Class Action

[Horse]

cowman, if I rent land from you, we would have to negotiate who got the surface revenue from any wells and I sure would not have right to sell your land or the lease to anyone else would I? So I wonder how leasing public land is any different.
Municipalities rent land they own to private citizens but they do not get the surface revenue and they cannot sublease it to anyone else. That is the way the entire Public Land issue should be.

[ivbinconned]

Just a guess here but isn't it quite possible that the leases are the leasie's to sell because they are an integeral component of what might be a viable operation and if a land owner can not include a lease (that has been developed and improved over many years at HIS EXPENCE) in a given package... then land deals will fail as a result.

This makes it possable for long established operations to stay intact from one generation to the next??

Just asking!

[Horse]

At his expence how does that figure when he never paid anything in the first place and he sure hasnt paid his share since.

[ivbinconned]

fences, roads, water projects, power, etc.....

[cowman]

Horse: You answered your own question in a round about way? The fact is the leasee might have paid quite a bit for that lease? Probably quite a bit more than it is actually worth? Most of these leases are junk land that produces little. You quoted one lease that was selling for over $700,000?
If the government ever decided to change the rules in the middle of the game and tried to cancel the leases, how long do you think it would take for a lawsuit? A lawsuit the government cannot win?
Back in the late seventies Lougheed tried the same sort of BS with oil rights. Tried to say the oil and gas belonged to the people of Alberta and should never have gone to the freeholders! He got his butt kicked in court! You can not steal peoples property and get away with it? This isn't Russia or something, hopefully we still have property rights!
Yes the grazing leases are costing the Alberta taxpayer a lot of money to have cows on them and yes the leasees are making a lot of money on surface leases. Probably a mere pittance compared to what the province is raking in from royalties but still a fair bit of money. This has already been fought in the courts and the court ruled a grazing lease is REAL property that can be bought and sold? You can't change that.

[Horse]

Cowman you also answered your own question you cant steal peoples property what are lease holders doing ,? show me anywhere it says in a lease that you as a lease holder are intitled to oil revenue . You have signed a lease to use the grass.You cant cut trees without permission and you cannot grass someone elses cattle so I realy dont think your argument holds water.
Ibvc I dont know about Sask but here we pay for water and brushing I dont know about roads but why should we pay so you have better access to said lease. The lease holder gets permission to say put in a watering system he does so with his own money but he dosent pay any rent until he has recovered his cost so who actualy paid.

[blackjack]

...put the lease land up for sale...but horse...i have a feeling you would be mighty disappointed in who would buy it...

[ivbinconned]

Here the holder of a lease pays for any improvments and still pays all the fees and taxes.

If and when the lease changes hands the new leaser has to pay for the improvments at a negotiated price.

Also horse one point I made that you have not commented on, so I will repeat it. The holders of grazing leases have to keep paying all the fees and taxes even in years of drought, when there is NO use and therfore NO income from the land.

I recently went 7 years where the use of my lease was nill! It will take a few good ones to regain my costs.

I make this point because of the difference between renting deeded land from a private person as compared to a crown lease.

[Horse]

IVBC do you pay by AUM or set acerage price, if you pay per AUM I rather doubt you pay more on good yrs than poor ones theAUM set here is a joke mabey 20-30 AUM per 1/4 most if not all here use more AUMs than they pay for There is supose to be 25% left for wildlife well in the dry yrs the wildlife went on a diet or moved into hay stacks and then the gov paid damages because the leaseholder took more than his share.I think the deaded land holder took it on the chin to so why should the gov lease holder get a cake walk?
And if that isnt enough then take your own advice and move to Alta.

[cowman]

Horse: I don't know why or how the situation evolved the way it did for grazing leases? I do believe the leaseholder should have some say in oil and gas exploration on the leases? If you let the oil companies just deal with government flunkies they would just do whatever, whenever they wanted to?
Several years ago a hunter challenged the grazing leases in court? The Rio Alto ranch was basically bought as a playground for wealthy oil man Doc Seamans and he intended keeping it as a private hunting preserve(16,000acres) for himself and his rich buddies? A native hunter was denied access and he took them to court. He won, but the whole thing was rather cloudy because of the fact he was an Indian...so not sure if that is still the accepted practice?
Without a doubt the grazing lease situation in Alberta is costing the tax payer a lot of money, but maybe is not such a bad solution? At least, for the most part, the surface rights revenue is going into the local economy and farmers pockets? Do we really want to put the leases up for sale or annual tender? You know who would have access to them then, right? A hint...not old Joe Rancher!
And in reality if you take away surface rights revenue a lot of these leases just don't make a lot of sense...certainly not enough to justify the high prices being paid for them? And what good are they for people a good distance from them?
My grandfather had a small grazing lease (480 acres). It quite frankly was nothing but a pain in the butt! I think you could only put 45 cows on it and because it couldn't be brushed there were always trees on the fence, cows with sore feet, every man and his dog thought it was a great place to hunt! He sold it about thirty years ago and said buying it was one of the dumbest things he ever did...now mind you there was no oil exploration on it!

[blackjack]

horse...why stop at the rancher...why not go after the natives as well...maybe they will share their oil and gas revenue with you...

[Horse]

Blackjack the natives have a title to thier property even if comunal. Following your argument why not share your salery ,because you worked for it it is yours but we share the govmt share of your salery because the gov is suposedto be me and you.
I realy cant figure out why a subsidy to the yanks and the europeans is bad but a subsidy to lease holders is not.
A subsidy is asubsidy is a subsidy.