How Alberta’s energy and environment ministers misled on open-pit mining plans.
Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more. SHARES Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage with Premier Jason Kenney at a 2019 press conference. Neither made a public appearance in the face of a public backlash against the government’s easing of coal mining.
Photo by Jason Franson, the Canadian Press.
Last week Alberta’s government tried to hide political reality by issuing statements implying the “passion” of citizens had convinced it to back off its efforts to bring open-pit coal mining to a vast, ecologically-vital portion of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.
Meanwhile, signatures on two petitions on Facebook opposing the UPC government’s pro-coal mining moves surged past 100,000.
Last March, at the beginning of the pandemic, the Jason Kenney government quietly revoked the province’s 44-year-old Coal Policy.
The visionary policy, created by former premier Peter Lougheed after extensive public consultation, said most of the eastern slopes of the Rockies should remain off limits to mountain-top removal in order to protect water security, wildlife and the area’s beauty.
Kenney’s axing of the policy immediately opened up 1.5 million hectares of the Rockies for coal development, including the headwaters of major rivers in the South and North Saskatchewan river basins.
I feel the government is trying to trick Albertans : Former civil servant on sudden coal lease cancellations
David Luff, who helped implement Alberta s Coal Development Policy in 1976, says the UCP government isn t being forthright about what it s now doing with coal in the province.
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Posted: Jan 19, 2021 1:07 PM MT | Last Updated: January 19
File photos of coal mining operations in Wyoming, at left, British Columbia, at right. Alberta has cancelled a policy that had been in place since 1976 restricting open-pit coal mining in wide swaths the Rockies and Foothills.(Matthew Brown/Associated Press, Jeff McIntosh/Canadian Press)
Alberta’s Cancelled Coal Leases Called a ‘Trick’
An ex-deputy minister terms yesterday’s step back ‘misleading.’ And it won’t deter a court challenge by ranchers and First Nations.
Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more. SHARES ‘The government didn’t follow the rules when they rescinded the Coal Policy,’ says Alberta rancher Mac Blades, among those asking the court today to reinstate legal protections of Rocky Mountain slopes from open-pit mining.
Photo by Callum Gunn.
Caught off guard by the fast-growing grassroots opposition to vast expansion of open-pit coal mining in the southern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, Alberta’s government announced yesterday it would cancel 11 newly-issued coal leases covering 1,800 hectares.
Ranchers are taking time out of their fields, farms and pastures to voice concern over a provincial government policy following public criticism from country stars Corb Lund and Paul Brandt .