Buffalo Lake a political blunder

Buffalo Lake a political blunder I skipped the legislature Monday and drove to Lac La Biche instead to take a first- hand look at a couple of things ( which I hope to write about soon). But question period was on CKUA so I listened in for a while. Hearing it on the radio caused a surge of relief— happiness about being free and out in the world. Most people around the legislature feel that way. The hallways are thick with the pleasant sensation of MLAs and observers rediscovering their humanity. A warped and vicious frame of mind sets in after about two or three weeks of any session. People start to act like over­crowded laboratory rats — lots of biting and clawing; strange obsessions such as Treasurer Dick Johnston's insistence on calling the NDP " Marxist- Leninists." Suspicion creeps in everywhere. Even the public gets into a bad mood. The mail recently brought a clipped newspaper advertisement for a travel out­fit called Elzinga Adventure. The corre­spondent theorized that Economic Devel­opment Minister Peter Elzinga had started a business with heritage fund mon­ey. As it turns out, his nephew owns it, but that's a far cry from the reader's first thought. Then there's the reader who asks why people like me, when they write about Jim Dinning's and Rick Oman's private fund-raising, don't mention the " extra $ 100,000" a year going to Liberal Leader Laurence Mark L i s a c The Province Decore. This is an erroneous reference to the Liberal party's approval of a $ 60,000 annual salary for Decore before he was elected to the legislature. He never did collect, although the party did pay for a few hundred dollars' worth of refinishing for his office furniture. Why do voters harbor these nasty suspi­cions? Maybe it's because they see things like the Buffalo Lake business, which culmi­nated Tuesday in an announcement timed for midway through last question period of the session, possibly of this year. The Buffalo Lake project will solve some genuine water concerns in small communities like Alix. But everything else about it is repellent — the personal involvement of the premier, the fact one of the major tourist businesses on the lake involves a family he counts as friends and political supporters, the way years of envi­ronmental study suddently went out the window^ because of what environmental officials called " renewed interest" in the project, the booster- like atmosphere sur­rounding the review board hearings ( chairman Don Thorne applauded one pro- development presentation and, after one of the few critical presentations, asked if there was any audience rebuttal), the way an economist recanted on a finding of a negative cost- benefit ratio. It's a sad fate for a lake region which. I'm told, was considered as recently as the early 1970s for a possible national park. ( The province was not enthusiastic.) There was even the typical rural- urban rhetoric now used as a red herring any­time someone outside a city wants some­thing. " I guess it's possible sometimes to be in large urban centres and not realize that for people in east- central Alberta, Buffalo Lake is their only lake for bathing, boat­ing and so on," Thorne told reporters Tuesday. Clever pluck at the heart strings. But the environmental impact study in March said the greatest potential for tourism growth at Buffalo Lake lay in cottaging and: " Most of the increase in demand appears tied to economic growth in Cal­gary with city residents accounting for many of the new cottages developed."