From TheTyee.ca – Feb 8, 2011
by Andrew Nikiforuk
Two years ago, Alberta’s Transportation Minister Luke
Ouellette described Joe Anglin, a former U.S. Marine and telephone
transmission engineer, as “dangerous individual and a trouble maker.”
At a conference of the Alberta Urban
Municipalities Association, Ouellette also wondered aloud “why someone
hadn’t dealt with [Anglin].”
It was a remarkable declaration and one for which neither Ouellette nor the Progressive Conservative Party has ever apologized.
But it’s not hard to understand why a
government ruled by one party for 40 years and now beset by political
scandal deeply fears the political crusader.
Over the last six years the 55-year-old
father of two has arguably become the most persistent and informed
critic of the government’s controversial plans to build $16.5 billion
worth of transmission lines and all largely for U.S. export.
“It’s all driven by the oil sands and the
failure of electricity deregulation,” adds Anglin. “I don’t think
Alberta’s politicians are bad or evil but they are incompetent and
dumber than you’re average monkey. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve
caught them lying.”
Three bills got blood boiling
Anglin first made a name for himself by
exposing systematic regulatory corruption on transmission approvals with
a series of legal challenges that dramatically forced the break-up of
the province’s energy regulator in 2007.
Then the businessman and his 1,000 member
Lavesta Area Group focused their attention on the political fallout:
three unprecedented pieces of legislation (Bill 19, 36 and 50) that
squarely limited public dissent on transmission issues and concentrated
all decision making power in the provincial cabinet.
In some government circles one of the bills (Bill 50), designed to end any landowner legal challenges to transmission lines, is even known as “the Anglin Bill.”
Both detractors and admirers alike call
Anglin a determined pit bull if not a scrapper who also enjoys nothing
more than a good fight.
“The only reason that Anglin is dangerous,” explains prominent St. Albert lawyer Keith Wilson, “is because he has so much information. He’s exposed how corrupt the government’s transmission line really is.”
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