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My, my, my... You have got to be the champion of all rationalizers! The courts are the last refuge of the individual and his/her inalienable right to own land. Here we have a clear-cut, classic case that flies in the face of a constitutional representative republic and you are trying to defend the tyranny of the majority as if this were some kind of "Mobocracy," (aka Democrazy)!

This nation was founded on the principle that men/women had a right to own and control real estate in order to have life (a living), liberty (personal responsibility and control) and the pursuit of happiness (freedom of decision making). You seem to want to rationalize all that and desperately explain it away.

That may be the way it is/was up in Alberta... but not here! Our ancestors died in battles to defend this dream/right!!!

Read #60. I can't make it any clearer than that.

If the right to own and develop real estate is inalienable, then every single zoning law in this country would be unconstitutional by definition. My guess is that you will suddenly get some "zoning law" religion the minute someone tries to build a chemical plant or 100,000-head hog farm eight inches from your property line.

I am not one of those who looks upon the Constitution as a "flexible" document, but I do realize that the reality of the modern world makes it very difficult to apply the "inalienable rights" in the U.S. Consitution to cases where people don't all live on 160 acres of raw land in the middle of nowhere. The moment your property can be developed in a manner that can impact other people, the whole notion of "inalienable real estate rights" gets thrown out the window.

I've seen this kind of case on numerous occasions. The family involved here is not interested in farming this land in perpetuity, or maybe even for the next five years. There is no legal basis for them to oppose this action (the law is that clear about it) -- what they are trying to do is drum up public support in an attempt to raise the sale price of their land. I can't say I blame them -- I'd do the same thing myself.

But that doesn't mean there is anything illegitimate about what the local municipality is doing here.

BTW, I ain't from Alberta. That would be kind of embarrassing -- having a Canadian lay out such a clear and concise argument on U.S. Constitutional law like that.

It's worth noting, though, that there is an interesting little item in Alberta law that makes things interesting up there. Land use law in that province can be abrogated almost at will in any case involving the development of land for the purpose of extracting minerals or other resources (oil and gas, for example). What this means is that someone wishing to open a coal mine or an oil well can ignore many land-use laws that would apply to someone wishing to build a shopping mall, an office building, or even a residential subdivision.

If you are a rancher in Alberta and someone wants to dig up your fields to run a gas main underneath your land, the only question is how quickly he wants you to move your cattle.