It took four years in court, but a group of Eastern Slope ranchers will finally get access to thousands of pages of documents outlining when and how the province decided to tear up 44 years of coal policy.
“The courts are being stalled up with resistance to release these materials that belong to Albertans,” said Laura Laing, a rancher based west of Nanton.
“As hard as they’ve been fighting for us to not see the rest of the documents – because what hasn’t been redacted is fairly damning – I would suggest we have a lot to find out on this file.”
The group had already received a series of five packages from the province through FOIP, but more than half of the roughly 1,300 were completely blank.
Those documents were spread between 2021 and 2023.
Many questions remain.
“Like, how did we get to almost opening up the entirety of the Eastern Slopes to industrial open pit coal mining – …