One Ponoka County councillor is still pushing Alberta’s government for shelterbelt tree operations in Alberta, and he’s urged MLA Rod Fox to do the same.
When Coun. Gawney Hinkley spoke to the minister of agriculture and rural development, Verlyn Olson, at the spring Alberta Association of Municipal District and Counties (AAMDC) Conference, he felt Olson didn’t know anything about the shelterbelt program in Indian Head, Sask.
The operation was closed because it was costing $3 million to run. However, Hinkley says transferring the shelterbelt to Alberta wouldn’t cost the province any money.
“We have the Bowden Institute and we have the Fort Saskatchewan Institution. The land is at Bowden down there, why can’t the provincial government get along with the federal government long enough to transfer that shelterbelt to the Bowden Institute?” Hinkley asked MLA Rod Fox at the March 26 county meeting.
Hinkley feels having the inmates at Bowden work at a shelterbelt would be a step up from the programs they experience at the institute
“What is the matter with the provincial minister of agriculture that he can’t, he hasn’t got the balls enough to stand up and fight for that to come to this province,” he added.
At the AAMDC Conference Hinkley also told Robin Campbell, minister of aboriginal relations, that a shelterbelt in Hobbema would solve many of the community’s problems because it would give the unemployed people something to do.