Alberta ordered to release coal papers
• The Alberta government must produce thousands of documents on its attempts to encourage coal mining in the Rocky Mountains after a judge threw out a bid to block their release.
In denying the government’s request for a judicial review into an order to provide the documents, Justice Kent Teskey warned the province that courts take a dim view of delay being used to neuter public attempts to understand how important decisions are made.
“The requesting parties have been practically denied access to the information they are entitled to at law and this court will not abet this conduct through the availability of judicial review,” he wrote in a judgment released Friday.
“If public bodies are unwilling or unable to comply with their timely obligations under (freedom of information law), they should expect that courts may apply a high level of scrutiny on the availability of judicial review.”
The judgment relates to an attempt by a group of southern Alberta ranchers to understand why the United Conservative Party government chose in 2020 to rescind a decades-old policy that had blocked open-pit coal development from the beloved landscapes of the southern foothills and Rockies.
In 2020, the group asked Alberta Energy for briefing notes, internal memos, reviews, reports and correspondence.
Legislation says a public body has 30 days to make reasonable attempts to respond but may make 30-day extensions. Those extensions were imposed again and again and, after 15 months, the department released 30 pages of what it said were 6,539 records.
It eventually refused to release any more, using exemptions allowed by the law.
The ranchers appealed that decision to the Information and Privacy Commissioner’s office, and the exemptions were disallowed.
The judge threw out the government’s request for a judicial review of that decision, saying it relied too heavily on loopholes for cabinet discussions.
“Cabinet confidence is essential to ensure that the government can deliberate freely and unimpeded, but it does not exist to allow governing in secrecy,” Teskey wrote.
As well, the judge said the government changed, without explanation, the number of documents involved, cutting the original number by more than a third.
“I am concerned about the seemingly casual attitude that Alberta Energy adopted in representing the number of records before the commissioner,” Teskey wrote.
His ruling emphasized the importance of timely access to government records.
“Every Albertan is entitled to a broad right of access to the records of their government. This is an essential pillar of a functional democracy.”