Corb Lund speaks out.

His posting from earlier today regarding last night's Town Hall in Ft. Macleod.

by Corb Lund

I attended the Alberta govt's Coal Town Hall last night in Ft. Macleod. One of the main messages I heard from Premier Smith and from Ministers Schulz and Jean was how much they are relying on the Alberta Government's Coal Committee findings. I'm familiar with the findings and I would strongly disagree that they are following the Committee's recommendations.

In fact, months ago, myself, Katie Morrison from Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and most notably, Bill Trafford from the govt's own aforementioned Coal Committee (!) specifically challenged these exact three government representatives to a long form, moderated, publicly broadcast debate on the coal issue. We got no response from any of them or their staff. We feel an in depth public discussion on the issues around coal mining would help clear up some of the public confusion around the situation.

As someone who has been heavily involved in this fight for over five years now, and have spent 100’s of hours speaking at length with dozens of people on both sides of the issue (including four gov’t ministers, the head of the Canadian coal lobby and two coal CEOs) I've come to have a pretty comprehensive understanding of the situation. In my opinion, many of the things the Premier and Ministers were saying last night were untrue, misleading and plainly dishonest.

The format of the town hall did not allow for follow up questions so the govt officials onstage were able to make what I feel were many untrue statements that could not be challenged by the public participants at the completely full event.

Bill Trafford, Katie Morrison and I would like to strongly reiterate our challenge to Premier Smith, Minister Schulz and Minister Jean for a public debate on coal at their soonest convenience to help Albertans understand these issues and make decisions on them.

If you would like to see this happen, please share this post and contact these gov’t officials as well as your local MLA through all channels: email, phone calls and in person.

We're being sold down the river to foreign interests by our elected representatives here folks, and it's happening quickly so speak up.