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The Country Music Star Taking On the Alberta Government

Corb Lund has been called a “woke bastard” for daring to protest coal mining

Corb Lund is almost royalty in Alberta. He’s a country music star who comes from a family with four generations of ranching in the province. And he’s stepping into the political spotlight.

Alberta country music singer Cord Lund is at the helm of a petition to challenge coal mining in the Crowsnest Pass area

Grassy Mountain coal mine project was once cancelled due to environmental impact concerns

Mining company Northback is revisiting the project with a revised proposal

This winter, Lund filed a Citizen Initiative Petition with Elections Alberta that, with enough signatories, will force a referendum question on coal mines on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Lund is opposed to mining in this region. The Alberta government is not.

“I think it’s crooked as hell,” says Lund. “There’s no upside to it.”

It was the Grassy Mountain project that inspired Lund to act. Grassy Mountain is a long-disputed plan to build a steelmaking coal mine in the Crowsnest Pass, near the town of Blairmore, on the site of a mine that closed decades ago.

Northback, the company behind the mine proposal, and its supporters have cast the project as an economic lifeline for the region; critics claim it will destroy a sensitive area at the headwaters of the Oldman River and harm fish habitat, grasslands, and water, including the drinking water for the 200,000 people who live downstream in Lethbridge and surrounding areas.

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Lund and his team call their campaign “Water Not Coal,” and they argue that Alberta shouldn’t be toying with mines in the region. Fifty years ago, then premier Peter Lougheed’s government felt the same and banned coal mining on the eastern slopes. In the spring of 2020, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party........

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