#Gina #Rinehart, an Australian worth $30 billion and an avid Donald Trump supporter, has changed Alberta’s politics in her relentless pursuit of mined coal.

The saga offers more evidence on how the wealthy exercise their raw financial power to engineer democracy for their own economic benefit.

Political scientists call the oversized influence of billionaires “the wealthification” of politics.
Witness how billionaires dominated the U.S. presidential election.

Now the influence of Australia’s wealthiest person seems to have won the open support of the right-wing populist government of Danielle Smith.

Not too long ago, Rinehart’s ambitions in Alberta appeared to be dead in the water.

️In 2021, provincial and federal regulators ruled her company’s proposal for a
massive open-pit mine at #Grassy #Mountain would pollute the Oldman River watershed and was not in the public interest.

Not to be deterred, the mining magnate spent millions to reverse the decision, with demonstrable effect.

In the last three years she has repeatedly sued the Alberta and federal governments and challenged regulatory processes.

And even though three separate courts have found her arguments baseless and without merit,
she continues to sue.

Two outstanding lawsuits, for example, contend the Alberta government owes her billions because her mining plans were stymied.

Overwhelming public opposition to coal mining forced the government to impose a coal moratorium in the Rockies to protect critical watersheds.

Outside of provincial and federal courts, Rinehart has hired two lobby firms with ties to the United Conservative Party government to actively promote her open-pit mining project.

When it became clear that citizens living in the municipal district of Ranchland, where Rinehart wants to build the mega-mine, were overwhelmingly opposed to its construction,
Rinehart actively participated in a dubious referendum sanctioned by Smith in the neighbouring community of Crowsnest Pass.

Rinehart’s company even drove voters to the polls.

Thanks to Rinehart’s promises of jobs and prosperity, one political geography voted yes to a project that will destroy water and landscapes in a neighbouring municipal district.

In the divisive process, the billionaire weaponized an economically depressed community to buy the illusion of social licence.

In the process Rinehart effectively disenfranchised 200,000 water drinkers downstream from the proposed mine,
as well as five million Albertans who own the resource and have consistently opposed mining in Rocky Mountain watersheds.

Last month Smith’s government openly embraced the billionaire’s Grassy Mountain project in an abrupt press briefing before Christmas.

Since then, hundreds of demonstrators have flooded the streets of small towns downstream from the proposed mine site to defend their water security in an arid landscape.

Rinehart’s victory to date adds a push-pin to her global map of political conquests.

In a recent speech, interspersed with video clips from the fellow right-wingers Elon Musk and Pierre Poilievre,
the Australian magnate said the mining sector must push its advocates into Parliament where they can rip up environmental legislation she claims is jeopardizing the world’s mining industry
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2025/01/09/Billionaire-Bored-Hole-Alberta-Laws/