@cowtowncoyote: Alberta Separatist Site Offers Donors a Piece of the ‘Republic of Alberta’ For a $1,000 contribution, a consortium seems to promise land and citizenship opportunities. ‘Unethical,’ says an expert. Of the 23 third-party advertisers vying for donations to finance campaigns in Alberta’s upcoming referendum on separation and immigration, Elections Alberta disclosures show Alberta Land Consortium Inc. is now sitting at a respectable fourth, having raised $30,315. After reviewing the Calgary company’s website — freealbertaland.com — you might deduce that its fundraising success is due to an extraordinary land and immigration scheme it is touting. For a $1,000 donation, the recipient will receive a free share in a fractional land corporation. The consortium offers the tantalizing prospect that this fractional ownership of as-yet unpurchased land in a potentially independent Alberta could grant citizenship to anyone from anywhere in the world. “You don’t have to move here or live here, but you are welcome to plant some roots here,” the website states. “Let’s just call it your vacation home for now. The opportunities await.” But any conclusion linking their fundraising success to the immigration scheme would be false. Corporate searches of most of the biggest donors to the consortium reveal their directors are Robert Deer and his children. Deer is listed on the Elections Alberta website as the consortium’s primary contact and chief financial officer. Of the $30,315 raised by the consortium, at least $25,150 came from corporations or individuals directly related to Deer. In an email to The Tyee, the 72-year-old acknowledged he and his family are the major donors. But he said everything related to the consortium is above board and, since his “brush with the law” 20 years ago, he would not “willingly or knowingly break any laws.” That “brush” was initially a first-degree murder conviction for hiring a hit man who in 2006 shot to death Calgary businessman Jack Beauchamp, with whom Deer was locked in a nasty dispute after a property deal fell through. After a series of retrials and appeals, Deer in 2012 was convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to serve the remaining four and a half years of a 16-year sentence. The bungling hit man, Mohamed Karim, an itinerant gardener, received life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years for second-degree murder. The existence of Alberta Land Consortium Inc. as a third-party advertiser raises yet more questions about the rules surrounding the referendum and third-party advertisers. Critics have labelled the referendum as more of an exercise in political pandering by the governing United Conservative Party than its stated goal of allowing direct democracy for Albertans. “We don’t have clear rules and the rules seem to have changed several times both with respect to referendum question campaigns and also with respect to the advocacy that people are engaging in around the questions,” Mount Royal University political scientist Lori Williams recently told CBC Calgary. After reviewing the consortium’s website, Williams said “it is all so highly questionable, certainly unethical, if not illegal, and of course there is self-dealing involved.”#fyp #foryou

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Saturday 08 August 2026 01:52:57 GMT