Australia’s richest person has won community backing to open a coal mine in Canada following a bitter five-year battle punctuated by allegations that the fossil fuel lobby secretly backed citizens’ groups ahead of a vote in the local town.
Gina Rinehart, a prominent supporter of US president-elect Donald Trump, spent millions of dollars over five years promoting the project as an economic boom for the coal-mining region, despite a ruling by local regulators in 2021 that the project was “not in the public interest.”
In heavy snow on Monday, nearly half of the 6,000 residents of Crowsnest Pass, in a scenic rocky patch of Alberta’s south-west, voted in a non-binding plebiscite in favour of restarting the metallurgical coal mine at Grassy Mountain.
The final count found that 72% were in favour of Rinehart’s Northback Holdings’ proposal to restart the mine, which closed in 1983.
Ahead of the vote, local media group Great West Media published an investigation alleging Citizens Supportive of Crowsnest Coal, a citizens’ group campaigning in favour of the mine reopening, had not fully disclosed its connections to a prominent oil and gas lobby group.
Rinehart is a controversial mining magnate who has amassed numerous iron ore, coal and farming assets in Australia and elsewhere.
She has supported rightwing think tanks with climate sceptic views, become embroiled in a family feud over the family fortune and urged Australians to work hard to compete with Africans willing to labour for $2 a day.
Senex Energy, a company in Australia co-owned by the mining magnate, is facing opposition over plans to develop and operate coal seam gas wells in Queensland.