The recent $142.8-million settlement paid to Atrum Coal is not just a staggering bill for Alberta taxpayers, it exposes a pattern of reckless governance that the UCP government is now repeating, threatening to cost us billions more.

Before the May long weekend in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the government quietly rescinded the 1976 Coal Development Policy without public consultation. This policy had protected 1.5 million hectares of sensitive lands in Alberta’s major watersheds for more than four decades. The announcement came as Albertans headed into the holiday weekend, a timing that would become a disturbing pattern.

Coal companies rushed in. Between July and September 2020, applications were approved and leases were granted for 240,000 hectares of previously protected Category

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