The news that Teck has pulled its bid for the proposed mine came the same day a deal had been reached between the Alberta government and a First Nation that had raised environmental concerns about the oilsands project.

Alberta will work with Indigenous groups in the province's remote northeast corner on what the government says will be Canada's largest off-the-grid solar power project.

The RCMP is now referring to its efforts to find four missing hunters in the northeastern Alberta wilderness as a "recovery" operation.