Water Not Coal petition fails after thousands of signatures rejected

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Sunny South News

By Anna Smith
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The No New Coal Mining in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains petition was found to be unsuccessful, after 24,000 collected signatures were rejected.

Chief Electoral Officer Gordon McClure determined that, as required under Section 10 of the Citizen Initiative Act, the requirements of Section 6 were not met.

A total of 196,088 valid signatures were counted at the end of the collection period, with 177,732 required to be considered successful. However, over the course of the verification process, exactly 24,000 signatures appear to have been rejected, bringing the final number below the necessary threshold at 172,088.

Elections Alberta stated that primary reasons for rejection included “incomplete elector information, invalid dates and incomplete or improperly completed canvasser signature witnessing declarations” during the validation phase.

It continued on in the release to add “electors being unable or unwilling to verify the information on the petition sheet, and not providing valid contact information to reach them for verification” were the primary reasons for rejection during the later verification stage.

No seeded names were found in the petition.

A statement from petition applicant Corb Lund expressed “grave concerns” about the fairness of the process, adding that “this has been an unreasonable and opaque process from the beginning. And despite diligently following every rule, we are left with more questions than answers.”

Lund thanked fellow canvassers for their efforts, assuring them the fight would not be in vain and said he would announce his next steps shortly.

In 2020, the United Conservative Party government rescinded a decades-old coal policy to reopen much of the eastern slopes to mining. It rolled that back the following year due to public outcry.

The government reignited the debate in 2024, when it introduced rules banning new mines on the slopes while exempting advanced projects.

Under Premier Danielle Smith, it also changed the rules for citizen-initiative petitions multiple times, forcing Lund to restart his application process late last year.