Canada

The governments of former Alberta premier Jason Kenney and now Premier Danielle Smith have been vigorously lobbied to support a private company’s high-stakes gamble on a rail line from Calgary to Banff.

With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of public money at stake, internal government documents obtained by The Tyee raise a question.

Why did Smith personally arrange for her husband to be granted extraordinary access to confidential internal government discussions about the proposed project?

The internal documents, obtained through freedom of information, show Smith’s husband, David Moretta, attended an hour-long confidential government meeting at McDougall Centre, the provincial government’s Calgary office, on Sept. 26, 2023.

The government redacted any information that would show who else attended the meeting and what was discussed.