Private Investigator posing as landowner was the worst, Spying on citizens casts a smothering pall of bias on any AEUB decision

Private Investigator posing as landowner was the worst, Spying on citizens casts a smothering pall of bias on any AEUB decision by Lorne Gunter, June 24, 2007, The Edmonton Journal
If you have concerns about security at public forums, you hire security guards, not private detectives. If you’ve already held a hearing that got out of hand despite the presence of security guards, you hire more guards for your next meeting — bigger ones, with even more darkly mirrored sunglasses and ‘roid-ripped biceps. You put the local police on notice; ask them to have an officer or two in the room. You have the chair announce that anyone disrupting another’s right to speak will be removed and anyone touching a staff member will be arrested. You don’t hire private investigators. … The AEUB shouldn’t be hiring private investigators to check up on parties to its hearings at all. The board is to be an impartial regulator, considering the evidence from all sides, and choosing what is in Alberta’s best interests. Even just having a PI pass himself off as a landowner to gain the trust of one side in a proceeding, so the board can know what that side is up to, casts a pall of bias on the board’s decision. It inevitably creates the appearance that the board consider landowners to be their enemies.

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