In the previous post, we saw the Committee on Private Members’ Bills unanimously (and surprisingly) recommending that Rachel Notley’s Eastern Slopes Protection Act proceed to the full assembly. But the spring sitting of the 2nd session of Alberta’s 30th legislature would soon end, and bills not passed by then would “die on the order paper” with the new legislative session expected in the fall. Normal legislative procedure takes time, and the NDP worried that even the second-reading debate they coveted might not occur before the session ended. Legislative debate can be expedited, however, if the assembly unanimously agrees to bypass normal procedure. On April 19, Notley introduced a motion requesting unanimous consent to give her bill second reading that very evening (see pp. 4613 and 4615-16 of the Alberta Hansard for the afternoon of April 19, 2021).
Legislative debate was urgent, Notley argued, because ongoing exploration activities posed the immediate “risk of water contamination and irreparable disturbance.” Recall that although the government had reinstated Lougheed’s 1976 coal policy pending public consultation, it allowed significant exploration to continue. “Coal mining companies,” said Notley, “are expected to use heavy equipment to drill test pits and to begin building hundreds of kilometres of roads.” This environmental degradation needed to be addressed immediately, she insisted, “not in November, when the minister’s coal committee reports.” Hence the need for immediate debate in the assembly.
The coal committee’s consultation would in any case be “utterly ineffective,” according to Notley, because its “terms of reference explicitly exclude from consideration” matters “at the heart of the call to limit coal mining,” namely, “water quality, water quantity, and land-use planning.” Her proposed Eastern Slopes Protection bill, by contrast, “would provide a more fulsome, a more responsive, and a more evidence-based frame for consultations with Albertans” (though only about “legacy” mining areas; the bill would prohibit mining in category-2 lands). Here was another reason for expediting debate on that bill.
The unanimous consent required for expedited debate was not forthcoming, making it more likely for the bill to die on the order paper, as Notley lamented in the video component of this tweet:
Letting the Eastern Slopes Protection bill die on the order paper was “something the UCP planned to do all along,” Notley insisted. Indeed, but this did not mean continued exploration pending an “utterly ineffective” consultation, as shown by subsequent posts in this series; start with the next one.
ADDENDUM (Jan. 2022): Notley correctly predicted that the government would let her Eastern Slopes Protection Act die on the order paper, but that happened later than anticipated. Rather than launching a new session after the legislature’s summer break, as the NDP expected, the government chose to continue the existing session, thus leaving Notley’s bill to wither on the order paper throughout the fall sitting of 2021. The Throne Speech beginning a new legislative session, which would kill bills on the existing order paper, was eventually scheduled for February 22, 2022.