This week DeSmog Canada received a 5-star ranking from the international watchdog initiative Transparify for our commitment to donor transparency.

We’re excited about our Transparify ranking but even moreso about the importance of promoting transparency among media-makers.

The production of fearless public-interest journalism in Canada is a rarity. And in our incredibly monopolized media landscape, there is an urgently growing need for in-depth journalism that holds the public’s right to know as a guiding principle.

Happy to congratulate @DeSmogCanada on their 5-star transparency in our most recent report: https://t.co/AjdGCf661m

— Transparify (@transparify) December 5, 2017

But what does it take to actually serve up ad-free and truly independent journalism to Canadians every day? As a non-profit society, profits, corporate interests and advertising revenue don’t play a role in paying our writers and for that reason don’t influence DeSmog Canada’s reporting agenda.

The needs and interests of our readers (you!) are at the forefront of our newsgathering decisions. And our goal is to make complex energy and environment news accessible to Canadians and to shine a light on critical, under-reported stories.

So how do we actually fund DeSmog Canada?

There are three parts to the answer. First, we are incredibly lean with just two full-time staff, a handful of nationwide freelancers and no office.

Second, we are very fortunate to receive ongoing core support from two foundations.

And third, small donations and monthly membership pledges make up a growing portion of our funding. (Check out our donor disclosure and editorial independence pages!)

This past fall over 60 DeSmog Canada readers signed up to become monthly members, collectively funding a part-time position for a new investigative journalist to join our team.

We hope that’s just the start. When our readers step up to fund a photoessay of B.C.’s remote mines or a mythbusting poll about the Site C dam, we are not only filling a gap created by dwindling newsrooms, we’re working to rebuild those bonds between journalists and the society they report on behalf of.

It’s a shared vision of the news we can all get behind. It’s a way for us to maintain our independence as we hold the powerful to account. And it’s a way to combat the growing distrust and disconnect many Canadians feel with traditional newsrooms.

We believe a reader-funded model is a promising way to sustain in-depth journalism in Canada and we hope you’ll consider supporting us.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

DeSmog Canada has been named as a finalist for “Best News Coverage” by the Canadian Online Publishing Awards.

The awards recognize the best of the country’s online publishing and are judged by a panel of experts from Canada and the U.S.

The other finalists in the “Best News Coverage” category are The Globe and Mail, CBC News, Macleans Magazine and The Huffington Post Canada.

DeSmog Canada submitted three stories for consideration for the award.

I Went to the Mount Polley Mine Spill Site by Carol Linnitt is a first-hand photo essay of the aftermath of the Mount Polley tailings pond disaster in August 2014.

Field of Dreams: Peace Valley Farmers, Ranchers Fight to Keep Land Above Water As Site C Dam Decision Looms by Emma Gilchrist profiles those who stand to lose the most from the construction of the most expensive public project in B.C. history: the Site C dam.

Companies Illegally Dumped Toxic Fracking Chemicals in Dawson Creek Water Treatment Systems At Least Twice, Officials Report by Linnitt rounded out the submission. In that article, Linnitt tells the story of companies thwarting fracking waste disposal laws.

At an awards ceremony last week in Toronto, The Globe and Mail took the gold prize for its coverage of the deadly attack on Ottawa last year. Maclean’s Magazine was awarded the silver prize for its coverage of the same event.

For our part at DeSmog Canada, we are beyond thrilled to be recognized alongside such heavy hitters in the news industry. As a small, non-profit news outlet, sometimes we feel like a small fish in a big pond. This recognition goes to show that when people come together and support independent media, big things can happen — thank you!

By the end of the year we need to raise $20,000 to continue our ground-breaking energy and environment reporting. Please donate what you can today.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“Our messages are not resonating,” Natural Resource Minister Greg Rickford told a room full of oil and gas executives in a luxury Rocky Mountain resort last fall. “You are fighting an uphill battle for public confidence.”

Rickford, who attended the meeting at the request of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), encouraged the executives to do more to spread the oil industry’s message to the Canadian public.

“Much of the debate over energy is characterized by myth or emotion,” he said, suggesting scientists and campaigners critical of development in the Alberta oilsands were “crowding out the real facts.”

Rickford made no mention of Canada’s international climate commitments, but he did deride concerns about pollution from the oilsands — the country’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rickford’s advice, released to Greenpeace via an Access to Information request, marked the beginning of a decisive shift in industry’s public relations campaigns.

As CAPP described it to The Guardian: “The energy industry is embarking on a different level of engagement and CAPP is moving to a ground campaign to activate industry supporters.”

While we’ll likely never know the level of coordination happening behind the scenes, the shared vision going forward was clearly articulated by Rickford: “Those of us here in this room have a responsibility to tell our shared energy story,” he intoned. “We must all be on the same page.”

Of Oil and Patriotism

Rickford’s call for a new “shared energy story” was in October of 2014.

At that point, the narrative that environmental advocates were “un-Canadian” had been seeded in public discourse, most doggedly by blogger Vivian Krause and most famously by key Conservative players high in the political party hierarchy.

The connection between pro-industry ideals and patriotism had been ham-handedly advanced by controversial personality Ezra Levant through his Ethical Oil campaign (which seemed to lose steam after its industry and Conservative-party connections were exposed by DeSmog).

Since then, the attempt to persuade Canadians of the Canadian-ness of the oil industry has ramped up and become much more polished.

A whole host of campaigns designed to advance the agenda of the fossil fuel industry have cropped up: Resource Works, British Columbians for Prosperity, Energy Citizens, Coal Alliance, Canadian Natural Resources Alliance, Pipeline Action, and many others.

But no individual has mastered the art quite as effectively as the oil industry’s citizen activist Cody Battershill, founder of Canada Action.

Described as a “one-man oil sands advocate…in [a] PR war,” last year Battershill told the National Post he wants to create a more “balanced conversation” about the Alberta oilsands.

But DeSmog Canada’s research indicates Battershill and Canada Action appear to have close ties to the oil industry and to powerful campaigners from the Conservative Party of Canada.

Who are Cody Battershill and Canada Action?

Battershill is a young Calgary realtor in the top one per cent of agents in his Canada-wide company. As he tells the story, his oilsands advocacy began in 2010 when he was walking along Vancouver’s Robson Street and noticed that a LUSH cosmetics store had placed some “Stop Oilsands” posters in its window. It caught his attention, he says. He knew nothing about oil and gas but “common sense says that everything in that store is made possible by natural resources.”

Battershill said he decided to get involved to foster “a more informed conversation about resource development.” He started a Twitter account and has been building Canada Action ever since.

His non-profit organization, Canada Action, sells clothing for men, women and children with the statement: “I love oil sands,” designed by Canada Action’s Robbie Piccard.

It echoes a longer-running campaign in the U.S. — run by Alex Epstein from the pro-industry Center for Industrial Progress — that makes a moral case for fossil fuels. Epstein, like Battershill, argues social prosperity relies on the consumption of fossil fuels while overlooking the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows the negative impacts of industrial pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.

Did you know you can move somewhere where it’s #EarthHour, every hour? (Always enjoy hearing @AlexEpstein speak) pic.twitter.com/7BOSp66buP

— Cody Battershill (@codyincalgary) June 16, 2015

Battershill declined to comment on his relationship with Epstein. Epstein did not respond to an interview request.

Battershill, right on point with Rickford’s advice, has said critics of industry add “a lot of fear and emotion to the argument that’s not supported by facts.”

Alongside his prolific Twitter activity, Battershill writes articles for the Huffington Post, the Calgary Herald and the Journal of the Canadian Heavy Oil Association, where he often opposes the opinions of climate campaigners or other environmental advocates.

Canada Action also produces numerous slick infographics that promote industry views on oilsands development. These are in turn shared by Canada Action sub-groups, Oilsands Action and Pipeline Action, which play an active roll disseminating industry-friendly information to large audiences on Facebook and Twitter.

Not bad for a realtor.

So is Canada Action a one-man band as Battershill would prefer people to believe or is there more than meets the eye?

Deep Industry, Conservative Connections

Canada Action was registered as a federal not-for-profit society in September 2014. With a little help from his friends, Battershill held a launch party at the Woods Buffalo Brewing Co. in Fort McMurray the same day. (Through a corporate registry search, DeSmog Canada discovered Canada Action existed as a numbered corporation between 2012 and 2013 before being renamed Canada Action Coalition in August of 2013.)

Kim Farwell, leader of oilsands extraction at Syncrude and two-time former president of the Conservative Party of Canada’s riding association in Fort McMurray helped Battershill organize the event along with Robbie Picard, Canada Action campaigner. Another organizer, Diane Slater, announced she was retiring as chief administrative officer at the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce — whose ranks are loaded with heavy oil businesses — to take on a more active role in Canada Action.

Canada Action’s registration as a non-profit society reveals its board of directors. Most interestingly, Canada Action’s society documentation indicates Battershill brought in an accomplished Conservative campaigner as a director.

Matt Gelinas and the 2011 Robocall Scandal

Although he was only 26 when Canada Action was incorporated, director Matt Gelinas already had a long history of political campaigning and advocacy for conservative causes. In 2006, he supervised phone banks for the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership campaign of the most right-wing candidate, Ted Morton.

As a University of Calgary political science student, Gelinas helped organize the visit of right-wing, incendiary speaker Ann Coulter to the university campus in 2011. In one of her more famous claims about Muslims, Coulter said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

By the time he graduated, Gelinas was a seasoned political campaigner working closely with key conservative organizations.

Gelinas went on to work with the Manning Centre, an organization that promotes conservative ideas and politicians. In 2013, before the Alberta provincial election, he presented a workshop at the Manning Centre titled: “Do you know how to get your voters out?”

Gelinas is also an expert consultant on NationBuilder, which provides software for political campaigns, helping candidates organize their online presence. NationBuilder’s power lies in converting social media activity into datasets useful for elections campaigning and fundraising.

Gelinas studied under conservative political strategist, and Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, Tom Flanagan. In his book, Winning Power: Canadian Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century, Flanagan writes that he contracted Gelinas’ company Blue Direct to perform “auto-dialler polls and electronic town halls.”

Blue Direct is still run by Gelinas’ colleague and conservative campaigner Richard Dur who was credited for helping win the 2011 federal Conservative majority. Dur is a trainee of the Koch brothers-funded Leadership Institute, a training centre for “conservative activists” that counts many senior Canadian conservative leaders among its alumni.

According to his LinkedIn account, between 2012 and 2013, Gelinas worked for the Responsive Marketing Group, an automated call service. The company has played a key role in the history of the Conservative Party of Canada and was a central player in the 2011 robocall scandal, before Gelinas joined its ranks.

Gelinas is also listed on Yatedo.com as an owner of Alberta Blue Strategies, a company that provided fundraising, voter identification services and automated calling services to the Conservatives. The Alberta Blue Strategies web address is no longer active, but according to urlmetrics.com the only available links currently redirect to the Blue Direct website.

Alberta Blue Strategies was paid more than $5,000 in 2011 from a Conservative candidate in a riding blanketed with misleading robocalls. The calls in that riding were later traced to an automated phone service provider called RackNine, which claims it provided services to a third-party who tried to “disrupt voting.” Although there is no overt connection between RackNine and Alberta Blue Strategies, Gelinas notes in a client testimonial on the company’s website that he recommends RackNine, which he uses for all his “web solutions.” DeSmog Canada could not confirm if Gelinas was connected with Alberta Blue Strategies in 2011.

Screenshot from the RackNine website hosting Matt Gelinas’ testimonial.

Furthering the connections between Gelinas’ businesses, colleagues and the Conservative Party of Canada, Riley Braun, an employee of Alberta Blue Strategies from 2011 to 2012 went on to become a stakeholder relations assistant in the office of Stephen Harper.

Canada Action’s listed address is the same as Alberta Blue Strategies. It is also the same as Patchwork Investments, owned by Susan Gelinas, the third member of Canada Action’s board of directors. There is little information about Patchwork Investments available online, but it is described on several websites as providing investment advice. Several calls to Patchwork’s listed phone number went unanswered.

Canada Action also shares an address with Data Trek Inc., an oil and gas data service provider. According to LinkedIn, the president of Data Trek is Dave Gelinas, who is a Facebook friend of Matt Gelinas, Richard Dur and Cody Battershill. DeSmog Canada tried to contact Matt Gelinas through Blue Direct to clarify his relationship to Dave Gelinas, but messages were left unanswered. A publicly available phone number for Data Trek is no longer in service.

Following the Money

As a non-profit society, Canada Action’s funders are not on the public record. Battershill says his supporters are ordinary citizens volunteering their time and effort to achieve that more “balanced conversation” about responsible resource development.

When asked who funds Canada Action by Stu McNish, producer of the Conversations That Matter video series, Battershill replied, “I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket.”

“There is nothing astroturf or fake about my passion for my country,” he added. “I’ve put my money, my time and my actions where my mouth is.” McNish did not ask Battershill if he receives industry or political funds.

DeSmog Canada made several interview requests to Battershill, who declined to answer questions e-mailed to him at his request. These included questions about Canada Action’s relationship with the Conservative Party, Battershill’s relationship with Matt Gelinas and whether or not Canada Action is currently or has ever received funding from individuals or groups associated with the fossil fuel industry or the Conservative Party.

In an e-mailed statement Battershill said, “We’re strong supporters of Canada’s oilsands and the resource sector generally because we know how important these industries are to Canada’s present and future prosperity. We believe it’s critical to educate Canadians about the social and economic benefits provided by the resource sector and its commitment to world-class environmental stewardship.”

He added the organization is non-partisan.

“We accept donations from individuals and we sell Canada Action merchandise to support our campaigns,” the statement said.

Food, Shelter, Clothing and Family Vacations. This is what Canada’s resources mean to Matt from Nanaimo, #BC. pic.twitter.com/JYutrG5yws

— Canada Action (@CanadaAction) July 18, 2015

Canada Action “Oversimplifies” Oilsands Issue

Battershill says he is standing up for more balanced and inclusive conversations about Canada’s energy resources. Although to onlookers, Battershill’s shrill criticism of climate and environment advocates may be working in the wrong direction.

In addition to celebrating Canada’s strong economy and its reliance on the extractive industries, Battershill also spends ample time countering the claims of prominent environmental organizations and renewable energy advocates.

In December, Battershill attacked the credibility of the director of Clean Energy Canada, Merran Smith, calling her an “eco-activist” with a “divisive campaign to injure the oilsands in the view of the public.” He has similarly criticized climate campaigner Mike Hudema from Greenpeace, Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein and celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Neil Young who have joined campaigns to advocate for the treaty rights of First Nations in the oilsands region.

Battershill has also taken up the narrative of blogger Vivian Krause who argues critics of the oilsands industry are merely paid protesters advancing the interests of U.S. companies (DeSmog has debunked Krause’s theory in an in-depth post).

According to Ken Chapman, former director of the Oil Sands Developers Group and proponent of triple-bottom line resource development, Battershill’s antics are not part of a constructive conversation.

“I think his intentions are sincere,” Chapman said of Battershill. “The problem is that I think he’s too much of a fan and I think he gets clouded. It’s difficult from Calgary to see the oilsands in perspective. I see lots of people have that problem. It’s also difficult from outside of Alberta to see the oilsands clearly,” he said.

Chapman said pro- and anti-oilsands groups take extreme positions, “like religious beliefs” that dominate the conversation, crowding out the facts.

“And it doesn’t matter what the facts are, it’s the belief systems that are what’s dominating. And quite frankly, they always will. What is open yet is the adult conversation, as opposed to the elementary school recess conversation.”

Chapman said that while Battershill’s “heart is in the right place…he is a little naïve.”

“This guy wants to win an argument. The thing is it’s not an argument. It’s about a design. We have to take a design approach to this thing, not an adversarial approach.”

Chapman added that while he thinks Canada will continue to develop fossil fuels for years to come, “we have a responsibility to do it better.”

He said that he owns an “I love oilsands” button that he wears in Fort McMurray. “I’m an owner of the oilsands. I want to be proud of it. I want to love the oilsands,” he said, adding, “I’m not there yet.”

“People are trying to oversimplify the issue. And people like Cody is well-intentioned on the industry side, but he’s oversimplifying the issue.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

No one admits to recording Richard Berman’s address to a room full of energy executives in Colorado Springs in June 2014, but it’s an eye-opener.

One unnamed industry executive recorded Berman’s remarks and was offended by them. He provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to the New York Times. DeSmog picked up the story the following day.

If the oil and gas industry is going to prevent environmental opponents from slowing down its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to use dirty tricks, Berman told the executives, whose companies specialize in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

At least four companies with Canadian fracking operations were in Berman’s audience — Devon Energy, Encana Oil and Gas, Ensign Energy Services and Newalta.

“Fear and anger have to be part of the campaign,” he said. “You got to get people fearful of what’s on the table” (what they might lose if environmentalists win) “and then you got to get people angry over the fact they are being misled” (by environmental groups).

Energy executives need to “think of this as an endless war,” he cautioned. “And you have to budget for it,” he warned, as he made a pitch for $3 million to run ads attacking environmentalists in a campaign he calls “Big Green Radicals.”[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Berman is founder and chief executive of Berman and Co., a Washington-based consulting firm that sets up non-profit front groups to attack unions, public-health advocates and consumer, safety, animal welfare and environmental groups.

He admitted that people are always asking him, “How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?” His reply was designed to reassure. “We run all of this stuff through non-profit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for some 20 years now.”

TransCanada’s Dirty War in Canada

Too bad the Edelman PR agency couldn’t guarantee the same anonymity to its client, TransCanada Corp., in its campaign to discredit critics of its proposed Energy East pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to refineries and export terminals on the Atlantic coast.

Documents released by Greenpeace Canada in November 2014 reveal a plan much more ambitious (and likely many times more costly) than Berman’s Big Green Radicals. But the framing is similar; where Berman says “Think of this as an endless war,” Edelman says “It is critical to play offence … We are running a perpetual campaign.”

The plans call for mobilizing 35,000 supporters (in the works), setting up an online hub (accomplished), extensive advertising (happening), researching the pipeline’s opponents (in the works), and recruiting allies and third-party voices (not known).

A week after the documents were made public, TransCanada cancelled its contract with Edelman, its anonymity blown. It’s not known who took over for Edelman, but someone has to do it — the war must go on.

An Anti-Environment History

The endless war began in 1962 when Bruce Harrison, then “manager of environmental information” for the Manufacturing Chemists Association, masterminded the industry’s campaign to discredit Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s book that raised the alarm that DDT and other pesticides were poisoning wildlife and endangering human health.

In their campaign to discredit Carson, Harrison and his colleagues, PR executives from Shell, DuPont, Dow and Monsanto, used the emerging practice of “crisis management,” which has been described as a mélange of “emotional appeals, scientific misinformation, front groups, extensive mailings to the media and opinion leaders, and the recruitment of doctors and scientists as ‘objective’ third-party defenders of agrichemicals.”

Substitute online hubs, Twitter and Facebook for extensive mailings and you have the blueprint for today’s campaigns.

Everything else remains the same.

Carson died of cancer two years later; Harrison went on to become a general in the endless war as a leading light in anti-environmental PR.

The war crossed the Canadian border in the late 1980s to attack environmentalists who were resisting clear-cut logging of B.C.’s old-growth forests. Inspiration for this ten-year-long campaign, dubbed “War in the Woods,” came from the Bellevue, Washington-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose name says it all.

The centre was funded by oil, chemical and timber companies, including B.C.-based MacMillan Bloedel, whose logging of pristine old-growth forests on the west coast of Vancouver Island was attracting growing opposition.

Leading the counter-attack were the centre’s Allan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold. Gottlieb was a fundraiser for conservative causes while Arnold was the strategist, like Rick Berman adept at setting up front groups. They created the “wise use movement,” a medley of industry groups held together by two principles: private property rights should have primacy over the public interest, and access to public lands for resource use and exploitation should be unrestricted.

Arnold liked “wise use” as a label for the movement: it is short and fits into a newspaper headline, and it is ambiguous enough to mean just about anything. But behind the soothing ambiguity is the iron fist. In his book, Ecology Wars, Arnold wrote, “Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement” — total war, in other words.

In 1988, Gottlieb and Arnold brought 250 groups to Reno, Nevada, to start a movement that would oppose the environmental movement. MacMillan Bloedel flew some executives and the mayors of Port Alberni and Port McNeil to the conference to listen to speeches about how to do battle with “preservationists.”

As Arnold told the timber industry:

“The public is completely convinced that when you speak as an industry, you are speaking out of nothing but self-interest. The pro-industry citizen activist group is the answer to these problems. It can be an effective and convincing advocate for your industry. It can utilize powerful archetypes such as the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community, the natural wisdom of the rural dweller… And it can turn the public against your enemies… I think you’ll find it one of your wisest investments over time.”

He recommended that Canadian timber executives organize grass-roots organizations that could be “an effective and convincing advocate for your industry.”

“Screw The Environment. We Need Jobs”

The executives and mayors went back to B.C. with a plan to draw the residents of resource towns into the fray. A year after the Reno Wise Use conference, a “coalition of people whose livelihoods depend on trees” held a provincial conference to launch a grassroots campaign to oppose the environmental campaign. Logger Mike Morton, an alderman in Ucluelet, a Vancouver Island logging town, stepped up as a spokesman.

Morton became chairman of Share the Clayoquot Society and the following year, executive director of Share BC, an umbrella organization for 22 local “share our forest” and “share our resources” groups (“share” meaning preserve a small portion of the land and “manage” the rest) set up by the forest industry.

Forest executives were able to turn the disaffection of rural and resource industry workers, farmers and small business people into anti-environmental sentiment. Woodworkers were losing their jobs, but not because of the actions of environmentalists. They needed to look to their employers, who were replacing thousands of workers with automated equipment and exporting raw logs instead of processing them in the province.

Environmental opposition built to a climax in the summer of 1993, when 850 people were arrested for blockading a road used by MacMillan Bloedel in its logging operations in Clayoquot Sound. It was billed as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Eight months later, in March 1994, 20,000 woodworkers and residents of timber-dependent towns massed on the B.C. legislature lawn to decry a B.C. government-commissioned land-use proposal for Vancouver Island that would protect 13 percent of the island’s land base. “Screw the Environment. We Need Jobs,” their signs read.

Labeled the “yellow ribbon campaign,” it was Share’s crowning achievement.

After eight years leading Share, Mike Morton had a new job as director of communications for the BC Liberal caucus. When the Liberals under Gordon Campbell won the 2001 election, Morton became director of communications for the premier, a post he retained after Christy Clark became premier.

By then the war in the woods was over but the war in the Alberta oilsands and in B.C.'s mines was well underway. 

Image Credit: Screenshot of an image of environmentalist Bill McKibben from a "Big Green Radicals" video by the Richard Berman-connected Enviromental Policy Alliance

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Vancouver city council’s unanimous decision to commit to running on 100 per cent renewable energy is the kind of political leadership the world desperately needs says Jørgen Randers, professor of climate strategy at the Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway.

“Despite the looming catastrophe of climate change the market will choose to do nothing,” Randers said in the keynote speech at the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments in Seoul, South Korea.

Nor will voluntary actions on climate be enough. Strong legislation, intelligent policy and collective action are the only ways to keep humanity from a nightmare future, said the former business executive who still sits on boards of major corporations.

“It is totally obvious what we should do. And it is only a little more costly.”

However capitalism is exactly the wrong system to deal with a long-term risk like climate change, Randers explained. Capitalism is designed to allocate capital to the most profitable projects and climate action is an additional cost.

Of course, failure to act will be an economic disaster as regions and countries are forced to devote more and more of their capital and labour to coping with climate impacts. Flooding, heat waves, water and food shortages and building defences to buffer those impacts will be very costly, he said.

Randers is a co-author of the landmark 1972 book Limits to Growth, which was updated in 2004. His latest book is 2052 A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years. Based on the latest scientific, economic and other data, 2052 is a real-world look into the next 40 years. It says global CO2 emissions will not begin to decline until 2030 producing a very hot planet 3 to 4 C hotter than today by 2080.

“The climate will just get worse and worse…it will be very unpleasant especially for the poor,” he said.

“There is a strong moral imperative to act on climate,” Andrea Reimer, Vancouver’s deputy mayor, told DeSmog Canada in Seoul.

“There’s also a fantastic economic case. So why shouldn’t Vancouver be a leader on this?” Reimer said.

Andrea Reimer addresses crowd at ICLEI World Congress 2015. Photo: Stephen Leahy

A new study substantiates this. It found that world’s biggest economies could save $520 billion a year if they go 100 per cent renewable. Such a shift would generate three million new jobs.

On March 25, Vancouver voted to make such a shift. More than 90 per cent of the city’s electricity already comes from hydro and shifting to 100 per cent will only take a few years.

Converting all of the cities’ heating and cooling systems will likely take until 2030 or 2035, she said. City staff are working out the details and timelines. Transport will be tougher still, perhaps taking until 2050.

“This could happen sooner with national and provincial government support,” Reimer said. Cities and local governments only get about eight per cent of total taxes paid by Canadians.

Vancouver is one of about 50 cities pioneering the path to a low-carbon future. Others include San Diego and San Francisco in California, Sydney, Australia, and Copenhagen which plans to be carbon neutral by 2025. Nearby Malmo, Sweden, will be 100 per cent renewable for all three sectors — electricity, heating/cooling and transport — by 2030.

Tackling all three sectors at same time works far better than just doing one said Anna Leidreiter, coordinator of the Global 100 per cent RE Alliance — an international alliance of organizations pushing for a shift away from fossil fuels. It is much easier to cope with renewable energy fluctuations and stabilize the grid when heating/cooling and transport are integrated, Leidreiter told DeSmog Canada.

That’s Germany’s approach where more than 80 regions are already 100 per cent renewable and 60 more regions are on their way.

Even Seoul is moving on this. The rapidly growing megacity of 11 million plans to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from renewables by 2020 by covering all of its public structures — water treatment plants, subway stations, schools etc. with solar panels.

Another essential policy for effective climate action is a carbon tax that rises to $100 a tonne, Randers said. “Carbon markets will not do it,” he said.

Even Ontario’s recently announced cap and trade market has been criticized by the likes of Canadian economist Jeff Rubin for being too weak to be effective. Cap and trade schemes operating in the European Union’s have also been found to be too complex, costly and ineffective by most analysis. However, even critics will agree a price on carbon is essential for meeting our global emission reductions goals.

British Columbia’s carbon tax shift is widely considered a smart policy and the best of its kind in North America. A 2013 study DeSmog reported on showed the carbon tax has allowed B.C. residents to enjoy the lowest income tax in the country (not Albertans), use the least amount of fuel per person and have arguably the healthiest economy. However, the tax needs improvement. For starters, the rate has been frozen at $30 a tonne since 2012 and there are backwards exemptions for the oil and gas sector.

Ultimately, people and businesses want to live and work in clean and green urban areas. And whoever develops expertise in shifting to 100 per cent renewable energy will own the 21st century, Reimer said.

Image Credit: Bart Speelman via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This week’s episode of DeSmogCAST covers the two major developments from Washington, D.C. this week — the historic climate deal between the United States and China and the upcoming GOP majority leaders' plans to attack the EPA’s carbon emission standards — along with new developments in the Kinder Morgan and Keystone XL tar sands export pipelines and the coalition of Canadian scientists standing up to Harper's attacks on science.

Hosted by DeSmogBlog contributor Farron Cousins, the DeSmogCAST guests this week are Carol Linnitt, Brendan DeMelle and Steve Horn. 

For more information on these stories, visit the DeSmog articles listed above, and for additional coverage of these issues, check out:

Kevin Grandia – U.S.-China Climate Pact Leaves Prime Minister Harper With Few Excuses Left Not to Act

Chris Rose – Kinder Morgan Oversells Benefits of Trans Mountain Pipeline, Underplays Costs, Says New Report

and much more at DeSmogBlog, DeSmog Canada and DeSmog UK.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A year ago, DeSmog Canada excitedly welcomed Emma Gilchrist to the role of Deputy Editor. As amazing as it has been to have Emma working tirelessly to bring the best out of our writers, digging into editing like it’s fun (really) and breaking news stories of national importance, we just can’t seem to contain all of her incredible talents in her part-time deputy position.

That’s why today we are beyond delighted to announce Emma’s new role as DeSmog Canada’s Executive Director.

Most of you will know Emma has incredible talent as a writer and, as we here at DeSmog know, she pretty much performs magic as an editor, but she also has a bold vision for independent media in Canada.

Coming from northern Alberta, Emma is familiar with the local politics of small towns dependent on oil and gas development. But as a seasoned journalist and citizen engagement expert, Emma also has rich insight into Canada’s political machinery and the role individuals, communities and civic organizations play in decision-making from the municipal to the federal level. (If you want the nitty gritty, you can read Emma’s full bio.)

In her reporting, Emma has brought critical insight to our readers across the nation. Now she'll be turning some of that strategic thinking toward building a sustainable non-profit media organization.  

With her new role, Emma will switch from splitting her time between DeSmogBlog and DeSmog Canada, to working full time for DeSmog Canada. But don’t worry, she’ll stay on as a contributor at DeSmogBlog, so you’re sure to still see her stories there.

Welcome to the new gig and congratulations, Emma. We’re a bunch of lucky ducks to have you on our team and leading the flock.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As many of our readers have already seen, DeSmog Canada recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign where we raised $50,000 from our generous supporters. Even though we're on the other side of that fundraiser, we still rely on support from readers like you. That's why we make it easy to contribute to DeSmog Canada at anytime through PayPal. 

If you are wondering why DeSmog Canada deserves your support, here's a list of our top reasons: 

1. We’re doing something no one else in Canada is

Our vision for DeSmog Canada is to build an independent, non-profit media outlet dedicated to reporting on energy and environment issues in Canada. That work doesn’t stop with climate reporting: we provide in-depth news on new energy projects and resource development and show how those projects affect local communities, First Nations and the local environment. We keep track of federal and provincial policies surrounding pollution and health, holding government and industry officials to account for their promises and their actions. We bring new knowledge and insight to Canadian politics and the impact decision-makers have on democracy and the rights of all Canadian citizens.

1. We need strong and balanced reporting on energy and environment issues

There’s no question environmental issues have become increasingly polarized in Canada. With government calling some of Canada’s prominent environment groups ‘foreign funded radicals’ and celebrities traveling to the Alberta oilsands to highlight the human and environmental impacts of extraction in the region – there’s no shortage of talking points being trumpeted across the aisle. But what about the conversation in the middle? The meaningful discussion of solutions that gets drowned out in all the noise? DeSmog Canada is designed not only to provide hard-hitting journalism, but to foster discussions about Canada’s energy future, the needs and rights of local communities, and environmental stewardship for generations to come.

1. Freedom of expression and transparency are endangered in Canada

Canada is one of the lowest-ranked developed nations on the world press freedom index. Even our own Information Commissioner says Canada has a problem with providing citizens access to information. And a new report just published this week gave many of Canada’s major federal departments a failing grade for lack of open communication, lack of whistleblower protection and political interference in science and research.

Canada is at the centre of what critics, academics and journalists are calling a “war on science,” with taxpayer funded scientists being muzzled by politicians. The need to get information to average Canadians has never been more difficult and important. We play a critical role in filling that gap while continuously telling the story of Canada’s silenced scientists.

That's why we helped launch the #CDNFOI hastag as part of an effort with the Canadian Association of Journalists, IntegrityBC, and the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association to highlight government secrecy in Canada.

1. In Canada and across the world investigative journalists are disappearing

According to the Canadian Association of Journalists, since 2012 almost 2000 journalists have lost their jobs in Canada. We wrote about this happening to investigative reporter Mike De Souza, highlighting all the important stories he broke while working at Postmedia. We also just covered the story of Postmedia preparing to purchase many of the major English-language papers across the entire country. With greater concentration of media ownership, press freedom comes under threat. That’s why independent and non-profit outlets like DeSmog Canada are important for maintaining a healthy flow of information in Canada. We tell stories that corporate media isn’t interested in.

1. Our team is made of talented journalists, writers and researchers that we pay but we still aren’t exclusive with our content

If you didn’t already know, DeSmog Canada has an amazing team that brings you breaking news, intelligent analysis and in-depth reporting. We also have skilled graphic designers and social media experts that ensure our reporting doesn’t just stop at our homepage. We work overtime to amplify our content and spread our reporting. That’s why you’ll see our work published on the Huffington Post, the Vancouver Observer, the Times Colonist, The Tyee, and many small town papers across the country. We really get a bang for our buck.

1. We bring our work offline to build knowledge and democracy IRL

Much of what we do happens offline. We send experts out into the community to train organizations and individuals how to do access to information requests. We give presentations on the muzzling of Canada’s scientists and how misinformation can be used to try to confuse the public about natural resource issues like pipelines or fracking. Our team also provides rapid fire research to talk show hosts, reporters, academics, authors, artists and individuals on a regular basis. We’re known for our great work, and for our exceptional team and we’re not afraid to share it. At DeSmog Canada we believe in what we do and the impact engaged and informed citizens can have in a healthy democracy.

That’s the short list of reasons why you should support DeSmog Canada, but there’s even more up our sleeves. To learn more about what we do, browse our site and Facebook page.

We hope you’ll find any one of these points reason enough to go to our PayPal page and give generously. Remember, we're independent, non-profit and we don't advertise. That's pretty cool.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Postmedia has struck a $316 million deal to buy 175 of Quebecor’s English-language newspapers, specialty publications and digital properties, including the Sun chain of papers, according to a report in the Globe and Mail this morning.

If it passes regulatory hurdles, the deal will mark a step further down the path of media concentration in Canada.

What does this mean for Canadians in practical terms?

In Calgary, for instance, the Calgary Sun would be owned by the same company as the Calgary Herald. In Toronto, the Toronto Sun and 24 Hours would be owned by the same company as the National Post. In Ottawa, the Ottawa Sun would be owned by the same company as the Ottawa Citizen. And in Edmonton, the Edmonton Sun would be owned by the same company as the Edmonton Journal.

It’s Vancouver that takes the cake for media concentration though — Postmedia already owned the Vancouver Sun and The Province, but if the deal goes through it will take over the free daily 24 Hours as well.

In a statement, Postmedia president and CEO Paul Godfrey said the company intends “to continue to operate the Sun Media major market dailies and their digital properties side by side with our existing properties in markets with multiple brands as we have in Vancouver with the Province and the Vancouver Sun for more than 30 years.”

Sean Holman, journalism professor at Mount Royal University, says the deal means three major things for the Canadian public.

“First, I think the Canadian public should be worried about what this potential sale could mean for press freedom,” Holman says. “If you have one media owner with the capability to dictate editorial policy across almost every single major newspaper in the country, that is not a healthy thing. There may be assurances of newsroom editorial independence, but we have seen over the years that newsroom independence has been violated by Canadian media owners.”

Holman also notes that as media companies encounter more financial trouble, business reasons are increasingly being used to compromise editorial standards. Case in point: In June, DeSmog Canada revealed that Postmedia had been running unlabelled oil advertorials.

The second major reason Canadians should be worried about this deal has to do with press criticism, Holman says.

“Right now, the Canadian media is not held to a very high level of accountability,” he says. “You look down in the States at the amount of media analysis and media criticism there is there and we simply can’t hold a candle to that. This potential sale will make that worse.

“If there is only really one major employer behemoth, how reluctant are newspaper journalists going to be to criticize one of their few major potential employers?”

Thirdly, Canadians ought to be worried about the capacity of the media to cover the important issues, Holman says.

“[Postmedia CEO] Godfrey has said that the chain won’t be closing any of Sun Media’s properties in major markets. I note that that statement does not include minor markets. Without further clarification, at this point in time, we could see closures there…We could see layoffs.”

“And as we reduce those newspaper resources and newsrooms themselves, that erodes the capacity of the media to perform its societal role which is to hold power to account.”

Media capacity is getting to such a point in Canada that Holman says Canadians need to be having a serious national conversation about how we are going to hold power to account in the absence of companies that seem to be concerned with that.

“I think this is certainly going to increase the pressure on independent and activist media to perform some of those tasks, which mainstream newsrooms may not be able to fulfill,” Holman says.

At DeSmog Canada, we are trying to fill that gap and hold power to account. Please give what you can today.

Photo: Rachael F. via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In her new book, This Changes Everything, Canadian author Naomi Klein positions climate change as a form of social disaster, which, like a lot of other disasters cannot be gazed upon for too long.

We are constantly finding ways and reasons to “look away,” she writes, “or maybe we do look – really look – but then, inevitably, we seem to forget.”

“Climate change is like that; it’s hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything.”

“And we are right.”

Part of the strategy of this forgetting or looking away, as Klein frames it, is in the myriad technical, lifestyle or personal ‘solutions’ to a warming globe that refuse to question the deeper roots of the climate crisis, the structural and socio-economic logic both creating the problem and masquerading as its solution.

The challenge, says Klein, is looking at the challenge of climate change head on, and realizing, whether we like it or not, it undoes a lot of what we take for granted in our everyday notions of the political, the economic, the corporate and the radical.

Canada, a world leader in the release of greenhouse gas emissions, is no exception.

The country's current political mantra – that nothing but increasing resource extraction can ensure us a stable economy – is one of those everyday presumptions that is drastically challenged in the face of global climate change.

Much of the work we do at DeSmog Canada is dedicated to bringing to light Canada’s failure to meaningfully address climate change. And to discuss how the scientific reality of climate change affects Canada's future.

This country’s efforts in the political sphere to bolster oilsands and natural gas development, western coal exports and proposed oil pipelines heading in literally every cardinal direction, all fail to heed the immediate message of climate science: that no future stable economy can rely on carbon-intensive development.

Climate change will change everything in Canada, too, there’s no question of that.

The question is whether we will become leaders in that change, or watch those early opportunities – to hitch our economy to a clean energy future – pass by.

Klein recently told DeSmog Canada that our work was an “indispensible tool” while she was writing This Changes Everything.

Right now DeSmog Canada is in the middle of our first-ever crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter.

Klein lent her support to our campaign because she recognized that a crucial part of addressing climate change is looking at it face on and refusing to look away.

And that’s a big part of what we do here at DeSmog Canada – face the tough issues and ask the hard questions. 

We believe that Canadians deserve strong leadership and a secure energy future, one that accounts for the reality of a changing global climate, not one that looks away.

If you believe that too, I hope you’ll join us and the other Canadians who want to have a more constructive debate about Canada’s climate and energy future.

Image Credit: Nicolas Haeringer, 2008.  

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Partisans may not believe it, but Canada’s “culture of secrecy” existed long before Stephen Harper moved into the prime minister’s office. And it’ll be around long after he moves out, unless Canadians do more than just cast their ballots in the next election.

That’s why four groups concerned about freedom of information, one of which I’m part of, are launching a campaign encouraging Canadians to take a small but vital step on social media that would raise more awareness of just how much is being hidden from us: spotlighting examples of government secrecy with the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Such secrecy has its roots in our political system, which has a tradition of strict party discipline. Because of that discipline, decisions made by the government behind closed doors – in cabinet meetings, for example – are rarely defeated in the House of Commons, making secret forums the principle arbiters of public policy.

To be sure, the Harper administration has done more than its share to cultivate a backroom state, frustrating access to government records and officials, as well as failing to fix our broken freedom of information system. But Canadian society is an especially fertile ground for the growth of policies that violate our right to know.

In part, that’s because our country doesn’t have any groups that exclusively and routinely advocate for greater freedom of information at a national level. Probably the closest we have to that is the small BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

But, as its name implies, the association’s two staff members toil on information and privacy issues in British Columbia and the rest of Canada from a tiny office above a beauty salon and spa in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, other organizations that care about our right to know have even more multiplicitous mandates. For example, Ottawa’s DemocracyWatch stands on guard for democratic reform and corporate responsibility, as well as freedom of information. Meanwhile, Halifax’s Centre for Law and Democracy also deals with other human rights issues abroad.

By comparison, the United States has three umbrella organizations that exclusively safeguard Americans’ right to know.

They include: OpenTheGovernment.org, representing 94 groups; the National Freedom of Information Coalition, representing 30 dues-paying groups; and the Sunshine in Government Initiative, representing nine groups.

Such umbrella organizations have always been few and far between in Canada.

In the seventies, a coalition called ACCESS: a Canadian Committee for the Right to Public Information was established to lobby for greater freedom of information.

Reports from the Globe and Mail back then described the committee as having the backing of groups such as the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Daily Newspapers Association.

But long-time right to know researcher Ken Rubin stated in an email that ACCESS, which played a key role in the creation of Canada’s current freedom of information law, was actually “primarily a group of diverse individuals” that included academics, activists and lawyers and had some “paper” affiliations with other organizations.

Despite that key role, by the eighties the committee had folded. According to Rubin, during the same decade, a “loose coalition” came together under the auspices of the Canadian Federation of Civil Liberties and Human Rights Associations to “monitor and improve” freedom of information. That coalition also “went by the wayside” once the federation “faded away.”

Then, in January 2000, investigative reporter Robert Cribb announced the formation of Open Government Canada – a “national forum for FOI networking, education and advocacy pushing for legislative changes that grant greater access to public information.“

More than 25 groups were represented at its founding conference in March of that year. However, in an email, Cribb stated the coalition “died a regretful death.”

The reason: “It proved to be impossible to lure financial support for such an endeavour – part of the perplexing lack of concern, engagement or righteous indignation in Canada around issues such as freedom of information and the public's right to know.”

Those concerns aside, in 2011, DemocracyWatch launched the Open Government Coalition. So far, the coalition is made up of three groups – not counting DemocracyWatch and an affiliated charity. Although founder Duff Conacher stated in an email he plans to expand it this fall.

In the meantime, the New Democrats and the Liberals have proposed laws and policies that would open up government. They should be applauded for doing so. And, if the past is a predictor of the future, they may even act on some of those proposals if they win power – just as the Conservatives did.

But eventually the expediency of secrecy seems to seduce every government, regardless of its political stripe. Which means a New Democrat or Liberal administration will likely become just as tight with information as the Conservatives – albeit, perhaps, with more of a velvet glove covering that clenched, iron fist.

Don’t believe me? Well, look no further than the United States where Democrat president Barack Obama swept into office promising an “unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Five years later, an Associated Press analysis found that in 2013 his administration “more often than ever censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.”

More recently, the agency also listed “eight ways the Obama administration is blocking information.”

Meanwhile, for his part New York Times reporter James Risen has called Obama “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.”

Just as neither the right nor the left has a monopoly on the truth, neither has a monopoly on secrecy.

As a result, it’s vital for Canadians to start paying better attention to our information rights so we can better safeguard them.

That’s why the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, DeSmog Canada and IntegrityBC, are now encouraging Canadians to tweet about threats to their right to know using the hashtag #cdnfoi.

Those threats include everything from backroom government meetings and frustrated freedom of information requests to inaccessible officials and nonexistent public records, whether they are at the federal, provincial or local level.

At present, the use of that hashtag isn’t widespread, making it more difficult for Canadians to know about such threats.

So, by just tagging stories about government secrecy with #cdnfoi, you can help your fellow citizens know about what they aren’t being allowed to know.

And you can encourage others to take up the fight by sharing these graphics promoting #cdnfoi – helping change Canada’s culture of secrecy in the process.

Image Credit: Will Brown

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.