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Grassy Mountain Coal Project - decision

appeal

Grassy Mountain Coal Project - appeal

judgment

Grassy Mountain Coal Project - judgment

Filing Year For Action

These proceedings arise from the proposed Grassy Mountain Steelmaking Coal Project in southwestern Alberta and stem from a joint federal-provincial impact assessment conducted under the Impact Assessment Act and Alberta's environmental assessment regime. In 2021, the Joint Review Panel concluded that the project was likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects that could not be justified in the public interest. In reaching that conclusion, the Panel considered numerous statutory factors, including the project's greenhouse gas emissions, contribution to climate change, sustainability, cumulative environmental effects, and consistency with Canada's environmental and climate objectives. Relying on the Panel's report, the federal Minister determined that the project's adverse effects were not in the public interest, while Alberta regulators likewise refused to authorize the mine.

The resulting litigation concerns different stages of those regulatory decisions. In Benga Mining Limited v. Canada (Environment and Climate Change), 2024 FC 231, the Federal Court reviewed the federal decision-making process. While rejecting the proponent's substantive challenges to the Panel's report and the Minister's assessment, the Court allowed applications brought by the Piikani Nation and the Stoney Nakoda Nations, finding that procedural fairness had been breached when the Minister considered post-report submissions without giving the Nations an opportunity to respond. The Minister's Decision Statement was therefore set aside and remitted for redetermination. In Northback Holdings Corporation v. Canada (Environment and Climate Change), 2025 FCA 31, the Federal Court of Appeal held that the proponent's appeal was not rendered moot by the Federal Court's judgment and allowed the appeal to proceed. Separately, Northback Holdings Corporation v. Alberta Energy Regulator, 2025 ABCA 186 concerns parallel challenges to the Alberta Energy Regulator's refusal to approve the project and addresses the availability and scope of judicial review under Alberta's statutory regulatory framework.

Although none of the courts independently evaluated the project's greenhouse gas emissions or interpreted Canada's climate obligations, climate change formed an important part of the statutory context underlying the litigation. The courts repeatedly referred to the impact assessment process, in which greenhouse gas emissions, climate change, sustainability, and broader environmental effects were considered as factors informing the public interest determination.


Grassy Mountain Coal Project

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Justice is the ethical and political framework that addresses fairness, including issues of responsibility, rights, and structural inequity.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from carbonised plant matter, rich in carbon and hydrocarbons, and occurring in several main types including hard coal and brown coal.

People with different national or cultural traditions from the dominant population

Social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced

Activities of industries that extract natural resources, such as mining, oil, and gas, for commercial use.

This sector involves activities to move goods and people, alongside the storage of products.

Grassy Mountain Coal Project - appeal

Impacted group

Fossil fuel

Economic sector

Finance