'This mobilization is unprecedented'
Despite the quiet announcement of the rescinding of the decades-old policy, word spread relatively quickly across Alberta.
News of coal policy started to dominate the headlines. Facebook groups like Protect Alberta's Rockies and Headwaters soon had tens of thousands of members. Thousands more Albertans signed petitions. Hashtags like #MountainsNotMines and #WaterNotCoal began cropping up online.
At the same time, hearings for another open-pit mine in the eastern slopes, the Grassy Mountain coal project, began. While that mine is not on category 2 lands (it is on the site of an old mine and on land dubbed category 4 and thus open for development), the real possibility of a new open-pit mine in the mountain headwaters galvanized Albertans already concerned about new coal leases in the region.
"The government simply did not imagine that this kind of mobilization could happen," Laurie Adkin, a political science professor at the University of Alberta, told The Narwhal.
"This mobilization is unprecedented," she said "I cannot think of any example in Alberta's history where this kind of coalition has come together and on this scale."
Meanwhile, Kenney was defending his government's stance as recently as early February, telling interviewers, "there are thousands of coal miners and their families that depend on the industry." He went on to describe opposition to mines in the eastern slopes as city dwellers who "look down on" coal miners.
Bratt took issue with Kenney's characterization, saying "almost everybody in the province was opposed to it, including people in their base of support." The UCP government, he said, "absolutely" failed to read the room when it came to opposition to coal mines.
According to Blake Shaffer, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary, the Alberta government failed to take into account the myriad values of Albertans when it rescinded the coal policy.
Without doing consultation he believes the UCP took a "fundamental misstep."
Even as the UCP government works to "course-correct," as Kenney put in on Feb. 10, there is still significant confusion surrounding Alberta’s most recent announcement.
Leases and exploration programs that have been approved since the coal policy was rescinded can continue. The Grassy Mountain coal project is not affected by recent announcements. Savage has said no "mountaintop removal" will happen in category 2 lands, but that left some Albertans scratching their heads about the specific vocabulary.
Shaffer said that left him wondering if "strip mining along the slopes" would be permitted. And the government's promise to create a new coal policy does not necessarily preclude coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Rockies.
"The government remains committed to expanding the extraction of metallurgical coal," Adkin said. "[It] continues to put forward the proposition that there is such a thing as environmentally responsible coal mining on the eastern slopes."
"The real question is was there enough economic value in doing this metallurgical coal extraction to deal with the cost of it?" Shaffer said, adding those costs are largely environmental and recreational.