A private investigator hired by the Alberta Energy Utilities Board posed as an aggrieved landowner to participate in conference calls of groups opposed to major power-line projects in Alberta and Montana, angry landowners and environmentalists said Tuesday.
Private investigator Don MacDonald of Fort Saskatchewan joined conference calls organized by the Alberta Environmental Network.
The group included landowners and their lawyers opposed to major projects, including a proposed Edmonton-to-Calgary line and another that could allow Alberta to export power to the U.S.
The first of those is the subject of a utilities board hearing underway in Rimbey.
The board said MacDonald and three other private investigators were hired only to monitor Rimbey-area landowners to see if they might become violent.
One owner produced a series of e-mails showing MacDonald was on a distribution list of landowners and environmentalists on both sides of the border.
In one e-mail, dated May 28, longtime environmental activist Brian Staszenski, believing MacDonald was a landowner, told him about an upcoming conference call between owners and Toronto lawyer Donald Bur. An upcoming challenge in the Alberta Court of Appeal to the hearings in Rimbey was discussed in that call.
MacDonald had already participated in at least one previous conference call, said Joe Anglin of Rimbey, who heads a group of 700 landowners opposed to the proposed 500,000-volt power transmission line.
MacDonald declined comment Tuesday.
Al Palmer, executive manager of corporate services for the utilities board, said if the allegations are true, MacDonald exceeded his mandate. Palmer said MacDonald never gave the board any information from the landowners.
MacDonald and three other private investigators were hired only to monitor people who gathered daily in the Rimbey recreation centre to watch a hearing on closed-circuit TV.
“The private investigators only reported to us about the potential for violence,” Palmer said. “Because they reported there was none, we let them go.”
The landowners and their lawyers have accused the private investigators of eavesdropping on their conversations, in violation of solicitor-client privilege.
The landowners are angry because the board has ruled the Rimbey hearings will be limited to learning whether the proposed power line down the west side of the Queen Elizabeth II Highway would meet the future power needs of industry and residents in the Calgary area. Local landowners say the board has refused to listen to any objections to the line, environmental or otherwise.
In mid-April, a board hearing in Red Deer was disrupted by yelling and physical confrontations, which led to the public being barred from the Rimbey hearings. The public must instead watch the hearings on closed-circuit TV.
Despite those arrangements and uniformed security in the nearby courthouse, the board hired private investigators to monitor the landowners’ gatherings in the Rimbey rec centre for signs of potential violence.
When told that the investigators had passed themselves off as landowners, Palmer said that wasn’t their mandate.
“We would not approve of that,” Palmer said. “They were only told to sit in the crowd.”
Palmer says he wasn’t told about MacDonald’s participation in the conference calls. “He did that on his own.”
Anglin, the head of the landowners’ group, said he is becoming increasingly paranoid about what he believes may be government and industry spying. “There’s something much deeper going on,” he said.
That’s possible, Palmer admitted, but the utilities board would not be involved.
“(Don MacDonald) is with a company that works for multiple companies,” he said.
Marie Barkley of Carstairs first introduced MacDonald to other people attending the televised hearings. She was sitting in the Rimbey rec centre TV room and watching the proceedings when MacDonald came over to chat.
“He said he was worried about a power line they wanted to build in Fort Saskatchewan,” Barkley said. “I hadn’t heard about it so I took him over and introduced him to Brian Staszenski.”
That introduction led to MacDonald getting a password that would allow him to join in conference calls. On May 28, MacDonald wrote to various people involved in those calls to thank them for including him. He also thanked them for telling him the Canadian president of Greenpeace was coming to the area for a training program.
That training program involved teaching people opposed to oilsands development how to protest peacefully. MacDonald indicated he would attend that training camp, but never showed up, Staszenski said.
Edmonton MLA David Eggen, environmental critic for the NDP, was also barred from the hearing and had to watch it on TV.
“It’s a culture of intimidation,” Eggen said. “For an MLA to be barred from the hearing speaks volumes about these proceedings.”
