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Bill 9 - Land Agents Licensing Amendment Act, 2008

October 15, 2008 - Committee of the Whole

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I’m pleased to get an opportunity to speak in Committee of the Whole to Bill 9, the Land Agents Licensing Amendment Act, 2008. This has been a really interesting journey for me. Clearly, I represent downtown Edmonton. You don’t get many land agents negotiating in downtown Edmonton, so I have learned a lot while I’ve done this bill.

A number of people have contacted me around this bill. Admittedly, it was back in the springtime, and I’m a bit rusty and trying to get back up to speed on what all of my notes mean. But the first thing I want to address is that I indicated that not many women were involved in this particular profession and was immediately called to task, a couple of times politely and a couple of times not politely.

In fact, I have researched, and as of last spring 169 licensed land agents were women out of approximately a total of 1,500 at that time. So my apologies to those women that I inadvertently dismissed. I certainly didn’t intend on doing that, and I am delighted to see that so many women have made this their profession. The ones I’ve met are pretty impressive – I will say that – and are doing a great job in the field.

What bothers me about this act is that the definition is changing now and that, essentially, the issue of being paid to do this has been removed because what we’re doing is repealing. This Bill 9 is essentially dealing with one section in the existing bill, section 1(c). Section 1(c) before gave the definition of a land agent as someone who

(A) on behalf of a person’s employer, (B) as an agent on behalf of another person, or (C) on the person’s own behalf, negotiates for or acquires an interest in land, or . . .

And here’s the piece that’s now going to be missing.

(ii) a person who for a fee, which includes accepting compensation for travel and other incidental expenses, gives or offers advice to an owner or the owner’s agent with respect to a negotiation for or acquisition of an interest in land.

That was the existing description in the legislation. What we have now is that is entirely repealed and substituted and, as is usual, it’s substituted with most of what was there before.

We’ve got:

(c) “land agent” means a person who negotiates for or acquires an interest in land
(i) on behalf of the person’s employer,
(ii) as an agent on behalf of another person, or
(iii) on the person’s own behalf.

So it has taken out that last clause about a fee.

I, of all people in this Assembly, truly understand the concept of choice. I think what I’m concerned about here is consumer protection. I can already hear people saying: “Well, you know, these people are intelligent people. They run their own businesses. In a lot of cases they’re farmers, they’re small businesspeople. You know, they don’t need protection from nothing.” True enough. But the government gets involved in a lot of consumer protection around identifying professions, setting out educational requirements and standards for them, so I’m a little curious as to why this would not come into play with this particular act where, in fact, the government is going in exactly the opposite direction and saying: “No. We’ll put no requirements out there for what a land agent is expected to do, educational requirements or standards, in any way, shape, or form.”

Another one that would be similar or would come to mind if you’re looking for a comparison profession would be real estate agents. Quite similar. They are negotiating on either side, a buyer and a seller, over particular attributes of a piece of property. They’re certainly regulated by government, and a set of standards is put in place or the requirement that an association do that.

What we have here is an act that, as I read it, is supposed to make it easier for unattached land agents to operate, to get hired, in other words. So they don’t have to be affiliated with anybody else. They could be a friend. They could be a neighbour. They could be your son-in-law or your aunt who negotiates on your behalf for this. You would expect that a certain – what’s the Latin phrase? – buyer beware would kick into place, and you’d want to make sure that you were covered as well as you could be. But people don’t always do that, and they may get their aunt or their son-in-law to help them out with this. Who will end up bearing the consequences if this is a negotiation that is not carried out with a great deal of knowledge about what’s required in these transactions?

One of the people that I met brought with them every single act that they have to deal with, and I think they piled up about seven or nine of them on my desk. These were all the acts that they were expected to know and to be able to deal with appropriately in the course of these transactions. I had to admit it was impressive.

Clearly, this individual – again, it was a woman – knew her stuff. She knew her way around this.

Another question that comes to mind is: if you end up with someone who’s not a licensed land agent who ends up negotiating, now there’s an expectation that their services will be paid for by the oil and gas company, as has been the tradition. But as my colleague from Cypress-Medicine Hat pointed out, it’s not a requirement under the act; it’s a precedent in the industry. Now you have a person who has negotiated, maybe well, maybe not so well, who expects their fees to be paid by the oil and gas company. The oil and gas company says: well, no; you didn’t meet these standards that they have or that the original land agents association has in place. And they don’t want to pay them. Well, what’s a person going to do? They’re going to turn around and go back to the original landowner and say: well, you pay me, then. Now we have a different thing in play.

My concern with all of this is that when we are sanctioning a profession or we’re saying that these people are out there and it’s okay with the government if they conduct business, I’m looking for the role the government does have to play in this. I don’t think the government has to be involved in the nitty gritty of every single little transaction that goes on – I don’t – but I think government is our only level of protection to make sure that there is a level of consumer awareness that is built into any process.

I would like to see some specific requirements for these unattached land agents, who don’t seem to be going through the same process as the land agents that have been in touch with me, that in order to get a licence have to go through a fairly rigorous process where they need to study, they need to go to school, they have to pass a test, they have to obtain a sponsor, they have to train for a year, they have to negotiate some leases, and then they have to pass another test. So they’re not fooling around here. In order to be licensed, they’re expecting a certain amount of things to happen, and they are expected under the original act to provide ethical and professional services and to serve both oil and gas and the landowners.

If we have an unlicensed, unattached person who is acting in an unprofessional manner, what recourse is there? It sounds like nothing. Tough luck. You should have figured that one out and not hired that person. That’s what it’s sounding like is out there. Is that really the way we want things to be when we’re talking about negotiating right-of-way and leases on land and things like that?

Why wouldn’t we have a landowner representative obtaining a land agents’ licence? Why wouldn’t they want to do that? Why would we be creating this new category of friend or – I don’t know how else to describe this because they’re not necessarily paid a fee, and they’re not falling under the licensing requirements of the Land Agents Licensing Act. [interjection]

I hear what the member is saying, you know, that people don’t want to be restricted. The landowners don’t want to be restricted; they want to make their own choice. I come back and say that we have a tradition in this province that when we are acknowledging a profession, we set some context, some boundaries around it. We have an expectation in the health field, for example, that there is a college that is set up that looks after standards and guidelines for a professional accreditation that someone in that profession is to meet. Then there’s often an additional association in which they basically are concerned more with their own standing as like-minded professionals. It’s not that I’m not willing to support what is being brought forward here; I’m just puzzled about why a more complete job hasn’t been done. I’m puzzled, aside from the argument of choice, as to why we would leave it in a position where we have people that are not required to have any standard of education or, in fact, meet any kind of standards like their professional colleagues and would allow these transactions or lack of transactions to take place out there on our land. Maybe I don’t understand this because I’m a gal from downtown. That’s fair enough. But in my reading of this act and my talking to the people that have approached me, this bill was not without its own controversy, and I still don’t have the questions addressed that I came to when I first read this act and said: why are they dropping this off? To me the argument about, “Well, it’s just to give everybody choice so that they can hire their son-in-law or their aunt or not hire them, not pay them” just doesn’t strike me as a complete answer.

That’s my challenge that’s out there. I’ve received quite a bit of correspondence. I mean, I think we all got the joint letter that was sent in June from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and the Small Explorers and Producers Association of Canada. They were expressing concerns about something. Then there were individuals that I heard from in a number of different ways. So I’m still not settled about this legislation, and I haven’t had answers that are addressing any of my puzzlement around this bill.

I look forward to this debate in Committee of the Whole to see if there are other explanations coming or anyone else that feels strongly about this besides me that wants to debate this particular bill. Thank you very much.