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When told that United Conservative MLA for the massive area, Jason Nixon, called the cancellation of the meetings “arbitrary,” Phillips said: “The safety of Albertans and conversations with the RCMP are never arbitrary.”

It’s odd though. Const. Mike Hibbs, the media relations officer for Alberta’s RCMP K Division’s southern district, said Monday that he hadn’t heard of any threats.

“I’m not aware of anything — of any threats at all,” said Hibbs.

Nixon, MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre, says he spoke with many RCMP contacts over the weekend and again on Monday and none of them were aware of any threats of any kind.

“The RCMP in my communities didn’t know what I was asking about; they never heard about any threats and they certainly didn’t ask for meetings to be shut down,” explained Nixon, who attended a rally in Drayton Valley Monday night that was hastily organized by community representatives to replace the cancelled information session scheduled for the conference centre there.

“I’m not going to call her a liar, but she needs to back up what she said because her actions insult all the citizens of these communities — good solid citizens who just want to ask some reasonable questions about provincial plans about our home,” said Nixon.

“In fact, the RCMP I’ve spoken to say as far as they were concerned, they thought the community meetings were going really well.”

Nixon says he has attended many public meetings before — including when the province was planning on closing half of the Sundre hospital two years ago — and while passionate, the proceedings were always civil.