Review staff
Two of the Alberta Green Party’s most recognizable members have been awarded with shadow cabinet positions following de-briefing and organizational meetings held recently in Calgary.
Edwin Erickson of Buck Lake who placed second to MLA Ty Lund in the riding of Drayton Valley-Calmar during the recent provincial election, and Joe Anglin of Rimbey who placed second to Lacombe-Ponoka MLA Ray Prins, were named to shadow the portfolios of a number of high-profile departments.
Erickson will be the Green Party’s opposition to Sustainable Resources Minister Ted Morton and will also cover the files of Agriculture and Rural Development which is currently under the direction of Minister George Groeneveld.
Anglin, who received nation-wide attention last year in leading a controversial battle against the provincial government’s Energy and Utilities Board (now the AUC) spying on citizens, will continue in his role in shadowing the Alberta Department of Energy and its minister, Mel Knight.
“I took on that position in late summer, 2007, when the Alberta Greens established their shadow cabinet, so it was a bit of a natural that I be re-appointed,” Erickson said from his home in Buck Lake. “I have six generations of background in small-scale, value-added forestry, and am still involved. I will always have a deep connection to forestry and wildlife interests.”
Erickson said he already has a lengthy list of problems that need to be addressed in the area of sustainable resources ranging from the very small to the very large.
“It would take a couple of hours to cover these issues adequately but the closure of the Weyerhaeuser OSB plant in Drayton Valley needs to be addressed. Personally, I don’t think the Drayton Valley Forest Management Agreement (FMA) should ever have been granted to a foreign company in the first place. We have put all our eggs in the Weyerhaeuser basket, and where has it got us? We need to turn that timber back into the hands of smaller Alberta entrepreneurs. Our over-dependence on the U.S. building market has come back to haunt us,” Erickson said.
He quickly moved from the world’s largest producer of dimensional lumber to a tiny insect that could bring companies like Weyerhaeuser, and the entire lumber industry, to their knees, and added that the issue of diminishing wildlife in Alberta also needs to be addressed.
“Although the Mountain Pine Beetle seems to be in a somewhat stagnant growth phase right now, we must be vigilant in monitoring its spread into Alberta,” he said. “We also need to immediately take serious stock of our diminishing wildlife species and their eroding habitat. Woodland Caribou, Wolves and Grizzly Bear are species which come immediately to mind.”
In order to protect those species and others, Erickson said it is vitally important that a balance be struck between the oil and gas industry and the proper management of the forestry industry.
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“We need to address the integration of forestry land-use by resource interests. As long as oil and gas and other mining exploration is permitted to clear rights-of-way without taking into consideration the infringement on forestry Annual Allowable Cuts (ACC), there is no accurate way for forest companies to predictably plan AAC and sustainable logging of cut-blocks,” he said.
As for his new responsibilities as shadow minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for the Green Party, Erickson said there’s plenty of work that needs to be done in those departments as well.
“The Family Farm is on its way to extinction in Alberta, unless some serious effort is put into re-vitalizing it. International corporate interests have been permitted to work all ends of agricultural markets from raising, feeding and slaughtering to processing and marketing of beef and other meat products,” he said. “Alberta consumers now generally have no clue as to the origin or content of the foods they consume, while the province’s producers become increasingly jeopardized at the hands of corporate conglomerates. And why, by the way, do we need to import beef from Australia, lettuce and tomatoes from California, and dried bread from Vermont? We need to support family-sized, local agricultural producers by encouraging localized control of processing, by developing new value-added markets, and by legislating against monopolistic control.”
While Alberta’s cities continues to boom and attracts tens of thousands on new residents every year, the same, according to Erickson, cannot be said about the province’s rural areas.
“Many of our smaller rural communities are dying. Municipal governments are increasingly expected to do more for less, while passing autonomy over to the provincial government,” he said. “Elected municipal representatives are expected to yield to unnecessarily top-heavy middle management, which doesn’t always have the best interests of the local citizens and communities as a priority. We need to take the blinders off and start thinking ‘outside the box’”.
As for the recent election that saw him gain a substantially higher number of votes than in his previous run for office during the 2004 provincial campaign, Erickson said while he was a bit disappointed, his party also experiences some major growth.
“It was our intention to win, so, naturally, I was disappointed. However, I did more than double my result from the 2004 election, which is encouraging. Provincially, the Alberta Greens also almost doubled its popular vote,” he said.
“In fact, aside from the PC’s, we were the only party that gained ground in this election. Having said that, after 37 years in power, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives are a huge machine and will have been in power for 41 or 42 years by the time of the next election. I haven’t completed the research yet, but I think that must be some kind of international record, even compared to countries like Cuba. It is a formidable challenge to take on a regime which is that ingrained in any jurisdiction. Many people start thinking that there is no other alternative – I think that’s quite apparent in the voter turn-out,” Erickson said.
“We also had a great team working with us this time, with over 10 times as many volunteers as in 2004,” he added. “I’m fully confident that we conducted the best organized campaign of all the parties here in Drayton Valley-Calmar, and we had a dynamite campaign manager in Connie Jensen.”
Anglin brings 30 years worth of experience in energy and utilities delivery in both Canada and the U.S., while Erickson gained his expertise through many years of active involvement in the value-added forestry sector and through his agricultural background in the Drayton Valley area.
In addition to their past individual efforts with the Alberta Greens, Anglin and Erickson led thousands of Albertans last fall in a province-wide assault on the infamous Bill 46, which was passed in an all-night session of the Alberta Legislative Assembly on December 4, 2007.
Both candidates faired very well in their respective ridings, with Erickson capturing 19.4 per cent of the popular vote in Drayton Valley-Calmar while Anglin capturing 23 per cent of the popular vote in Lacombe-Ponoka. Provincially, the Alberta Greens enjoyed a formidable 78 per cent increase in popular voter support in the March 3 provincial election.
“We need to address the integration of forestry land-use by resource interests. As long as oil and gas and other mining exploration is permitted to clear rights-of-way without taking into consideration the infringement on forestry Annual Allowable Cuts (ACC), there is no accurate way for forest companies to predictably plan AAC and sustainable logging of cut-blocks,” he said.
As for his new responsibilities as shadow minister of Agriculture and Rural Development for the Green Party, Erickson said there’s plenty of work that needs to be done in those departments as well.
“The family farm is on its way to extinction in Alberta, unless some serious effort is put into re-vitalizing it. International corporate interests have been permitted to work all ends of agricultural markets from raising, feeding and slaughtering to processing and marketing of beef and other meat products,” he said. “Alberta consumers now generally have no clue as to the origin or content of the foods they consume, while the province’s producers become increasingly jeopardized at the hands of corporate conglomerates. And why, by the way, do we need to import beef from Australia, lettuce and tomatoes from California, and dried bread from Vermont? We need to support family-sized, local agricultural producers by encouraging localized control of processing, by developing new value-added markets, and by legislating against monopolistic control.”
While Alberta’s cities continues to boom and attracts tens of thousands on new residents every year, the same, according to Erickson, cannot be said about the province’s rural areas.
“Many of our smaller rural communities are dying. Municipal governments are increasingly expected to do more for less, while passing autonomy over to the provincial government,” he said. “Elected municipal representatives are expected to yield to unnecessarily top-heavy middle management, which doesn’t always have the best interests of the local citizens and communities as a priority. We need to take the blinders off and start thinking ‘outside the box’”.
As for the recent election that saw him gain a substantially higher number of votes than in his previous run for office during the 2004 provincial campaign, Erickson said while he was a bit disappointed, his party also experiences some major growth.
“It was our intention to win, so, naturally, I was disappointed. However, I did more than double my result from the 2004 election, which is encouraging. Provincially, the Alberta Greens also almost doubled its popular vote,” he said.
“In fact, aside from the PCs, we were the only party that gained ground in this election. Having said that, after 37 years in power, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives are a huge machine and will have been in power for 41 or 42 years by the time of the next election. I haven’t completed the research yet, but I think that must be some kind of international record, even compared to countries like Cuba. It is a formidable challenge to take on a regime which is that ingrained in any jurisdiction. Many people start thinking that there is no other alternative – I think that’s quite apparent in the voter turn-out,” Erickson said.
“We also had a great team working with us this time, with over 10 times as many volunteers as in 2004,” he added. “I’m fully confident that we conducted the best organized campaign of all the parties here in Drayton Valley-Calmar, and we had a dynamite campaign manager in Connie Jensen.”
Anglin brings 30 years worth of experience in energy and utilities delivery in both Canada and the U.S., while Erickson gained his expertise through many years of active involvement in the value-added forestry sector and through his agricultural background in the Drayton Valley area.
In addition to their past individual efforts with the Alberta Greens, Anglin and Erickson led thousands of Albertans last fall in a province-wide assault on the infamous Bill 46, which was passed in an all-night session of the Alberta Legislative Assembly on December 4, 2007.
Both candidates faired very well in their respective ridings, with Erickson capturing 19.4 per cent of the popular vote in Drayton Valley-Calmar while Anglin capturing 23 per cent of the popular vote in Lacombe-Ponoka. Provincially, the Alberta Greens enjoyed a formidable 78 per cent increase in popular voter support in the March 3 provincial election.
Anglin brings 30 years worth of experience in energy and utilities delivery in both Canada and the U.S., while Erickson gained his expertise through many years of active involvement in the value-added forestry sector and through his agricultural background in the Drayton Valley area.
In addition to their past individual efforts with the Alberta Greens, Anglin and Erickson led thousands of Albertans last fall in a province-wide assault on the infamous Bill 46, which was passed in an all-night session of the Alberta Legislative Assembly on Dec. 4, 2007. Both candidates faired very well in their respective ridings, with Erickson capturing 19.4 per cent of the popular vote in Drayton Valley-Calmar while Anglin capturing 23 per cent of the popular vote in Lacombe-Ponoka. Provincially, the Alberta Greens enjoyed a formidable 78 per cent increase in popular voter support in the March 3 provincial election.