CALGARY — Corb Lund’s Water Not Coal campaign raised more than $340,000 during its unsuccessful citizen initiative petition drive to force a province-wide vote on banning new coal mining on the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.
On July 3, Elections Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure announced Lund’s petition had failed to meet the signature threshold required to force a province-wide referendum.
Lund’s petition required 177,732 verified signatures — equivalent to 10% of the 1,777,315 ballots cast in Alberta’s 2023 provincial election — to proceed to the October 19 ballot.
Elections Alberta counted 196,088 valid signatures during the initial validation process, but found in a subsequent statistical verification conducted at a 95% confidence level that this reduced the estimated number of verified signatures to 172,088.
Since that announcement, Lund has voted continue to his anti-coal battle as his campaign recently filed an application with the Alberta Court of King’s Bench, seeking a judicial review of Elections Alberta’s decision, stating the organization’s decision, “was unreasonable, procedurally unfair, and inconsistent with the purpose of Alberta’s Citizen Initiative Act (CIA), which is intended to facilitate public participation in direct democracy.”
According to new financial statements released by Elections Alberta, the country music singer’s campaign is shown to have raised total revenue of $341,950.63, while the campaign listed expenses totalling $329,951.18, leaving a surplus of $11,999.45.
Of the total expenditure, $325,794.19 was classified as initiative petition expenses subject to the campaign spending limit.
Among expenses, the largest was $110,145 for public relations, followed by $99,346.49 for technology costs and $57,822.31 for promotional materials.
Public relations and technology costs alone totalled $209,491.49 — approximately 64% of the campaign's regulated petition expenses.
It is not clear from the financial records whether any of the $110,145 in public relations spending was paid to Point Blank Creative — a digital media agency headquartered in Vancouver that has done work in the past on multiple NDP-related campaigns and that Lund confirmed had worked with his campaign.
The final financial statement also lists $75,652.23 in “other income” but does not specify what that refers to.
In contributions, Water Not Coal reported $266,298.40 in receipted contributions, including $174,338.40 from contributions greater than $250 and $91,960 from contributions of $250 or less. The contribution figures include both cash and valued contributions.
Numerous contributors gave $4,600.
They included Gordon and Wendy Cartwright, Craig Harris, Scott Holtman, Kirk Hudson, Kimino Kimino, M-Bar-7 Holdings Inc., Colin Margetts, Joann McCaig, Joyce Nishi, Catherine Page, Pekisko Landowners, Christopher Perry, Rocking P Ranch, Tara Russell, John Smith, Bradley Valgardson, Brady Valgardson and Sandra Valgardson.
Contributors of note include Russell, who is the program director at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Northern Alberta chapter — a national conservation group that has received millions of dollars in federal funding in recent years while simultaneously organizing anti-coal campaigns. Her husband, Margetts, is also listed as a top contributor.
Joann McCaig, an author and owner of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in Calgary, also donated over $4,000 and has a history of being a large donor to the Alberta NDP between 2006 and 2024, contributing $28,724.23 in total.
Lund himself contributed $4,600 to the initiative, while Jessie Westers, the campaign’s chief financial officer (CFO) and director of Internal Audit at the University of Lethbridge, contributed a total of $1,008.83 to the campaign.
Several businesses and organizations also appear in the contribution report, including M-Bar-7 Holdings Inc. at $4,600, Pekisko Landowners at $4,600, Rocking P Ranch at $4,600, Paradise Canyon Country Club Inc. at $2,000 and JCF Vipond Professional Corporation at $1,000.