The outsized influence of billionaires in the workings of ailing democracies has struck again. Gina Rinehart, the Australian owner of the $46-billion mining empire Hancock Prospecting, just flexed her mining muscle in the municipality of Crowsnest Pass, Alberta - and the UCP invited her right in.
Gina Rinehart, the Australian owner of the $46-billion mining empire Hancock Prospecting, just flexed her mining muscle in the municipality of Crowsnest Pass, Alberta. In the process the billionaire weaponized an Alberta community in her bid to resurrect a project rejected by regulators: the Grassy Mountain metallurgical coal mine.
Rinehart’s subsidiary Northback Holdings won a resounding yes in an absolutely surreal referendum that asked residents in the historic coal mining community a highly deceptive question: “Do you support the development and operations of the metallurgical coal mine at Grassy Mountain?” The deception involved an inconvenient matter of geography. The project is located not in the municipality of Crowsnest, but in the neighbouring municipal district of Ranchland, which opposes Rinehart’s project.
Nevertheless, a community bombarded by corporate propaganda provided a resounding answer to a question impacting a different municipal district. Almost 2,000 citizens (71.8 per cent) voted yes to a coal mine located elsewhere, while 769 (28.2 per cent) voted no. The preordained and socially engineered outcome surprised no one.
After regulators rejected her project in 2021 for economic and environmental reasons (and three separate courts upheld that decision), Australia’s richest woman simply rebranded her company. She then began a systematic campaign to reanimate the controversial billion-dollar project that many Albertans regard as a threat to water security. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith then opened a new political window for Rinehart.
In 2022 she promised her supporters in the Pass that if they voted in favour of the mine in a referendum, she would push the project forward as premier. With that political nod of approval, Rinehart’s company Northback Holdings has been unabashedly working for a yes vote for two years. The Australian company lobbied provincial government and the local municipal district. It funded a school lunch nutrition program to win hearts and minds. And it inundated Alberta’s right-wing media platforms (True North and Western Standard) with coal propaganda. During the referendum it plastered the community with “Yes” billboards. It put up “We are a coal town” signs. It canvassed citizens door to door. It wined and dined potential supporters. It even offered to drive the elderly to the polls.
Northback CEO Michael Young not only promised jobs and tax revenue but offered magical solutions for the mine’s environmental impacts with technologies that don’t exist. He dismissed selenium, a toxic fish killer created by coal mining, as an “education problem.” In broad daylight, a referendum designed to build a false social licence for a foreign company completely undermined the fundamental principles of democracy.
So, Alberta, did you really vote yes? Or did the UCP just make you THINK you did?