crown land

[jdavis]

I understand you are a livestock producer. Do you feel it is fair the way crown land is administered. As for being rewarded for good stewardship that is some kind of doublespeek to cloud the issue. If I rent land from an individual I have to abide by the agreement I do not get a reward for doing my part other than the privilage of renewing my lease when it is due , so why should lease holders get free rent and resource revenue for living up to their obligations. If they can not farm without welfare then they should move on to some thing they are more suited to.

[plowjockey]

I agree with oilcan on this issue. I am a Beef producer in Sask where the Gov. took the resource money away on our crown lease land when they built up a huge debt. I would have liked to have seen that money spent where we could have seen the results not buried in Gov. paper. As far as Competition goes I can not see that one producer or the few that have leases are geting rich and if you are in cattle you will know that it is a long term deal and to jump in and out on a yearly basis just for the sake of competition is not logical! It opens the door for bad stuardship!

[cowman]

I agree with jdavis to a certain degree but I wonder if the rates are a lot higher in other parts of the province. Maybe a more realistic rate would be more fair and it certainly seems unfair that leaseholders recieve the resource revenue. The problem is these leaseholders, in many cases, bought these leases with the understanding that this was the deal and paid accordingly. Is it fair to change the rules now without some form of compensation? Leases can be bought and sold by anyone and we do live in a market economy that has some rules about private property. And I do believe that the courts have ruled that crown leases are real property. So how do we deal with that in a fair way?

[jdavis]

On the Alta gov web site on public land it says "lease holders pay app 3.5 mill in rent and is estamated they recieve 40 mill in annual resource revenue on one large lease the rent is less than $30,000 and recieves more than $400,000annualy. on one small lease less than $650. rent but recievesapp $75.000 a lease holder in east central alta would recieve app 2.000 first yr and 1,000 per yr annualy and pay only 200 in rent and taxes. Now I would say some are getting rich and they sure dont need cows to do it.Plus they still get the use of the grass that is what they are supose to be renting not oil wells . It puts any one with a grazing lease at a real advantage . If the young people could get a deal like that mabey some more would give farming a try.