CALGARY — The dispute between Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and country music singer Corb Lund continues over the nature of a meeting between the two last spring regarding his Water Not Coal petition, with Lund arguing he was denied the same level of access that lawyer Jeffrey Rath received for the Alberta independence petition.
The disagreement comes after text messages between Rath and Smith were published by Rath on the social media platform X in late October, generating a media and political firestorm.
The texts centred on advice the premier supposedly gave him and Stay Free Alberta’s Mitch Sylvestre in June 2025 to delay filing their pro-Alberta independence referendum citizen initiative petition application until the new legislation took effect, prompting Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi to confront Smith in the legislature on October 29 about why she had provided advice to “the separatists.”
“It’s my job to help explain when legislation and regulations are coming, and I did that,” Smith said, defending the text messages.
She also stated she had provided similar information regarding the Elections Alberta citizen initiative petition rules to Lund during a meeting in May.
“I was happy to meet with Corb Lund as well to tell him a little bit about the timing of regulations and rules and how they would apply to his initiative as well,” Smith said.
“That’s just part of the job.”
But, according to the Edmonton Journal, Lund said it took him “years” to secure a meeting with Smith and that the discussion wasn’t primarily about the petition process. Instead, the country musician sought assurances about how his proposed referendum question would be worded and presented on the Elections Alberta website.
“It felt to me like we were treated very unfairly, especially when you compare it to how the other question was treated,” Lund said.
However, Smith's office has rejected suggestions that Lund had been treated unfairly, describing the May meeting as “cordial” and maintaining that the government had meaningfully engaged with him.
“Any suggestion otherwise is false,” the premier's office said in a statement, pointing to the government's efforts to protect 40,000 hectares along the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.
Lund’s Water Not Coal petition sought to prohibit all new coal mining activity along the Eastern Slopes but failed to qualify for a referendum after the campaign failed to meet the signature threshold in July.
The petition required 177,732 verified signatures — equivalent to 10% of the 1,777,315 ballots cast in Alberta’s 2023 provincial election — to proceed.
Elections Alberta originally counted 196,088 valid signatures during the initial validation process, but a subsequent statistical verification conducted at a 95% confidence level reduced the estimated number of verified signatures to 172,088, leaving the petition 5,644 signatures short of the required threshold.
Lund has since applied for a judicial review, citing procedural unfairness and challenging Elections Alberta’s signature-validation methodology.
“We believe Elections Alberta applied standards that were stricter than the law requires, and that thousands of Albertans were effectively shut out by verification processes that don’t make sense,” Lund has said.
“This judicial review is about ensuring that citizens’ voices weren’t get lost in technicalities.”
On Friday, Lund’s lawyers appeared in Edmonton’s Court of King’s Bench for a procedural hearing.
The case is now expected to be heard in full in March.