The Alberta Government should give workshops on how not to build trust with the public, you know, those Albertans who pay their salaries.
Postmedia made a freedom of information request (FOIP) for the results of a public opinion survey on renewable energy and agriculture only shortly after the online questionnaire closed last August.
The Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry sent Postmedia a 126-page document two months later. On Nov. 12, the ministry forwarded another 124 pages, for a total of 300 pages that were nearly completely blacked out and redacted.
You can only imagine what the government clerk thought as they mailed 300 functionally blank pages to Postmedia. Maybe something like, “This is weird.”
At least Postmedia got something: the Alberta finance ministry won’t even send out redacted documents and has repeatedly withheld the results of its own survey on a potential Alberta Pension Plan.
Secrecy, Not Accountability, is the New Normal
Government secrecy is becoming the new norm in Alberta. In some cases, like this one, it might even be illegal.
The 34-question opinion survey, conducted online between July 24 and Aug. 14, targeted agricultural landowners, Métis settlement representatives, irrigation district representatives, municipal representatives, and renewable energy companies.
Questions centred around how farming and ranching could coexist with renewables, like solar and wind energy.
“Your input will be used to determine criteria to identify the suitability of agricultural land for renewable energy development,” the survey stated.
According to a report by the Edmonton Journal, the ministry leaned on sections of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) that allow exemptions for third-party information ” reveal(ing) the substance of deliberations of the executive council” or cabinet discussions about “advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options.”
However, nowhere in FOIP does it say that the government can withhold survey data, which is what Postmedia asked for in its official request.
These redacted 300 pages have the steaming stench of a government that has no problem keeping the public in the dark about data that undermines its political agenda.
As far as TheRockies.Life can determine the survey data has yet to be seen by anyone outside of the government.
Let the Data Speak
But we’re willing to make a bet. If the survey results were an overwhelming thumbs down for renewable energy development, nobody would have had to make a FOIP request to see them.
Government communications staffers would have immediately scheduled a news conference so that agriculture minister RJ Sigurdson could tell the world that farming and renewable energy are like oil and water—they don’t mix.
Instead, the ministry has sat on the results for almost three months, probably because the results paint a more complicated picture than the government wants to acknowledge.
If we were to guess, the survey results probably highlighted legitimate concerns about wind and solar on agricultural and municipal lands.
However, there was probably optimism that, if planned well, wind turbines and solar panels could coexist with agriculture in some carefully designated areas. And with the emerging field of agrivoltaics, where agriculture and solar not only coexist but mutually benefit each other, it makes sense to make Alberta, the sunniest province in Alberta, the leader in the renewable/agriculture merger.
But we are only guessing what Albertans told the government because the Sharpie markers keep blocking the results.
Maybe Postmedia can request a FOIP on the government’s budget for Sharpies! But then again, they will probably just get another 300 pages of blacked-out documents.
