These days nearly as many people visit albertaventure.com in a month as subscribe to the magazine. And though there is some overlap between the two groups, most absorb our content through one medium or the other, not both.
That leaves us editorial staff in a kind of love-hate relationship with the website. On the one hand, it is a whole additional burden requiring a separate strategy and content development from people raised on print. On the other, it steps in and solves certain limitations to the print product.
A perfect example of the latter is our annual “Best and Worst” feature, commemorating the noteworthy business news of the past year in Alberta. At best the magazine can cover the first 10 months of the year; it typically takes three months to plan, assign, edit, design, print and distribute a paper magazine. The December issue, for example, was on press on Nov. 11. How then do you treat a really important business story like Bill 50, which eventually was passed in the legislature on Nov. 25? Doesn’t that qualify as best or worst, depending on your perspective?
Here’s where the website can really complement our commitment to magazine readers. This year for the first time we’ve committed to continue adding to the Best and Worst package right up to Dec. 31 online. And it’ll still be there in 2010 for those seeking to refer back to a story that took place over this tumultuous year for business.
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I’d like to take a moment to comment on a really important development in our neighbouring province to the west that may have escaped the notice of Alberta readers. In November the Nisga’a Lisims government in northwestern B.C., created in 1998 by the province’s first modern aboriginal treaty, passed a law permitting individual, fee-simple ownership of tribal lands.
Other commentators noted the significance of this in the context of the Indian Act (which holds all reserve lands in common) and the evolving social development of Canada’s first nations. They brought up the writings of former World Bank economist Hernando de Soto, who theorized in his book The Mystery of Capital that the most important cause of poverty in the developing world is the inability of individuals to secure title to their land and thus use it as collateral for loans the way most of us in the developed world do. You can see the obvious parallel on Canada’s native reserves where people live in expensive, substandard housing provided by constitutional obligation by a paternal federal government.
But there’s a still more important implication to the province of B.C., where more than 90% of the land base is owned by the Crown (which in most areas bothered neither to conquer nor sign a treaty with the existing inhabitants as a body of international law requires). That’s why, when you drive B.C.’s highways, you have to make sure your gas tank is full; you can go tens, even hundreds of kilometres between commercial developments of any kind. (Compare this to the state of Washington, where you can find motels and service stations and artisanal shops almost anywhere.) The Crown land is off-limits to all but forestry monoculture and preservation. It can only be bought under certain circumstances such as for agriculture, which is impossible in 95% of the mountainous province. Indeed, even the forest licences dictate how and where the tree harvest can be used and processed.
Back in 1991 I flew, then drove, with then-premier Bill Vander Zalm and a clutch of other journalists to the Nisga’a capital of New Aiyansh to see him break with 120 years of denial of native claims and initiate the treaty negotiation with the Nisga’a. Many right-wing commentators then (and remember Vander Zalm was on the far right of the political spectrum) viewed this as unprincipled appeasement of native activism (this was the summer of the Oka standoff) that would deny British Columbians their birthright and remove most of B.C. from the market economy.
However I felt at the time, and last month’s news from New Aiyansh confirms it, that the settlement of land claims would instead liberate B.C. from chronic underdevelopment due to government ownership of the land base. It amounts to the de facto privatization of B.C. Now Nisga’a land can be bought and sold between owners, both native and non-native. Most importantly it can be mortgaged, providing capital to the rural people who most need it. Although there are certain land-use covenants on the land still, I foresee a day when, thanks to the treaty process, anyone can acquire land all over B.C. (which is about twice the size of Alberta, remember) and use it for the highest possible use, whether it be for a woodlot, recreational property, gas station, eco-lodge, what have you. And that will be a very good thing for all of Western Canada.
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A number of people have asked me for my thoughts on the Wildrose Alliance. I have to reply that I’m not a political commentator. However in a recent column for Investment Executive shortly after Danielle Smith’s ascension to the party leadership, I did look at some of the economic implications, or rather limitations.
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