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Country musician Corb Lund says he’s not giving up the fight after his petition to stop new coal mining in the Eastern Slopes of the Rocky Mountains was ruled a failure.<\/p>\n
Lund says he has questions about the process that Elections Alberta used to reject the list of names and that he’s looking at taking it to court.<\/p>\n
“We’re not going anywhere on this,” Lund said Monday in an interview.<\/p>\n
He said his group Water Not Coal may apply for a judicial review in the coming days.<\/p>\n
The petition was rejected last week<\/a> by Elections Alberta. It was the latest setback for Lund in six years of fighting coal mining in the Rockies.<\/p>\n He said the mining isn’t worth the threat to the environment, particularly water, but that his efforts have been met with policy flip-flops and regulatory “rug pulls.”<\/p>\n “We’re frustrated about this, but not surprised,” he said.<\/p>\n “It makes me question to what extent we’re living in a democracy.”<\/p>\n We’re frustrated about this, but not surprised.- Corb Lund<\/p>\n Lund needed almost 178,000 signatures from citizens to force Premier Danielle Smith’s government to act on concerns over coal mining.<\/p>\n A successful petition would have compelled the United Conservative Party government to consider a law banning new coal mining or send the issue to a provincewide referendum.<\/p>\n Lund said he delivered more than 207,000 signatures, of which Elections Alberta counted 196,000 valid ones.<\/p>\n However, the agency said when it did random checks on the authenticity of names, statistical sampling led them to estimate 172,000 were verified, causing the petition to fail.<\/p>\n Lund questioned if Elections Alberta followed its own rules.<\/p>\n He said he has heard from people who received calls from unidentified phone numbers and, if they picked up, were asked by a person who didn’t give a staff verification number to offer up their personal information.<\/p>\n “They were asking people from a random 1-800 number, ‘So what is your full name, and what is your home address?”‘ Lund said,<\/p>\n “If that was me, I’d hang up on them.”<\/p>\n He added, “We followed every rule, and we’ve drilled our canvassers to be very fastidious about following all the rules. And they’re still messing with us.”<\/p>\n Process outlined<\/p>\n Elections Alberta disagreed.<\/p>\n The agency, in a statement Monday, said if the phone number or email address submitted by an elector wasn’t in service, that signature was rejected. And anyone contacted by phone received a text message in advance.<\/p>\n “No signatures were deemed invalid or failed verification because they did not answer the phone or respond to an email or voice mail for verification,” it said.<\/p>\n Elections Alberta said its verification process was rigorous, and last week it cited unconfirmed voter information as reasons for rejecting signatures.<\/p>\n The petition effort was the first to undergo the signature verification process since a massive breach of the provincial voting list<\/a> prompted a higher degree of scrutiny from Elections Alberta.<\/p>\n Lund’s petition was somewhat moot before it was rejected.<\/p>\n