While he’s short on specifics, the secretary-treasurer for the Northern Oilfield Contractors Association says he’s optimistic that group will have at least a partial answer to its dilemma in the next two weeks. At least it’ll have some direction on the part of the dilemma that’s in the provincial government’s court.
Dave Redgate told Association members Friday that their annual general meeting has been split in two – one meeting Friday, and a second scheduled for Oct. 6 – because he’s convinced they’ll have something to vote on at that time.
Redgate told members that he and Association President Kelly Persson met with “a highly-placed government official” in recent weeks to share their concerns.
“And I am optimistic that something will be forthcoming,” he said, adding that the proposal won’t necessarily be everything they’d hoped for.
The Association has been frustrated in recent months by what Redgate calls ‘censure’, or a shortage of information being shared with members of the legislature – and the cabinet.
Confirming that statement at Friday’s meeting in Slave Lake, Gord Klassen, a contractor from Debolt, said he met with his MLA Mel Knight (Grande Prairie-Smokey) – and Economic Development Minister Mark Norris – to discuss contractors’ concerns about accessing Crown lands.
“Norris said that was the first he’d heard of this,” Klassen told the group.
“We have no voice – we’re not recognized – as a stakeholder, so we’ll have to rely on municipalities” that have been promised a seat at the negotiation table.
That said, however, Redgate told members he believes at least “a short-term solution is forthcoming, even though it won’t get us back to normal – what ever that is.”
The Association’s lawyer met with government negotiator and the Loon River First Nation, he said, but the proposal presented at that meeting suggested the establishment of a ‘fund’ that First Nations groups can draw from when Crown lands are being developed in their area.
“The access fees are already paid (by industry to the province), and to initiate surcharges is wrong – it’s double dipping.”
Members at the meeting unanimously agreed.
“All we need to know, all we’re asking,” offered Darryl Boisson of High Prairie, “is does anybody – any Albertan – have more right than anyone else to access” work on Crown lands? That’s the part the province can deal with, said Redgate, while he cautioned members to remember the dilemma is essentially two-fold — part that’s provincial jurisdiction, the other that’s waiting for a ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada.
“The clearly defined constitutional and treaty rights of First Nations people throughout Canada are concerns presently being reviewed at Federal and Supreme Court levels.”
The matter of provincial jurisdiction, he added, “is related to Crown land management and access of industry — and all Albertans’ (rights to) equally access those lands for resource development.” It’s that Crown land management policy, he added, that the Association “has been asking the province to enforce from the beginning.
“We can no longer wait while the government of Alberta shows reluctance to enforce its legislation on Crown land management while it patiently waits for Federal and Supreme Court decisions.
“It must be clear to Association members and their communities that — in the absence of either legislative or judicial decisions that would provide clarity to our understanding of ‘rights’ – that the existing rules of Alberta must govern the rights of all Albertans to access Crown lands in pursuit of their livelihoods.”
The rules, he said, must be applied to “First Nations, aboriginals and non-aboriginals on an equal basis.”
The specific answer, “must come in the recognition of what consultative requirements must be afforded to First Nations on Alberta’s Crown lands resource base.” And the province must realize that “solutions that advantage one society at the expense of the other will only lead to divisions of the community.”
It’s those divisions “that we’ve seen escalating for the past seven years.”

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