CAMROSE, Alta. – Environmentalists are the only group that will win if farmers fight among themselves over the release of a controversial report on agriculture and the oil industry, said a southern Alberta rancher.
“Environmentalists are putting a pox on both our houses,” said Tom Livingston during the Alberta Surface Rights annual meeting.
“Every time we have a confrontation it always gets into the press,” said Livingston, of Duchess.
About four years ago the Alberta Cattle Commission began work on a report on the effects of the oil and gas industry and agriculture.
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A draft copy of the report was released last year to some oil and government officials for review. The commission also sent the report for a peer review who said the report made leaps of logic and didn’t include modern oilfield practices.
Many farmers have been calling for the release of the draft copy.
Livingston said the report is “too important” to fight about over small issues like an early release.
“There are some suggestions the report is incomplete. I suggest we don’t go off half-cocked. Let’s see what the final report has to say before we comment on it,” he told the group.
“I’d like to point out any place we can have co-operation rather than confrontation, it’s more productive.”
“As I understand, some parts of it wouldn’t hold a bale of hay,” said Livingston.
But Bill Bocock, a dairy farmer from St. Albert, near Edmonton, has called for release of the report.
“It seems rather ironic that the report is in the hands of industry and government and farmers are denied access to the report when it was initiated and partly funded by farmers.”
