EDMONTON – The Alberta government should not be able to wash its hands of the federal endangered species legislation, says the Western Stock Growers Association.
Environment minister Ty Lund told the legislative committee on agriculture and rural development that the province’s lawyers say the federal government has the constitutional power to impose the law.
“That’s a cop-out,” said stock grower Dave Wildman of Sangudo after the committee meeting. “If the provincial government will back a barley producer’s challenge to the (Canadian) Wheat Board, they certainly should back the same challenge to this endangered species legislation.”
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Lund is no fan of the federal legislation, which has passed first reading in the House of Commons. He told stock growers he feared it could give the federal government control of wildlife on private land since the law protects the animals even if they wander off government land.
The stock growers urged Alberta to fight the legislation in the courts, but Lund said there weren’t good grounds for a challenge.
Freedom threatened
The stock growers are particularly impassioned about endangered species legislation because they see it as the thin edge of a wedge cutting into their two most cherished principles: The sanctity of private property and provincial freedom.
“This is just another example of the federal government moving into provincial jurisdiction and expropriating private property without compensation,” said stock grower Dave Foat.
“If we’re willing to relinquish our wildlife, then we’d better be willing to relinquish our oil, our gas, our mining, our forestry, and eventually our farmland.”
