has nothing to do with safety. It has everything to do with imposed duty of care and potential liability. The reason the NEB established a control zone on private land is that the pipeline companies didn’t bury their pipes deep enough in the first place.
And when the easement agreements, which are private contracts between the energy company and the landowners, were originally signed, there was nothing said about crossing restrictions and potential liability if and when a landowner drives farm equipment across a pipeline easement.
These potential liabilities and obligations were imposed on thousands of landowners AFTER the contracts were signed and the pipes put in. How would Sullivan or any other Canadian respond if after he or she bought a house, the government passed a law saying that every time that person was in his or her back yard, they couldn’t have access to the quiet enjoyment normally associated with private property because some other private shareholder-owned company who doesn’t own the property has a particular interest they want protected. And how would those same property owners respond if the potential penalty for infringing on that other party’s interest could ultimately end up with the property owner paying a million dollar fine and spending two years in jail?
That Sullivan thinks landowners should simply accept the liability and duty of care imposed on them because the energy companies and the NEB put the word “safety” on the title is ridiculous. If the energy companies and the NEB are imposing liability and duty of care upon landowners on private property, even under the designation of safety, then the energy companies have a clear financial obligation to the property owner.
If Sullivan and the energy companies don’t want to pay the landowner they are imposing upon, then bury the pipes deep enough that landowners don’t have to worry about them, and therefore know they are not obligated or potentially liable. In cities and elsewhere, heavy traffic is driving across all kinds of buried infrastructure all the time without any problem, without any NEB safety zones, without any personal liability for doing so, and without land agents like Sullivan waving an arrogant finger at people telling them what is and isn't good for them.
That Sullivan and his industry cronies think landowners are there for them to control, and tell what to do, simply demonstrates how arrogant the land agent culture and the NEB regulatory culture toward landowners truly is.
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"Due Process" and the Morality of Property
One example of how the National Energy Board (NEB) so easily expresses scorn for landowners can be seen in a story that CAEPLA Advisor John Goudy posted on his blog last week. John, who is an attorney living in Ontario, explains how the NEB claims its decision to set the location of a major power line corridor without any kind of a public hearing, satisfies the property rights provision in the Canadian Bill of Rights. This is the clause that says property cannot be taken from a Canadian citizen apart from “due process of law”.
Interestingly, the evening before John posted the story, about twenty individuals formally or loosely associated with CAEPLA, spent three hours doing a video/conference discussing—among other things—“due process of law” and what that phrase actually means.
We were talking about it because for staff training purposes, every Monday evening CAEPLA’s senior staff plus a few advisors and a handful of others, spend three hours in conversation with leading advocates, journalists, lawyers, and landowner representatives.
Two weeks ago, the discussion was led by Dr. Thomas Merrill, a professor at Columbia Law School. Professor Merrill was a clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, and is the former Deputy Solicitor General for the United States Department of Justice. In that capacity, he represented the United States Government before the U.S. Supreme Court. The man understands the concept of due process of law, as do the many Canadian attorneys who have led these weekly CAEPLA training sessions.
It was during our call with Dr. Merrill that we came to understand that in both Canada and the United States, the term “due process of law” essentially means:
“The legal safeguards a citizen has a right to when a legal authority or government agency does something that could affect that citizen’s established rights, including their property rights.”
Ironically, the very next morning we all awoke to learn that Ottawa’s National Energy Board claims due process of law for landowners has nothing to do with legal safeguards. Instead, the NEB
claims"due process" is the opportunity landowners have to
send them an email.
(I am not making this up!)
Think about this and what the NEB is telling people:
There is a landowner affected by this NEB-initiated power line project, a man who runs a feedlot— who looks like he is going to have a massive 100-foot corner post tower located directly inside one of his cattle pens.
A corner post is a gargantuan steel tower where a major power line takes a 90° turn. And because it’s such a massive construct, it is
anchored with huge steel cables to secure it. The affect this monstrous
steel obstruction will have on this man’s cattle business will
be devastating.
Yet according to Ottawa’s National Energy Board bureaucrats, the “due process” of law this feedlot owner is entitled to as a result of its intrusion, and to protect his property rights, is the opportunity to send a letter or an email to the NEB in downtown Calgary.
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Incidentally, Dr. Merrill (referenced above) has a scholarly paper on the subject of the Morality of Property posted on the Web at the William and Mary Law Review. It’s quite academic, but for those who want to take the time to work through it, you will undoubtedly find it enlightening.
The Morality of Property
by Thomas W. Merrill and Henry E. Smith
Introduction
The relationship between property and morality has been obscured by three elements in our intellectual tradition.
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Legless Turkeys and Ottawa's National Energy Board
The advantage to being a rookie, or new to something, is that you have an unhindered ability to approach situations without preconceived ideas. You easily question things that other people take for granted, and that they accept, simply because they have been done that way for as long as anyone can remember.
To get a grasp of how this works, think about the young married couple and the first time the new bride cooked a turkey. Before popping the bird in the oven, just like she had seen her mother do so many times before, the young wife carefully cut off both drumsticks, placed them in a separate pan, and covered them with tinfoil to cook separately. The new husband, who had never seen turkey cooked in that fashion, wanted to know why she did it that way.
“Because that’s exactly the way my mother always cooked turkey. Plus it tastes so good doing it that way!” she explained. Later that day when the bride’s mother dropped by for a visit, the groom decided to ask his new mother-in-law about the family tradition of cutting off the drumsticks prior to cooking the turkey. “Oh, I do it that way because that’s exactly the way my mother always cooked turkey,” she replied. “Plus it tastes so good doing it like that!”
Later that week, the new groom and his bride had a chance to visit her elderly grandmother. During the visit, he remembered the sawed off turkey legs and decided to ask about the family tradition of cutting them off prior to cooking. “Oh that,” the old grandmother chuckled, “I always did that because in the old days the ovens were too small for a full-sized turkey, so the only way I could get one of those big birds in my oven was if I cut the legs off and put them in a separate pan.”
There is a lot that could be said about the relationship between legless turkeys and Ottawa’s National Energy Board (NEB). If someone were to ask me what single aspect of the NEB is most like the turkey story, I would have to say, “The way it is assumed by so many in the industry—plus those who actually run the NEB—that the NEB’s role is to pretend it represents all stakeholders, even as it maintains and nurtures an openly incestuous relationship with the industry insiders that NEB boss Gaétan Caron for so many years openly referred to as the NEB’s partners.”
I have been around the federal regulatory system long enough now to understand that the NEB doesn’t correctly represent the public interest, or even appropriately consider the legitimate interests of all stakeholders. In reality, the NEB is a type of industry-backed, industry-funded shill. (The word shill means “a person or organization that publicizes or promotes something for reasons of self-interest, profit, friendship, or loyalty.”)
Let me explain:
No Real Regulator Would Use That Word
No real regulator would even think of using the word “partnership” when referring to the companies or people it regulates. Think about it:
I have a friend who for years worked at the Transport Department, acting in the public interest as a regulator of the trucking industry. His responsibility was to ensure that big-rig trucks on the highway are safe and not overweight. My friend’s name is John.
The idea that John and his colleagues were in a partnership with various trucking businesses, or with the truck drivers who break transport laws and therefore get tickets, is ridiculous. Like all real regulators, they wouldn’t dream of being in a partnership with those that they monitor, regulate, and when necessary, discipline.
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Running Errands For Its Partners
Over the past couple of weeks, with my video camera and tape recorder in tow, I have been pounding the back roads across western Canada, interviewing landowners who have had to deal with Ottawa’s NEB.
“The NEB is a joke!” a retired rancher told me. “An absolute joke—it’s a sham that runs errands for its partners in the energy sector!”
That the man saying this about the NEB is ardently pro-industry and pro-development helps clarify how big a problem the NEB really is for landowners. This retired rancher likes the energy sector and is enthusiastic about development. His negative attitude toward the NEB has been shaped by his personal experience as a landowner living along an NEB-regulated pipeline corridor.
In Northern BC, I met with landowners who have been waiting ten years to have their issues resolved. You heard right—ten years! One woman I spoke with, who literally had a nervous breakdown because of it all, explained what it was like when she first came to understand that the NEB and the company that built the pipeline across their land are in a “partnership.”
She and her husband had agreed to a pipeline being built on their land, so long as it was located at least an 1/8th of a mile north of their farm site. Their farm site includes several corrals for their cow-calf operation, so they didn’t want the pipeline anywhere near that area.
Yet instead of laying the pipeline where the couple had agreed, the NEB regulated line was literally put through the middle of the corrals on their farm site. It was also made to run along the immediate edge of a small dugout inside one of their corrals. The pipeline was then covered with dirt.
Before the pipeline was put in, the dugout’s edge had been lined with rocks so cattle could safely make their way to the edge to drink. The rocks disappeared when the line was put in. The dugout’s edge became soft black dirt that had been pushed in over top of the pipeline.
On a different portion of land they own, the couple caught the pipeline company hauling logs away. Knowing that a load of logs is worth a lot of money, the woman literally stood in front of the big logging truck to stop it, wanting to know who authorized the removal of logs from their property. The land agent and trucker physically moved her out of the way, and then took off with the load of logs.
Today, this farm family can’t legally drill a post hole in their corrals without first asking permission. Without permission, it is illegal for them to drill or dig deeper than 11.8 inches anywhere within the NEB’s 260 foot control zone—an area that the NEB and pipeline company now control without having paid a single dime for that right.
The woman showed me photos of calves that had gotten stuck, and then froze to death, in the ground where the pipeline was put through next to their small dugout. Her husband explained how he also lost the gravity flow water source, which prior to the NEB pipeline being installed had been trouble free and never froze in the winter. Since the pipeline, they have spent thousands of dollars trying to maintain a reliable water source for livestock.
To this day this couple has never been paid for damages to their property, for the logs that were hauled away, or the animals that died. Their land value has also been driven downward. Who wants to buy a cow calf setup that’s built right on top of a pipeline right of way, where you can’t even drill a post hole without asking a bureaucrat for permission?
When the couple kept complaining to the regulator, an NEB guy was sent out from Calgary by plane. He flew to Grande Prairie where he was met by the very people who had taken the logs, wrecked the dugout, destroyed the water source, and ploughed the pipeline through the middle of the corrals.
When the NEB guy drove in the yard, literally chauffeured by the very people responsible for the entire mess, these folks saw for themselves what the nature of the relationship is between the regulator and the company. They immediately recognized that the NEB sees itself not as an independent regulator, but rather, as an agent of the industry—a kind of fixer.
Ex Parte
The day I met with this couple I saw two other farm families with similar stories. In one case, the landowner described what it had been like for him to sit through an NEB-related arbitration hearing after he realized that almost everybody in the room except him, had arrived on the same plane.
Another landowner—this time on a provincially regulated pipeline—described what he felt like after he saw the arbitrator for a hearing where his grievance was supposed to be addressed, having breakfast on the morning of the hearing, with a representative of the company his complaint was against.
In law, it is called ex parte when a judge or adjudicator meets with one party without the other party knowing about it, and being present with an opportunity to refute or comment on what is being said.
Like this unethical provincial regulator, the NEB has a long practice of participating in ex parte situations. So much so, that when CAEPLA submitted an Access to Information Request, wanting to know who was in the room with the NEB higher-ups when they made certain far-reaching policy decisions that affect landowners, it refused to answer. It responded by sending us 300 blank sheets of paper.
And that demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt that Ottawa’s NEB prefers secrecy over transparency and high sounding bureaucratic rhetoric over accountability.
In short, when it comes to landowner interests in Canada, Ottawa’s energy regulator is a legless turkey.
Now That's a Big Fracking Deal!
In Northern B.C., a group of landowners are getting prepared to have an underground water pipeline built across their land. The project is being imposed upon them by the B.C. government.
The purpose of the pipeline is to supply vast quantities of water to the energy industry, who mix it with chemicals and sand, and then push it underground backed by enormous pressure. The intent is to literally fracture and break up the earth. The process is commonly called fracing—or fracking (short for fracturing). It is the method energy companies are using to break up underground formations and thereby gain access to oil and natural gas deposits.
To give you an idea of what fracking can involve, consider the fact that earlier this year Apache Corporation announced that it had recently completed a frack job in British Columbia that required 50,000 tons of sand and nearly one million cubic metres of water.
After I read about it, I spent the better part of a morning trying to understand what 100 million pounds of sand (50,000 tons), and one million cubic meters of water, look like.
I know the Titanic, that famous ocean liner that today is 12,000 feet under water, weighed 46,000 tons, was about the length of three football fields, and needed 3 million rivets to hold it together. The rivets alone weighed 1,200 tons. The vessel was 175 feet tall (about the same as a 14 story office tower); had 159 coal fired furnaces to fuel its boilers; generated 50,000 horsepower; and two of the three propellers that pushed the monster were 24 feet wide—the combined height of four tall men. The ship’s anchors were so massive that it took twenty huge draught horses to pull just one of them on a specially designed wagon from the factory where it was forged to the shipyard where the boat was built.
The Titanic was considerably larger than a WWII front line U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, like the USS Saratoga, and at 46,000 tons is several thousand tons shy of the weight in sand that was used in the frack job.
What one million cubic metres of water looks like is a little more difficult to put into practical terms. The easiest way is likely to think in terms of a truck convoy.
The largest and longest truck convoy there has ever been was during WWII, when the allies in western Europe operated what they called the Red Ball Express. The Red Ball Express was a fleet of 6,000 vehicles that moved food, fuel, ammunition, and war material to the front lines from Cherbourg, which is along the English Channel. At its peak, the Red Ball Express moved about 12,500 tons per day.
The fleet of vehicles needed to transport one million cubic meters of water would make the Red Ball Express look like a junior operation. To provide a mental picture of what it would involve, imagine a fleet of bulk fuel trucks—like the kind that deliver gasoline and diesel to many farms—stretching from Vancouver, through the lower mainland and the Rocky Mountains, across Alberta along Number One Highway, continuing through Saskatchewan and Manitoba, on into Ontario, ending east of Kenora, in the Lake of the Woods area near Dryden.
Each truck would have to be about 30 or 32 feet long, carry 2,500 gallons, and maintain roughly two truck lengths between each vehicle along the entirety of the TransCanada Highway. The convoy would be nearly 1,700 miles long—about 2,700 km—and like the Red Ball Express, would crowd every other vehicle off the road.
Chemical Additives and the Pressure used in Fracking
Prominent industry sources say that 99+% of the material used in a frack job is water and sand, and about one-half of one percent consists of “additives.”
According to the Houston-based Halliburton Corporation, which is considered by many to be the Godfather of fracking, “…the remaining portion involves complex chemistry, much of which has been created through Halliburton's research and development efforts…”
A story in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, says some of the chemicals identified as being used in the facking process, though unnamed, are quite dangerous. The newspaper stated:
“…35… compounds contain chemicals that are classified as health hazards. Biocides, used to control bacteria that might grow in the drilling mud or the fracturing fluid, can also kill insects and leave the soil sterile if improperly handled. Three of the polymers used to thicken the fracturing fluid can cause cancer either by themselves or because they might contain traces of other carcinogens. Several compounds include ester alcohol, which can harm animals and aquatic life. The health effects from other chemicals range from skin irritation to cancer. One chemical can cause 'difficulty breathing, twitching, lung congestion, paralysis and coma'."
In the case of a frack job that uses one million cubic metres of water, as was the case with the B.C. frack, if we assume that one-half of one percent consisted of the additives the industry speaks about, it means the project pushed somewhere around 5,000 cubic metres of chemicals underground.
Five thousand cubic metres is more than one million gallons.
The balance of this extensive article will appear in an upcoming edition of the CAEPLA Landowner Report.
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He didn't say the decision was fair, appropriate, equitable, just, or even that it was right. He called it "priceless".
Corrupt Regulatory Processes at Ottawa's National Energy Board
(Excerpted from a soon to be published CAEPLA Landowner Report)
The final nail in the coffin of the NEB/landowner relationship was hammered the day the NEB knowingly stripped thousands of landowners of legal and regulatory protections that they had enjoyed for decades.
This occurred when the NEB unilaterally transferred 24,000 km of provincially regulated pipelines (The NOVA Gas Pipeline System) from the Alberta provincial government over to its own regulatory portfolio. It did so without any regard for the manner in which landowners were severely and negatively affected. And it did so after landowners put together nearly $300,000 to present legal and professional testimony that clearly spelled it out.
At the NEB hearing on the matter, when landowners presented legal evidence that explained exactly how far-reaching the regulatory shift would be upon them, rather than address the legal aspects of the argument, or the legitimacy of the positions put before the NEB, it openly commented on how many people it thought the landowners in attendance might represent.
In other words, rather than consider the legitimacy of a policy position that was presented at an NEB hearing, a hearing which by law has the same authority as a court, the NEB ruled on the basis of how politically powerful it thought the opinions of various people might be.
Then, shortly after the hearing, NEB boss Gaétan Caron, speaking at an event in Eastern Canada, referred to the NEB decision on the NOVA issue, and to the trampling of landowner interests, as “priceless”.
Ask yourself this: “What judge anywhere in the country would even think of referring to a decision he or she might make as priceless? Notice that Caron didn’t say that the NEB’s decision was fair, appropriate, equitable, just, or even that it was right. He called it “priceless”.
Quite frankly, only an ambitious bureaucrat with little concept of propriety would even think in such terms.
Keep in mind that as soon as the NEB stripped Alberta landowners of their longstanding property rights, the regulatory pipeline empire that Caron the bureaucrat presides over was expanded by more than 50%.
Caron’s exact words taken from yet another speech he made shortly after the NEB’s dastardly deed are below:
“The transition from provincial to federal jurisdiction was both historic in importance and relatively uneventful in terms of degree of public profile of our proceedings. The consequences are clear, however. Effective 26 February 2009, the NEB became responsible for an additional 23,500 km of natural gas pipelines, in addition to the 45,000 km we already regulated. In one fell swoop, we acquired significant new responsibilities.”
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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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How Someone's Own Words and Actions Reveal Identity and Character
Edward R. Murrow was probably the most famous newsman of the 20th century—maybe the most famous newsman ever. As a broadcaster, he was especially quick to point out the limitations of his trade.
"Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies your voice," Murrow would say to his colleagues, "is no reason to think [any of us has] more wisdom than we had when our voices could reach only from one end of the bar to the other."
During the late 1930s, and throughout WWII, Murrow and his colleague, William Shirer, were responsible for delivering the news from Europe to other parts of the world. They did a superb job of it, the result being that during the entire conflict, millions of people would listen to their radios, hanging on their every word. After the war, Shirer wrote and published books like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Berlin Diary. Murrow returned to the United States to become a well-known voice of reason at CBS.
Today there are Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in journalism given out each year by the Radio-Television News Directors Association; the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and the Overseas Press Club of America. Additionally, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy is given each year to a U.S. State Department employee by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
About five years ago, a movie called Good Night and Good
Luck, was made about Murrow’s relationship with CBS producer Fred Friendly, and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. It’s a great film that was nominated for more than 50 awards, including six Oscars. (It stars George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., and David Strathairn.) The movie tells the true story of McCarthy, a former judge and U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who relied upon bullying and bombastic accusations to sensationalize things in order to get what he thought he wanted. McCarthy openly accused all kinds of people of being communists, Russian agents, or spies for foreign governments.
The movie explains the resulting fear, and the way Murrow and Friendly finally extinguished McCarthy’s political leverage. They did it by putting together an entire TV program using nothing but video clips of McCarthy’s own words, statements, and accusations. In doing so, they cut his credibility to pieces because it provided everyone with a clear understanding of exactly how much nonsense the man was capable of spouting, and the fear it propagated.
The Blacklisted People Who Lost Career Opportunities because of McCarthy
Due to McCarthy, a bevy of individuals were blacklisted from their chosen careers. They couldn’t get work, which led to a culture of control and fear that saw many labelled as “un-American.”
Actors, musicians, movie producers, directors, and screenwriters that were accused of wrong thinking, and/or wrongdoing, at one point or another included people such as Eddie Albert; Orson Wells; Edward G. Robinson; Will Geer; Sam Jaffe; Leo Penn—father of actor Sean Penn; and many many more. Others who were named included director/producer Richard Attenborough; composer Leonard Bernstein; and William Shirer, Edward R. Murrow’s former broadcast colleague who had reported on the war from Europe.*
Seeking justice and an assured right to free speech, which McCarthy was eager to suppress, Murrow and Friendly assembled their TV program. What the two men initiated neutered McCarthy, and ended up destroying his career. After their TV program aired, his reputation was cut to pieces.
Interestingly, the entire arsenal of information that Murrow and Friendly used against McCarthy contained nothing but video tape of McCarthy’s own words and statements.
After the Murrow/Friendly documentary, McCarthy still made speeches in the U.S. Senate, but no one listened, including the press. More often than not, his colleagues got up and left when he started talking. His colleagues in the Senate voted overwhelmingly to formally “condemn” McCarthy for his words and actions.
How the NEB’S Own Actions Expose the Truth of Who and What It Is
Many people know that CAEPLA is engaged in a project, where in a sense, we are undertaking to do to Ottawa’s National Energy Board what Murrow and Friendly did to McCarthy.
No one at CAEPLA is particularly angry, in the sense of being bitter. Many are indignant due to the federal regulator’s consistent misrepresentation, secrecy, and smug arrogance. Even so, we recognize that to affect change, the NEB needs to be exposed for what it really is, using the NEB’s own words and actions.
As part of that process, next week we are sending information kits to more than 400 MPs and Senators, explaining how the NEB implements changes to policies as a result of secretive meetings that occur in backrooms that have locked doors and closed shutters. Additionally, our objective is to explain how the NEB then hunkers down and cloaks itself in even more secrecy, when asked to explain what goes on in such situations. Few people realize that the NEB refuses to say who sits in on its closed door sessions, in essence, telling the NEB bureaucrats what to do and how they should run the place.
As part of the information package being sent out, each MP and Senator will receive copies of the same material the NEB sent to CAEPLA after we submitted an Access to Information request, wanting to know about its backroom sessions. The NEB’s reply was to send us more than 300 empty sheets of paper—totally blank except for page numbers.
When Dave Core from CAEPLA first spoke to the Information Commissioner’s office after CAEPLA appealed the NEB’s ridiculous response, and after the Commissioner's office had seen firsthand what the NEB had sent CAEPLA, the man with whom Dave spoke asked a rather wry and witty question.
“Do you think these guys are trying to tell you something?” he quipped.
“Yeah, that they think landowners should %$^& off when it comes to asking for information, or expecting anything close to genuine accountability,” was Dave’s immediate reply.
Interestingly, CAEPLA has more than a dozen other Access to Information requests submitted to the NEB that have not yet been answered. One of them, which was submitted long before the Enbridge Pipeline leak in Michigan, is a request for a complete list of all historic contamination on that same aging pipeline along the entire Canadian route—which could indicate where the weak spots or danger points might be located.
As per standard NEB operating procedure, it hasn’t answered that information request either.
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*FOOTNOTE CONCERNING BLACKLISTED/REDLISTED MEN AND WOMEN: Today Richard Attenborough is Lord Attenborough, known for having directed, produced, or starred in some of the most important and creative films ever made—Ghandi, A Bridge Too Far, The Great Escape, and Elizabeth. Eddie Albert is best known as Oliver Wendell Douglas, the city lawyer turned bumpkin on Green Acres. Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in the movie that many consider the greatest film ever made, that being Citizen Kane. Will Geer is best remembered as Grandpa from The Waltons. Sam Jaffe played key roles in classic films like Ben Hur and Lost Horizon to name just two. And Leonard Bernstein became one of the world’s most renowned composers and conductors. In 1980 he was named a recipient of the Kennedy Center Award.
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I am hoping at some point to be able to write a book about the NEB, its practices and its nature. As a prelude, I have been working on a piece that we will publish in a CAEPLA magazine later this year. A brief introduction taken from the piece is below. - Kevin
The Partnership
For five decades, Ottawa’s National Energy Board has been representing the Canadian energy industry before Parliament, and at the same time, determining energy policy on behalf of the Government of Canada toward the industry.
The NEB calls itself a regulator, and outwardly claims to act in the public interest. Yet even as it makes that claim in one forum, its most senior executives have gone about the country, and indeed the world, explaining to just about anyone who will listen that the NEB is not so much a regulator as it is an integral part of a strategic partnership with energy and pipeline companies.
Until the NEB came under scrutiny by groups like CAEPLA, and therefore started to be more circumspect about the way it publicly describes itself, repeated statements by NEB executives clearly indicate that its most senior executives see themselves as energy industry royalty, and at the same time, a sort of hybrid cross between the sharp end of the stick and an enraptured cheerleader.
Toward landowners and any other legitimate interest it perceives as a possible impediment to its partner-driven agenda, the NEB will endeavour to be the sharp end of the stick. Toward its partners, it’s the starry-eyed cheerleader.
For years, the NEB has been able to maintain this openly incestuous relationship with industry while avoiding direct scrutiny, or even very much criticism. In part, this has happened because up until recently many people thought criticizing the NEB was the same thing as criticizing the energy industry, or standing against wealth creation and economic development. But that’s all changing.
It’s changing because a growing number of Canadians recognize that the performance of energy regulators and the practices of the industry must be scrutinized. They also recognize that this type of scrutiny doesn’t reflect an attitude of anti-development any more than telling Little Johnny to clean his room is a declaration about the child’s self-worth.
At the grassroots level, for more than two decades landowners have known about the NEB’s inordinate “partnership” with the industry, and the impact of that partnership upon them. Over time, landowners have also become acquainted with the NEB’s affection for secrecy, and its propensity for doublespeak.
The full article, entitled, "The Partnership," will be published in an upcoming CAEPLA Landowner Journal.