Season 2, Episode 3: Chris Spearman Has Questions for the Premier
with the former mayor of Lethbridge, Chris Spearman
In Episode 3, Season 2 of The Gravity Well Podcast, you hear about coal mining’s impact on Southern Alberta with guest Chris Spearman, former Mayor of Lethbridge. Spearman highlights the risks of coal mining, including selenium contamination and water scarcity, which threaten the region’s agricultural industry and water supply. Despite widespread public opposition and scientific evidence against coal mining, the Alberta government continues to support it, raising concerns about economic and environmental sustainability. The episode underscores the need for public engagement and government accountability in protecting your water, an essential resource.
Hosted by Jenny Yeremiy, The Gravity Well delves into complex issues to foster understanding and improve the world.
Introduction to Chris Spearman
Alex:
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Jenny:
Hello, good afternoon, Chris. Thank you for being here, Chris. I’ve had the opportunity to meet Chris many times now in our battle against coal, coal exploration in the eastern slopes. Chris, I first met in Fort McLeod. We were both speaking, well, you were speaking primarily about water for food, and I’ll let you get into it, you can explain a bit about water for food and your background for everyone. I know that you were the former mayor of Lethbridge, somebody representing a big population in Alberta. Obviously Lethbridge is right in the fray of this problem. I’ll let you get into that. Today we’re just going to walk through, Chris has crafted nine questions for the premier that we’re going to walk through today. And I’m glad that the way that Chris has done this and it frames all of the issues from those nine perspectives. I’m going to stop talking for a second. If you wouldn’t mind introducing yourself first, Chris, and then we’ll take off from there.
Chris:
Okay. My name is Chris Spearman. I first came to Southern Alberta in 1981. I’ve worked for one of the food processing industries in the industrial park in Lethbridge since 1981. And early on I recognized that food processors needed to have an advocate group and an umbrella group. And they helped form the Industrial Association of Southern Alberta, which was to promote economic conditions to support and encourage more investment of industries and specifically food processors in southern Alberta. And then later on we got together and decided that we needed to have an independent organization in the city of Lethbridge to promote economic development. We were one of the founding members and I was on the executive of economic development, Lethbridge, whose primary purpose was to encourage private investment and support the agricultural industry. Every time you attract a new agricultural processor, it generates tens of thousands of acres of new farming opportunity.
When I was mayor, we continued that. I continued supporting economic development and one of the things that we did was we attracted the Cavendish Foods potato processing plant, a 450 million investment in the city, again, generating additional income. But going back to maybe 30 years ago, the sugar beet industry was struggling and we needed a replacement. And we actually advised that if we could grow sugar beets here, we could probably grow potatoes here. Potatoes is a better option from a market point of view. The sugar beet and sugar market all over the world is subject to corruption, price fixing all kinds of issues, which make it uneconomical to grow sugar beets, and it always struggled here, but potatoes are a value added product. They’re a consumer product much more so everybody eats potatoes, everybody eats french fries. Adapting our industry to potatoes instead of sugar beets was a big success.
There are many other forms of food processing. Richardson’s has a massive canola plant called Richardson Oil Seeds. There’s Pepsi, Frito Lay producing potato chips in Tabor and in Lethbridge, McCain’s has a potatoes processing plant. There is a pork processing plant, there’s a Sunrise Poultry. Encouraging investment in food processing. We’ve moved a long way in the last 70 years in the region and kudos to the forefathers of the city of Lethbridge for creating industrial parks with heavy infrastructure, big water pipes, big wastewater pipes and processing plants to support that type of thing. I continue that legacy. And the unusual thing about southwest Alberta is there isn’t very much oil and gas and the city of Lethbridge has no oil and gas. The county of Lethbridge has no real oil and gas. We needed another industry and it was food, food production. There was lots of basic primary production, but how do you add value?
That’s my background is really promoting that and have done so for over 40 years and that’s where I’m coming from. And now I see coal mines threatening all of that. Everybody needs the water from the river. Everybody needs that for basically watering their land, irrigating, feeding their livestock, most importantly for fresh drinking water. The city of Lethbridge provides water not only for themselves potable water for 111,000 citizens, but for 12 other communities as well. Hurst, Coaldale, McGrath, Raymond, all those communities around Lethbridge all get their water from the city of Lethbridge, from the same treatment plant. The critical thing is that as coal mines develop, and we’ve looked at the government studies, the Alberta government studies, four of them that said everywhere they’ve developed coal, there’s been selenium, seepage, leakage and contamination, and there has been wind blown coal dust. And if you think it happens elsewhere, imagine what it would be like in southern Alberta where we have the huge massive Chinook winds. People say it’s not if the old man river will be contaminated, it’s when and when we’re looking at coal mining options like open pit mines. Grassy Mountain, the argument for Grassy Mountain put forward by Northback is that they need to reclaim the site, but the size of the proposed grassy mountain open pit mine is eight times the original site. It’s going to be massive controlling selenium seepage from an open pit. Mine will be almost impossible. I would say it will be impossible. And controlling windblown coal dust will also be impossible.
Jenny:
That’s right.
Chris:
I think that’s the concern that I have. We’re going to create 400 jobs in the coal mining industry and basically put 40,000 jobs at risk. The jobs of farmers, ranchers, intensive agriculture, livestock people, the people who work in the food processing plants, we have now more than 20 food processing plants in the city of Letford and another dozen in the region around us, all those value added plants. Where is the economic argument for a single coal mine?
That’s where I’m coming from.
How Has Chris Tried to Get Answers About Coal Mining Risks
Jenny:
That’s an excellent overview. Thank you so much Chris. And I do want to get into the details of everything you just brought forward there. I just want to offer, first of all, we got to see each other again on Saturday. There was a wonderful concert down in Fort McLeod again where we heard many artists, about 15 artists or more, sing songs, all about agriculture and ranching. And we had Harley Bastian speak there as well. And the whole theme was around how important water is to this and how drought stricken the area is. The concern for water already, let alone adding coal in the mix. But yeah, let’s start breaking this down a bit. Chris, you were saying on Saturday that you have spoken with or you’ve reached out to the premier, the minister as well as Northback. Can we just start there? Can you tell me what you’ve tried in terms of trying to get these nine issues forward to them?
Chris:
I initially attended a Selenium Information meeting back on June the 12th last year, which was hosted by Northback. And when I was the mayor of Lethbridge, we hosted Atrium Coal back on June the 22nd, 2021. And we had asked them some basic questions like, are you concerned about Selenium? And he said, not really. And we said, well, we understand Selenium is a big issue associated with coal mining. Well we’ll deal with that when we have to type of thing. And we said, do you have a laboratory working on solving the Selenium issue? And the answer was, none, we don’t. And then we said, well, are you working with the industry on it? And they said, oh yeah, we are. We said, okay, where are the laboratories where you’re working on the Selenium issue? And they couldn’t tell us. Then we asked our municipal engineer, is Selenium going to be an issue?
And our director of water and wastewater said, if the selenium levels in the Old Man river are excessive and harmful to humans, there is no known technology to remove the selenium from the water. I began asking those questions more than eight months ago at the Selenium information session in Blairmore. I said, do you have a technology to remove excess selenium from the water? And the host couldn’t answer the question. They said, well, I’ll give you my card, you write an email and we’ll get back to you. June the 13th, the very next day I wrote to the hosts who were there on behalf of Northback and asked them all my questions. I never heard anything for five months. And then at the end of November I got an acknowledgement email from the company that hosted, and I never got answers to the question.
They just said, thank you for your questions. We won’t be answering them. North Pack will answer them, but probably not for two or three months. Then I assumed, whoa, two or three months will be after the AER hearings, so we won’t have our answers. This was pretty typical Northback won’t answer questions. I published my questions in the le be with the cooperation of the editor and again, no response from Northback when the Minister of Energy had his policy announcement on December the 20th, I began writing to the Minister of Energy and I said, in the event that the Old Man River becomes polluted with selenium and coal dust and the water is not usable to create portable water for 140,000 citizens served by the city of Lethbridge, what is your backup source for treatable water? I’ve yet to get an answer from the Minister of Energy. And that was a month ago that I wrote that letter.
Jenny:
Wow.
Chris:
The Minister of Energy, Mr. Brian Jean has said that the Northback proposal for Grassy Mountain is an open pit nine. And he said that back on December the 20th. And then I was listening to the Premier’s online show, your province, your premier on January the 25th, and a caller called in and was concerned about open pit mines and the Premier said, well, grassy Mountain is not an open pit mine. I wrote to the premier and asked her a series of questions, but the very first one is we’re confused because the information keeps changing. Your minister says it is an open pit mine and you say it’s not an open pit mine. I think we might be talking about semantics here, but I don’t want to put words in the mouth of the premier. There’s various forms of open pit mining and it might be highwall mining, they’ve referred to that sometimes, but they really all are open pit mining with all the same risks. There will be selenium seepage, there will be windblown coal dust, let’s be honest. Let’s not play semantic games. Let’s talk about what the risks really will be to the residents of the old man river basin.
Jenny:
Wonderful. Yeah. Further, Brad last week was explaining the same thing as you just said, there is no version of coal mining that is going to eliminate this definite risk of selenium poisoning. Actually Saturday, I don’t know if you saw, but there was an environment, the government of BC put out a warning on March 1st and listed all of the issues that Dr. Norm Campbell outlined in terms of coal dust and what it can cause for people with lung disease, for people with asthma, for anybody with any chronic illness needed to not go outside. And that was from one day of wind and it would be constant through that valley for sure.
Chris:
Yeah. As you know, those Chinook winds are the regularly gusts are 50 kilometers, but I think it was two weeks ago it was 110. That’s
Jenny:
Right.
Chris:
That’s not unusual. Several times a year it’s over 90, over a hundred kilometers an hour.
Jenny:
It would very quickly be devastating. What’s fascinating about this is how quickly we would start seeing issues. Okay, I’m going to break this down. I really do think you did a great job here. The first thing you highlighted for the premier, thank you for walking us through how you had communicated this. You went right to the source, then you went to our minister, then you took it up the chain to our premier. And last I heard it was still outstanding. You haven’t had a response from the premier.
Chris:
That’s right. I wrote to the premier on February the 13th. It’s now March the third and I haven’t heard anything from the premier. Nobody’s answering questions, Northback’s not answering. The minister of energy is not answering and the premier’s not answering.
Jenny:
What is interesting to me, and I’m curious what you think about this, Chris, is $614 million [AHS scandal]. They’ve described it as 15 billion. I wouldn’t say it’s 15 billion, but it’s a billion or more dollars that we are potentially exposed to and we can get into that. But to me the level of corruption and the back and forth is even more in the open than what we know of the AHS scandal. I’m hoping that people will start realizing connecting these two and realizing that is a bigger scale issue and a bigger, more attention, more as more hands are on deck or needed kind of thing. Okay. The first question or first comment you put in here is the type of mining. You talked a little bit about this already. I wanted to mention that you were talking about Atrium. They just put out their statement of claim for this supposed lawsuit, and they state very clearly the Elaine Coal leases, which are right next door to the Grassy Mountain site, can only be technically and economically developed in an open pit mine. Now to your point about confusion, underground mining methods are not technically or economically viable on these leases. Therefore the legal claims for constructive taking and other causes of action continue to trial. They’re saying that because it’s open pit Brian Jean’s like new coal policy, it doesn’t apply to them. This policy didn’t even prevent this lawsuit.
Chris:
Nope.
Jenny:
Yeah. Anything more to say just on that one area where we’re talking about the activities taking place. I recall in the hearing that Grassy was brought up as being open bit mining as well. I agree. I don’t think there’s been any statements to the contrary from the actual coal companies that they have any other methods available to them. Correct.
Chris:
They speculate that they’re not going to use the old methods, they’re going to use new coal mining methods and they’re going to prevent and control pollution that way. My question is, well show me somewhere in the world where that’s succeeded
Monitoring is Not Mitigating
And they can’t. The issue is that every time we’ve had a coal mine, there has been pollution. When the coal mine closes down, there has been lasting costs which have to be picked up by others. The coal companies never pay the full cost of reclamation. This is a really bad deal. The royalties are 1% next to nothing. The income from the royalties is less than what the provincial government cancelled in terms of photo radar finds. This is pennies. You ask a good question, why are we doing this? And it makes no sense whatsoever. And I’m sure we’ll get into this, there’s more to it. They say that they can control the pollution by AER monitoring.
Jenny:
Right. That was the next point. Thank you. Go ahead.
Chris:
We say no, you can’t. What’s happened in every other case is that, by the time the A ER detects it, if they detect it, because the AER has a record of only detecting issues 3% of the time, and when they do, it’s too late. When they determine that the river is polluted and that there is excess selenium levels in there, you can’t stop it. The only way to stop the selenium contamination and the coal dust contamination is not to do the mining in the first place.
Jenny:
That’s right. Monitoring is not mitigating. You pointed to an article for the premier where you’ve in the globe and Mail that highlights a publication that was done in June of last year. In Alberta from the Elk Valley, we do have a lake that is, or the snowpack, sorry, just
Chris:
It’s wind blowing. Snow. Dust, yeah. That’s a government study. They know what’s happening. Their own scientists, we got their four studies, we found out they agreed with us. The minister referred to four studies as if it was some form of reassurance that the environment minister. We asked her for the studies and when we received them from her department, we found out that basically they all raised concerns about coal mining and evidence of coal mining contaminations elsewhere. It’s going to happen in the old man river based on their own science. Some of the media have said we’ve tried to contact the authors of those reports and the government won’t let them speak to us. More recently, you might’ve seen just this past weekend, the AER fined a coal company for contamination and leakages and basically the total fine was $9,000, basically nothing.
Jenny:
Yes, pennies. Yeah.
And I heard there was one recently, although I don’t have the details on it, that was even less. It’s like the fines are getting lighter. Yeah, thank you for saying that because yes, this is what Brad pointed to last week, and actually the Globe and Mail article did Brad’s partner in that study. Bill Donahue was the person who had said that those reports aren’t being made available and the scientists are being held back from speaking about it, which is just bananas. It’s like they know the information is there and they’re not willing to even look at it or speak about it is how it seems without a response from them, which is an
Chris:
Interesting position for a government. It’s supposed to be looking out for our interests. Really, this government doesn’t seem interested in looking after the best interest of Albertans.
Jenny:
That’s right. And I need to add in this one of the events, and I can’t remember if you were there that day, Chris, but we went to speak to Chelsea Petrovic, the MLA, and it was a very lively group, very frustrated with not being heard. She, in my opinion, dismissed a lot of what was being said. Said, I’m going to listen to everyone. And we said, listen to data, listen to, I didn’t, but the members from the community said, look at science, listen to data, and next thing you know she cancelled any further meetings with her constituents over this.
75% of Albertans are Opposed to Coal Mining
Chris:
Well, I think she openly said that she would only listen to the science and then people said, well, the science agrees with us. And
Then that’s where it stops. Again, a reminder for everyone to write to your MLA. I’ll put the [writing] tool in this before I close again for people to do so. Okay. Let’s talk about the policy consultation process. You talk about the number of Albertans that are against this and go ahead, expand a bit more.
Yeah, more than 70% of Albertans on pole after pole are opposed to coal mining in the Rockies and on the Eastern slopes. Most recently, I think it was Plateau Consulting who released their information. Again, I think they were 75% opposed. The government is not listening to Albertans. On December the 20th, the Minister Gene said that they would be developing the new coal policy in consultation with the industry. Now I’d like to remind you that Albertans own the coal resources and all the other resources in the province. And these Australian coal companies have only shown up 10 years ago. They’ve been in this area since 2015. All of a sudden they have more rights than Albertans do in terms of shaping the new coal policy. And they’re the only ones the minister is going to be consulting with. There was a coal committee which did consult with Albertans. They made recommendations. Everything that they recommended seems to have been forgotten and the government’s just ignoring the recommendations of the coal committee and just moving forward, I can only imagine what the new coal policy and what the regulations are going to be. You can bet they are not going to be in the interest of Albertans if only the foreign coal companies get to say what the policy is going to look like.
Jenny:
That’s right. I’m just going to quote a couple of these eight recommendations from the coal review panel. With respect to consultation, meaningful involvement of Alberta’s indigenous communities and land use planning processes. Two things that did not happen through this. Another one was making sure the net benefits were a part of this process. Those are the two I think I’m going to highlight at this point.
And I did want to add, I just hot off the presses, the Mountain Child Valley Society who I interviewed the first interview this year, they just issued a statement that they’re saying the due process of consultation was not done to their community, not by the Crown, not by the province, and not by their council. That’s a big gap in what were the findings of that coal review panel and what was supposed to come out of those recommendations. The next one was decisions being made unilaterally. You’ve touched on this a bit, but yeah, can you talk a little bit about the project and the cancellation? This was something that Bill Trafford brought up in the hearing is the status of grassy. If you could just expand on that, Chris.
Chris:
Yep. When the joint federal provincial panel ruled and rejected the Grassy Mountain Project, they did so on the basis that the economic benefits did not justify the risks. And they also said that the claims made by the coal company were just not credible. That decision was appealed three times by the coal company, by Northback or Benga and lost all three times. Then at that point the company went into the government website, only the proponent can do this and changed the status of the project to cancelled. After that occurred, Brian Jean unilaterally changed the project to advanced. It’s still on the government website as cancelled.
Jenny:
That’s right.
Chris:
Without consultation, and only on the basis of the vote in the Crowsnest pass where 1,953 people voted in favor of the mine, 720 or so voted against it, the minister moved forward and changed the status of the mine from cancelled to events without any other consultation, without consulting anybody downstream from the mine knows the 200,000 people living downstream, including the people in the city of Lethbridge, not consulted, not given a voice. But the minister said after that non-binding vote, non-binding democracy has had its day. We said “no”, democracy has not had its day. The people who will be most affected were not consulted and will not given a chance to vote.
Jenny:
And I just want to highlight at this moment you have more than 6,000 signatures that you’ve gathered since January. If democracy spoke, you’ve already toppled what they tried to accomplish with that small vote that they did locally.
Chris:
But yes, and we just did that in a few weeks and there were a lot of interesting things taking place during the Crowsnest mine vote. The company was buying people meals, hosting them in restaurants, and paying their bar bills. There were lots of things happening, which seemed unusual in terms of third party financing for a non-binding vote. We did that. We accumulated more than 6,000 original signatures from people who are concerned without having to offer them any form of incentives. People voluntarily and enthusiastically have come forward to sign their petition.
Jenny:
Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, I just want to highlight what Bill Trafford said. Exactly with what you’re, this is quoting, this is on the record. Bill Trafford said, A project that has been terminated or cancelled before construction or completion, cancelled projects are explicitly stated by the proponent to be cancelled. It wasn’t the government cancelling, it was the proponent itself who cancelled the project. And
Chris:
Then the company was unhappy with the result and they went and lobbied behind the scenes. Disrespecting the courts, disrespecting the court decision and then the government was compliant and complicit because they accepted that lobbying and it resulted in favorable results for Northback. The government themselves disrespected the decision of the courts in what other form of legal justice do we have where if you don’t like a court decision, you can go to the government and get it overturned by lobbying.
Lawsuit Compensation and Other Misleading Statements
Jenny:
That’s right. We’re basically saying the rule of law goes out the door. This is how important this is. Thank you so much for saying that, Chris. That was the next one that you covered two for one there. Okay. The other thing you talked about was in order to avoid the legal challenges, I’ll let you start and then I’ll add on again please.
Chris:
Now the government starting with the premier and the Minister of Energy and other ministers, Nathan Neudorf in the City of Lethbridge attended the Chamber of Commerce meeting and told people that the cost of paying off the coal company was going to be somewhere between 10 and 20 billion. And that was going to be a huge hit for taxpayers. And the only way to avoid that was to open up the Eastern Slopes to coal mining. We actually went into the mining act and found two clauses, clause 8.1 B, which provides the minister with the power to acquire by expropriation any estate or interest in minerals. The minister has the power to do this without compensation. And secondly, 8.1 C allows the minister to cancel or refuse to renew an agreement as to all or any part of a location when it is of the opinion that any further exploration or development of the mineral is not in the public interest.
We found two clauses in law that the government could use. The government has never mentioned these two clauses publicly, and those two clauses would limit the compensation that might be payable to mine companies. Why is the government not pursuing that and worse, why are our government leaders openly telling the public that we have a weak case and we have to settle? If you’re going into a litigated situation that is currently not settled, why are you commenting publicly saying that we’re not going to do well unless we open up the slopes to the mine companies because they’re going to get big payments from us. And the mine companies said, thank you very much for making that statement. I think they’re going to be using it in court.
Jenny:
Yeah, a hundred percent. On the backs of that, just on February 26th, last week the Environmental Law Centre put out an excellent summary of this situation and it included the two links to the mine Act that you pointed to that limiting the risk for litigation amount. I just want to read one portion of this, the government can change the laws. This is another thing they said in this, if they really wanted to, just like they’re doing here where they’re saying we’re changing the law to help it change it in the right way though, which would be to just strengthen that law that limits compensation. And then the other part that they say is the compensation would include the amount that the companies have paid for the rights. It would include the amount that they have expended, their expenses to date, and then it says determine fairly by the minister.
The minister has discretion here, which is interesting, and then to explore and to drill. I’m now wondering, was this why we were even allowing the exploration that there’s more compensation involved? This is, again, if there were answers given by our leaders, we could certainly exclude these things. But these are the concerns that are raised, but the amount would include, it does not include the present value claim by the coal company plaintiff. When Brian Jean says that $15 to $20 billion, that’s the part where this legal entity says no, it would just be for the expenses made, not the present value, the net present value of the future opportunity lost. Okay. Anything more under that before we move on to the next one?
Chris:
I’m just not sure why the Premier and the Minister of Energy would be deliberately inflating those values and presenting to the public that way it harms our legal case. Why misinform Albertans? That’s a consistent trend from Minister Jean, by the way. He’s been consistently, what’s the word that the Global and Mail reporter used he’s “disingenuous” in terms of providing information to Albertans. When you cannot trust your government ministers, who can you trust?
Jenny:
Yeah, you’re reminding me. This direct message tool that I shared in the chat, many people, if you are one of these people that took this letter and sent it in or wrote your own and sent it in, thank you for doing that. You probably like me, got a canned response back from the minister saying, look at the coal policy. Well, first of all, the coal policy isn’t available.
Secondly, the companies themselves are telling us it’s open pit mining. None of that matters. It’s really infuriating for anybody who’s made the effort. Please know that you’re not alone in this frustration with the gaslighting that we’re getting from our minister.
Chris:
And the current coal policy doesn’t even mention Selenium.
Jenny:
Right?
Chris:
Yeah,
Jenny:
I wanted to say, and I haven’t yet, but I went on the grassy tour in September and they handed me this. It’s Selenium and it talks about the value of selenium. Nowhere here does it say that they have the ability to address it. They just talk about monitoring. To me this is, and I can tell you being on the tour, this was the most information I received. There’s not much being given to people in terms of being honest about the risks that people could be exposed to.
Chris:
The fact that excess selenium is dangerous, that there’s a fine line, being able to manage it is very, very tricky. But when you have excess selenium, and so what that means is the farmers are including selenium in their feed to their animals. They need, their animals do need a balance deal feed with selenium in it. There’s basically the soils are selenium deficient, but that selenium also finds its way back into the river. And when you already have a high level of selenium from coal mining and then you get these additional amounts of selenium coming in off the farmland, the bioaccumulative means it’s additive and just makes the problem worse and worse as you go down the river.
Jenny:
It doesn’t quit.
Chris:
No, it doesn’t quit. And it becomes a bigger and bigger problem to manage. We can currently maintain and manage the selenium levels in the water because there isn’t a coal mine there. Those selenium levels are well below the harmful standards for humans. And they can be managed, they can be treated. But once the coal mine comes in, it’s game over. Basically it’s the end of the AgriFood industry in southwestern Alberta.
Jenny:
I went to BRBC the Bow River Basin Council meeting, they were talking about a 5 billion agriculture industry. Do you know the number? I don’t know if that included all food processing. Do you know the amount made?
Chris:
I think so. It’s probably integrated. Integrated. The value of agricultural exports from the region is about 2 billion a year. But when you figure what’s the value of the assets and the farmland and all of that, easily 5 billion. And of course two thirds of Canada’s irrigated agriculture is in the old man river reservoir and the old man basin.
Impacts to Other Industries and Water
Jenny:
Right. When we talk about this business case, let’s talk about that a little bit more, Chris. Just the amount of risk to an ongoing steady business that has had many returns for the people of this region.
Chris:
These mines are quite small, but have the potential to do a lot of damage. But when you compare it to the coal mining in the Elk Valley, those are huge mines. Grassy Mountain has an expected life of 23 to 25 years based on the identified coal that’s been located there and is going to generate about 400 jobs. They say maybe more, but when you consider how many people are employed in the integrated agriculture industry in farming, ranching, intensive livestock and food processing, these numbers are far in excess of that. It is our core economy. When I was involved in economic development, we always thought about things in terms of the benefit to the region. If we bring in this industry, who else will benefit? What are the multipliers? I’ve never ever seen an economic development case where you bring in one industry that will effectively harm all the others.
Jenny:
That’s right.
Chris:
Yeah. It’s bizarre. And I’d like to know from the government why they’re pursuing this strategy because it makes no sense.
Jenny:
Agreed. That gets into one of your last points here. We have this, I’m going to go back to the recommendations for a second. In those eight recommendations, one of them was to do exactly like you’re saying, weigh it against the other opportunities
Jenny:
And undertake a review of the tenure and royalty scheme for the coal mining. We’re not getting much money from this. You think of the minimum, I feel like it’s tens of millions versus billions of dollars of money lost and then the freehold mineral rights where they’ve never really addressed this outstanding problem of where they are in proximity and why we have them there. Looking at the updating of the coal policy in a way that was actually again, like I said, to exclude these sensitive areas resolves uncertainty around responsibility for reclamation liabilities. You touched on this a little bit already there were not getting, we have legacy problems that they haven’t addressed. And in fact, in the hearing, I’m sure you’d remember this, they were asked, are you going to address the former liabilities? And they said, no, we’ll only address the exploration liabilities. And actually they said they don’t need to because it’s exploration. They can do what they want because the assumption is it’s going to proceed. They don’t want to reclaim it because it’s going to proceed. A lot of ways that they’re skirting any sort of obligation and creating more hazards, more liabilities for us going forward. And
Chris:
That’s been the reputation of the industry and it looks like nothing’s going to change.
Jenny:
This is why these conversations are so important. Yeah, I think we covered all the main ones. But yes, it was an eight month process that came with these recommendations that the minister and the premier clearly have shelved and are, like you said, going around the rule of law and allowing somebody to upend our court systems. The last thing I want to touch on, Chris, is your discussion around water availability. And this is something that Brad introduced last week a bit where he is talking about the old man being potentially over allocated as it stands. This is something that I think people, I’m in southern Alberta, I’m worried about water. I think to add to this, it’s made it even more stressful. But can you speak a little bit about water availability and what you know and what your thoughts are?
Chris:
Well, I live basically in the eastern slopes myself and I know what it’s been like the last few years. And in 2023, we had a two meter snow pack at the end of the ski season, about April the seventh, two meters. But we had a very hot spring and all that snow melted and the water ran off pretty much by the end of May on our property. Our wells ran dry by the end of August. That was shocking for us and we were not alone. The start of 2024 in the Old Man Reservoir, the MD of Pincher Creek, their water intake pipes were above the water level and it was completely dry. It was basically a trickle of water. People were very concerned. What happened last year was we had timely rains and on my property I put in a 9,000 liter water retention system, rainwater retention system, combination of vinyl barrels and totes and a 5,000 liter central tank so that we could retain rainwater.
And last year was fairly dry, but we had five timely rains and just as we were running out of rainwater, we got more and filled it up. Again, very lucky. This year we have very little snow pack, not even a meter. This year we’ll have difficulty again, water availability is going to be a huge issue. Unless we get much more snow and much more rain in the next few months, it’s going to be a difficult year. I guess what happens is every year this agricultural economy is looking at water and coal. Mines use a lot of water. We cannot get to the point where there is another huge draw on the water. We’re barely getting by with the water that we have and we have contractual commitments to make water available to Saskatchewan from Alberta and beyond. How can we have not just Northback, but all those other coal companies proceeding? What’s going to happen is if Grassy Mountain is approved as a development coal mine, the others will also get approved. They will follow like Dominoes. The biggest challenge is stopping Grassy Mountain and making sure that whatever water is available is available to agriculture and to the economy and for drinking water for the people who live in the area.
Jenny:
That’s right. Yeah. And now with, we need to touch on briefly the fact that Brian Jean lifted the coal policy during the hearing. It’s now not just the old men that’s at risk. We have other basins within the Eastern slopes that are now at risk with this. Watching I read that there was a potential lease or licence in Nordic that people are watching for too.
Chris:
As it spreads, this government has no limits and no conscience. This is the same Brian Jean that heavily criticized Jason Kenny when he tried to open up the Eastern slopes four years ago and offered his advice at that time, never to open up the Eastern slopes and never to open up the Rockies for coal mining. It’s the same minister. What happened in four years and why has the logic completely reversed? Why is the minister just not credible at all on this issue? And I would say, why is this minister still in his job? No kidding, nothing he says is holding up under scrutiny, but he’s still our minister of energy and still aggressively pursuing coal development. That 75%, 70 to 75% of Albertans do not want.
Calls for Minister Jean’s Resignation and Key Takeaways
Jenny:
And I would say like Lorne pointed out on Saturday, whose water does this affect? That’s what he said. And let’s say 70% of us put our hands up and he said, those that didn’t, you need to put your hand up. It’s only that they don’t know that they should be saying no to this. Thank you so much. And I did want to add there, you just said it and I did too, calling for Brian Jean’s resignation. This is something I’ve heard you say. Thank you very much for doing that. I’ve done it as well. Highly recommend people respond especially to his canned email and say, this is the wrong direction. And I love that you also say what Corb Lund says, which I’ll let you say. This isn’t a left or right issue.
Chris:
That’s right. It’s a right or wrong issue. And it’s wrong for a minister to not be listening to the constituents under our parliamentary traditions. If a minister is shown to be misleading the public and cannot be credible, they almost always are forced to resign. This is the exception to the rule that this minister has not been compelled to resign, given the fact that he cannot be trusted.
Jenny:
That’s right. Yeah. Thank you Chris. Okay, let’s do a little bit of housekeeping before we wrap. I just want to mention tomorrow is another protest and hearing happening at the AAR’s offices 250-5th Street downtown.
Chris:
Yeah, 250. Yep. Fifth Street, I think it is. And at 11 o’clock. Yeah.
Jenny:
Yes, 11:00 AM is the protest The hearing is about. I had this wrong last week, I’m just going to correct it. We’re going to hear closing arguments from Northback, and then I believe we’re going to hear some of the economic requests that the pecan council had asked for. I think those are the two things that the actual hearing will entail. But regardless, we’re going to be out there showing our support. Please, if you’re listening, this is about you. We need, like Brad said last week, normal Albertans to understand that it is critical that we all take a step like Chris has done here and stand up for our province. Thank you very much. Chris, housekeeping from you. What’s coming up for you that people should know about?
Chris:
We have the SACPA session that Southern Alberta Public Council on Public Affairs on Wednesday night in Lethbridge. Last week you probably heard that Lethbridge City Council voted nine to nothing against coal, any coal exploration. They were reaffirming the votes we’ve had in the past, we’ve had four votes. When the city votes nine to nothing against it and the province doesn’t even acknowledge it again, that’s another issue. The people who are most directly affected and we do need to move forward. This is probably the biggest issue of our times. This is earth shaking in terms of economic development going forward. Are we going to value the AgriFood industry? Are we going to protect it or are we just going to throw it all away for a coal mine?
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you. This is the severity of it. This is our water. This is our ability to live in this region and have a healthy lifestyle, be able to function and have an economy, all of the things that we need. Thank you so much, Chris. Like I said, I appreciate your battle. You are definitely standing up for Alberta and we need more and more people like you. Thank you very much for leading the way.
Chris:
Well, we need people to speak up and one person can’t do it. We all do it together. Thanks for the opportunity, Jenny, and I hope people feel that they have a stake in this because you definitely do.
Jenny:
Yes. Thank you so much. That’s awesome. Okay, take care for now. We’ll see. We’ll see you tomorrow actually.
Chris:
Thank you, Jenny.
Jenny:
Yeah, thank you.