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Daveberta Podcast

Water Not Coal with Corb Lund

As the Water Not Coal citizen initiative enters its final week, country music singer-songwriter and rancher Corb Lund joined the Daveberta Podcast to explain why it’s important for Albertans to sign the petition to block new coal mining projects, like Grassy Mountain, from opening in the Eastern Slopes of the Canadian Rocky Mountains.

The Water Not Coal campaign needs to submit more than 177,732 signatures to Elections Alberta in order to force the Alberta government to respond to the following statement through a vote by MLAs in the Legislature or a province-wide referendum:

“The Government of Alberta shall prohibit through legislation all coal exploration and mining activities within the Eastern Slopes of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, other than mines that are in actual production as of January 1, 2026. For clarity, this prohibition includes Northback Holdings’ Grassy Mountain Project and Valory Resources’ Blackstone Project as well as any projects to expand any producing mines.”

Ranchers, farmers, landowners, residents of communities downstream of the Eastern Slopes, and Albertans across the province are concerned about the impact of large industrial coal mines on the fresh water that flows from the Rocky Mountains.

Read more on the Daveberta Substack

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Alberta Politics

Nate Horner’s big deficit budget — another year, another Alberta budget at the whim of oil and gas royalties

There’s a baked-in analysis in every Alberta provincial budget that is impossible to ignore: Alberta relies too much on revenues from oil and gas royalties to fund the daily operations of government.

The other baked-in part of the analysis is what Albertans want: well-funded public services without having to pay more taxes for them.

From a first glance, it sure looks like that’s what Albertans got in Minister of Finance Nate Horner’s budget tabled today in the Legislature.

The budget doesn’t appear to include any big spending cuts, but it does include something Conservatives in this province used to like saying they wouldn’t do: run a deficit. This budget runs a big deficit of $9.4 billion and projects deficits for the next two budgets.

Read all about it on the Daveberta Substack