Protect the Prairie

[kato]

Check this out.

http://protecttheprairie.ca/

Had this shared with me on Facebook. IMHO, it needs to be shared a lot more. The word Viral comes to mind.

[grassfarmer]

Better watch out the guys over on the commodity
forum don't read this kato - you siding with these
Union types in an attempt to perpetuate state
ownership of land. You'll be labelled a communist or
worse, lol.

[ASRG]

Nice video/nice pictures.
Why is a union promoting this?
This kind of feel good stuff usually is a smoke screen for an agenda....in this case probably Agenda 21! They talk about "crown land" but in reality they mean ALL land. In fact I would question if every picture in this video is actually crown land?
When they paint this as protecting prairie from the "evil oil companies and developers", does that include the evil grazing leaseholders? I suspect a big city union feels a lot closer to a multi national oil company that they do with an independent grazing lease rancher?
And when you really think about it every last one of us is sitting on former "crown land", once owned by the government of the day? If the government had never sold it in the first place we'd be sitting in some slum in Europe!
But now we have ours....so to hell with everybody else? That isn't how this country was built.

[kato]

Is it not the union that represents the PFRA workers? If so, they have every reason to be upset. I know I would be.

[Happytrails]

Government management of land is often very expensive. Transferring control to the users is better IMHO. If the riders need a job they should seek a contract with the new management or look in the Western Producer. There are lots of jobs in agriculture not being filled these days.

[sumdumguy]

It just seems as though some of these institutions
are so much a part of the prairies that it is odd
the government would just dump them. I'd like to
see them dump an institution in Kabec.

[ASRG]

I didn't realize this was about the PFRA patures in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. In Alberta they are always selling crown land (about 14,000 acres last year) and it is usually up north and is basically unused swamp/brush.
Did the PFRA pastures turn a profit for the government or were they an expense?
If the pasture patrons take over the former PFRA pastures will they be paying the province for using the property?

[smcgrath76]

PFRA (now AESB) was a long time branch of the government based in Western
Canada and basically created to deal with the dust bowl of the 1930s. They
had a world class tree farm with nearly 100 years of breeding for genetics
and species suitable to Western Canadian conditions. That alone is probably
responsible for 90% of the trees around farmyards and shelterbelts in the
prairies. The PFRA pastures maintained large tracts of open grasslands and
a lot of reclaimed land that bascilally blew to somewhere in Wyoming in the
1930s. They also did a lot of work bringing genetics into the commercial
cowherd. PFRA pasture program and tree farm were break even programs and
PFRA had established a set of world class experts on
water/drought/pasture/tree and other ecosystem related challenges.
Additionally they also had a very good track record of working with real
producers to make good things happen.
I appreciate that things change over time, but in my mind the decision to
gut PFRA is based on dogma, not reality and it displays the contempt of the
current government for anything that might have an environmental benefit.
Some of the pastures are in the process of being restructured, but there are
not even conservation easements placed on these tracts, with many housing
endangered species and providing long term economic returns and
environmental goods when simply left as is. I suspect there are a lot of
folks who would like to try out the new no-till technologies on some of the
land reclaimed 2 or 3 generations ago.

[ASRG]

Sean: I know I have at least a couple of water wells where the PFRA paid one third of the drilling costs. I also have shelter belts that came from the PFRA at Indian Head (they didn't cost me anything).
I believe both these programs are gone now.

[kato]

Our local pasture has an environmental designation. Otherwise the bulldozers would be in there right quick, followed by the potatoes and the spray planes. The local guys were thinking ahead on this one.

If anyone anywhere in the government could come up with a reason for actually throwing all this away, I'd like to hear it. I suspect that there is NO reason, other than an idealogical one.

The ideology of the Harper government is not for the benefit of the citizens. It's all about big business, IMHO.