Alberta government documents confirm coal lobby in Rocky mining

Documents released under Alberta's freedom of information laws confirm the United Conservative government has been in talks with the coal industry for years about easing policies protecting the Rockies from open-pit mining.

The documents also show the province has been talking about allowing the public to review its plans for at least seven months in total for those landscapes.

A group of southern Alberta ranchers who have waged a four-year battle against Alberta Energy have been exposed by the Canadian Press to understand why the province has scrapped a decades-old policy protecting the Rockies from coal mining.

Last week, a judge blocked the government's attempt to block further releases, and ranchers are now facing thousands of pages.

But the records already obtained repeatedly refer to meetings and communications with industry on the policy before it was deleted in May 2020.

They show that bureaucrats have been working on ways to correct what they called “underinvestment” in the region in October 2019.

Public opposition to open-pit coal mining eventually forced the government to reverse its decision.