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.
This case is not about an unlawful exercise of government power, she argued earlier Tuesday. This case is about the government s ability to create and dictate policy based on economic, social, political and other relevant factors.
Southern Alberta ranchers and area First Nations are attacking the government s decision to revoke a coal policy from 1976 that blocked development on some parts of the eastern slopes of the Rockies and tightly restricted it elsewhere. The policy was quietly revoked without consultation by Energy Minister Sonya Savage last May.
Burkett, saying there is nothing to review, argued the policy was not rooted in legislation or regulation.
Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage addresses the attendees while Tom Olsen, Managing Director of the Canadian Energy Centre, looks on at a press conference at SAIT in Calgary on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. File photo by The Canadian Press/Greg Fulmes
First Nations, ranchers, municipal officials and environmentalists hope to persuade a judge this week to force Alberta to revisit its decision to open one of the province s most important and best-loved landscapes to open-pit coal mining.
At least nine interveners will seek to join a southern Alberta rancher s request for a judicial review of the province s decision to rescind a coal-mining policy that had protected the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the headwaters that flow from them for almost 45 years.
First Nations, ranchers, municipal officials and environmentalists hope to persuade a judge this week to force Alberta to revisit its decision to open one of the province’s most important and best-loved landscapes to open-pit coal mining. At least nine interveners will seek to join a southern Alberta rancher’s request for a judicial review of the […]
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