At the closing of 2024, I wrote an article titled Protecting personal rights and freedoms is about to get very expensive, which I sent out to the United Conservative Party Constituency Associations, urging them to pressure the premier to settle out of court, the $16 billion lawsuits coming at the province over former Premier Jason Kenney’s flip-flop on the property rights of our nascent metallurgical coal industry.On January 21, Premier Danielle Smith publicly announced the province would be lifting the moratorium on coal exploration and development projects and specifically addressed the lawsuit risks as a motivating factor. Following this announcement, UCP’s Minister of Energy and Minerals, Brian Jean, quickly followed by declaring that while his ministry will be allowing advanced (legacy) projects like Tent Mountain and Grassy Mountain to progress, there will be no new mountain top clearing or open pit mines allowed in the future of Alberta’s nascent Rocky Mountain metallurgical coal sector.While I am pleased that the unjust moratorium was lifted, I am afraid that this will not stop the lawsuits.In fact, Peter Doyle, CEO of Montem Resources has confirmed they are still proceeding with their $3.4 billion lawsuit over their freeholder land rights being effectively expropriated by the province and are seeking compensation.Trust me, I get it folks, this is a highly contentious issue in Alberta and the UCP have to juggle the political science together with the environmental science, as they proceed to conclude this difficult chapter.In this follow-up article, I want to emphasize a most fundamental fact of modern life, which is we are utterly dependent on large scale open pit mining operations to provide us with the building blocks of modern infrastructure and technology..Note that outsourcing these industries to Third World countries only results in greater environmental costs, given it takes great wealth and highly efficient regulations to limit the environmental impact from large scale mining operations.Notice that I said “limit” and not “eliminate”?Mining, like agriculture, inescapably alters the environment to benefit humanity.So here are further thoughts for consideration by the UCP and by Albertans in general. Number one, we must stop viewing the Rocky Mountains as a sacrosanct region.I would argue that the average metropolitan Albertan, who use one or more of the seven national and provincial parks that border or are embedded in the Rocky Mountains as part of their seasonal opportunity to connect with Mother Nature, would argue for conservation over natural resource development projects.However, I also believe that with the near loss of Jasper to forest fires in 2024, more Albertans are waking up to the need for more environmental realism when it comes to wilderness conservation.Many Albertans are now wondering how long it will be before Banff and Kananaskis will come under fire pressure like Jasper, given the absence of logging in the southern Foothills over the past century and the suppression of forest fires has given rise to unnaturally large levels of forest fuel.Log it, graze it or watch it burn, folks. Number two, we need to apply a more consistent and less contradictory cost versus benefit framework on approvals for new open pit mines in Alberta and one that acknowledges that one has to break an egg in order to make an omelet.For example, why would the UCP ban open pit metallurgical coal mines in the Rockies, while advocating to double oil sands production in Northern Alberta?Is this not contradictory, given most of the province’s synthetic crude oil production (>1.2 million barrels per day) comes from open pit mines such as Suncor Base Plant, Syncrude Mildred Lake and CNRL’s Horizon.Or how about the fact that Burnco was able to receive its operating permit for its large open pit gravel mine west of Cochrane and it is located along the north edge of the Bow River and is in the Foothills region? This large 450 hectare open pit gravel mine will operate for 30 to 35 years and will produce over 15 million tonnes of gravel for the great Calgary region. Number three, we need to re-evaluate our common disdain for so-called mountain top removal mining techniques. If Alberta had a mountain that contained immense quantities of gold and diamond, but it required that we pulverize much of the mountain, would we not sacrifice 1 mountain out of 10,000? The UCP’s ban on mountain top clearing for the production of metallurgical coal that we need to create steel, should be viewed as a contradictory position given the province permits LaFarge’s Exshaw mining operation just west of Cochrane and along the Bow River. Quite literally, Exshaw has been consuming an entire mountain since the 1960s to produce the cement needed to build the greater Calgary region..Note that if you live in Southern Alberta, the foundation your house is built on, is likely the by-product of a mountain top removal operation.Clearly, I must remind people that large concrete structures require gravel, cement and steel (rebar) and that rebar manufacturing requires metallurgical coal to convert iron oxide to steel. So, why are the UCP flip-flopping and applying contradictory regulatory methods on this important topic?The answer is quite simple folks; they are afraid of the NDP and their coal hating voters.Activist pressure, decades of misinformation, poor public relations and a lack of education, has created a culture of fear and paralysis within our regulatory system that disproportionately penalizes coal mining over other comparable mining practices.In closing, I suggest the UCP government focus on settling the lawsuits out of court and protecting Alberta taxpayers from undue financial risk due to their indecision and their contradictory justifications. By playing politics on this important file, my fear is that Alberta’s nascent mining industry will fail to create clear signals that the province is open to investment in critical minerals.
