- Written by CAEPLA
I have talked with TransCanada and the man in charge of lands on the company’s Eastern Mainline pipeline project (applied for at the same time as the Energy East Project) concerning the complaint about land agent bullying. This gentleman stated that he believes his land agents would never bully a landowner and his proof is that he has seen the land agent’s reports and his report does not “refer to any bullying.” He said he would fire any agent that bullied and that there were no implications of that in the Davis case!!!!
I was assured that the company was not threatening landowners that TransCanada would apply to the NEB for Right of Entry on landowner’s property to do the archeological survey.
CAEPLA sent this message to some of our members along the project.
As a result, CAEPLA has been contacted by another landowner confirming that the bullying was not an isolated case, confirming the Davis family interpretation of what the land agent “inferred.”
Dan Walker, a landowner near Grafton, Ontario, sent me an email last week to report his neighbor also refused to work his land for TCPL’s archeological survey, the same as the Davis family. Dan’s neighbor grows his crop using a no-till cropping to protect his soils so working the soil would compromise his crops and therefore refused to work his land. The TransCanada land agent told this gentlemen that if he did not work the proposed easement, TransCanada would get Right of Entry from the NEB and have someone else do it. The same threat as posed to the Davis family.
The same agent visited Dan’s property. In his email Dan says, “The same agent also came here (TCPL’s Enforcer) to get me to sign for survey, but when I refused, because they only wanted to pay for one property not the two, as he was leaving my kitchen he turned and looked at me and said they will be getting a ROE from the NEB and that this was my last chance to get a thousand dollars for free.”
Dan concluded his email with, “TCPL knows what is going on; you know it and I know it.”
