In his recent book Harperism: How Stephen Harper and His Think Tank Colleagues have Transformed Canada, author and adjunct SFU professor Donald Gutstein outlines a battle being waged in Canada for the “climate of ideas.”

The Prime Minister is often thought of as a lone wolf, “the rogue conservative who marches to his own drummer.” But it’s not so, argues Gutstein. Harper is merely “one side of an ideological coin.”

The flipside is the network of key influencers — politicians, industry titans, think tanks, journalists — who work to advance not just Harper’s agenda, but the agenda of neoliberalism that serves powerful private interests, Gutstein says.

According to Gutstein, public sentiment in Canada — around things like environmental policy, free-market orthodoxy and the collection of taxes — is strongly influenced by a cadre of like-minded individuals and organizations who work in conjunction to, for example, sway public opinion on implementing a carbon tax or funding the arts.

The overall effect of this strategy has been the emergence of Harperism, a political style ruled by market logic and economic freedom. What has been lost along the way is robust democratic participation in Canadian decision-making, checks and balances, scientific integrity and the influence of civil society groups, Gutstein argues.

I recently spoke with Gutstein about attacks on environmental groups in Canada and asked him to explain how he sees this factoring into the broader political landscape.

Q: How do you see oil and gas interests, free-market think tanks and the Conservative government banding together to “neutralize,” as you say in your book, environmental opposition?

A: Harper and the think tanks rarely get together but they do work together in a very well understood way. The think tanks are working over a long period of time to change the climate of ideas. They can’t force us to think differently but they cast doubt on the motivation of environmental groups — ‘where do you get your funding?” — these questions are up in the air.

That makes it easier for Harper to do something: attack them, cut off their funding or ignore them. It makes it easier to happen today than it was 10 years ago. I do think environmental groups’ reputations have been sullied or tarnished by this constant work on them.

The articles, the op-ed pieces, the news stories with quotes from the think tanks — all this eventually changes the climate of ideas about environmentalism.

Q: I really like this idea in your book of transforming the “climate of ideas.” It sheds a light on how democracy works, or the way that opinions or perspectives are formed within a democratic setting. Things like the credibility of environmental organizations are really up for grabs in the media. You see grand claims being made, often without substantiation, that could damage the reputation of an environmental organization. I think it was Mark Twain who said ‘a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.’ How do you see this strategy of casting doubt and changing the climate of ideas at work in our democracy?

A: I’d probably need to think more about this question, but one example springs to mind: when Ezra Levant was doing his Ethical Oil campaign he would write op-eds in the Toronto Sun attacking Greenpeace, but the Toronto Sun would never give any space to Greenpeace to say what they are really about or to respond to Levant’s wild charges.

So all the readers knew about Greenpeace was what they read from Ezra Levant.

The way the media frame stories, who they give voices to — that has a lot to do with what ideas gain in credibility and get a more positive or more negative tarnish to it.

That’s just one example, but it’s a bigger picture.

I appreciate that things have changed quite a bit because of Twitter, Facebook and the internet, but I think that the corporate media still play a defining role in determining which ideas get promoted, and which ideas are ignored.

I love that quote…“If the media don’t report on an issue, it might as well not exist.” I think that’s so profound. It’s the other side of asking: which ideas do they promote, and how do they spin them, which things are credible and which are not?

I think the media still play an important role…even on the Internet. So much of what is on Facebook and Twitter are responses or commentaries to what’s in the media.

Q: Do you see certain individuals being deployed as ‘ambassadors’ of anti-environmental or free-market ideas?

A: Oh sure. That’s a long-standing strategy. Just this morning someone contacted me about an article I wrote on Rabble about John Luik, who was a frontman for the tobacco industry. He wrote all these books and papers and was secretly funded by the tobacco industry for years and years.

He’s the model. There are lots of people like this that operate as individuals. [Luik] even did work — wrote a book — for the Fraser Institute criticizing the need to regulate second-hand smoke. Individuals exist as individual personalities and in a way they can seem more credible.

Q: Do you see individuals like blogger Vivian Krause in this kind of light? She appeared on the scene as this independent researcher just asking questions on the Internet and in no time she was thrust into the national spotlight and given some of our most prominent media platforms. On her resume she even credits herself with initiating the Canada Revenue Agency investigation and audits of Canada’s environmental charities. It seems she’s become a ‘rising star’ because her narrative served the interests and needs of the Harper government and the fossil fuel industry. Do you see her falling into the typical pattern of how individuals are deployed to serve certain interests?

A: There are hundreds of millions of bloggers, so why did she rise to the top? She’s getting op-eds in the news media and it’s interesting to look at that.

She writes for the National Post, which is the most amenable to this kind of corporate propaganda. The Financial Post, which is just the business section of the National Post, is edited by Terrance Corcoran and he’s for a long time gone after ‘junk science’ and has attacked Greenpeace and the environmental movement for decades. So that would be a really good home for her.

[Krause] wouldn’t have really gotten anywhere unless corporate media and some of the industry groups started seeing the benefit of having her.

If she can take away from the harm they’re doing to the environment and move it to the supposedly nasty things that the energy industry’s critics are up to then that really gets the heat off them to a large extent.

She would be playing a pretty significant role for them.

Q: What do you anticipate happening in Canada over the next year as we move into the next federal election?

A: Well that’s an interesting one. Harper has so many files open, from the one on the First Nations property ownership act, trying to transform First Nations [reserves] into private property, but that’s sort of on hold. He moved forward on it to a point. And then the attacks on environmentalists have gone so far…it’s hard to know what he’ll focus on.

They’ve set the narrative for the next election with income-sharing and the child tax benefits.

…

If Stephen Harper is voted back in it will be unimaginable, the plans he has ready to go.

If the Harper Conservatives did get back in, it’s incremental, he would move to deregulate new areas, remove the significance of scientific information. He would find places here and there.

He would probably boost the ability of environment Canada to do financial costing of ecosystem services.

It’s never going to be a huge move, it’s always going to be these small steps, but they all add up eventually into something huge. 

Image Credit: Prime Minister's Photo Gallery

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Just over a week before the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings began, EthicalOil.org and its allies launched a pre-emptive PR offensive on environmental and First Nations groups who oppose the pipeline. Their new website, OurDecision.ca, and ad campaign are an attempt to invalidate opposition to the pipeline by pointing to the small amount of American funding going to some environmental groups, and claiming that pipeline opponents are actually the “puppets” of “foreign interests.”

Sun News was first to promote the campaign, and by the end of the week, numerous papers across Canada were repeating the story. After mentioning last November that "significant American interests" would line up against the pipeline, Stephen Harper eagerly picked up where he left off, touting EthicalOil.org's cause, decrying the foreign influence attempting to “overload” the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Review. By Monday, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver had penned a letter to Canadians denouncing the foreign interests trying to “hijack” the review process "to achieve their radical ideological agenda". The same ominous tone and divisive talking points were parroted over and over by EthicalOil.org, Harper, Oliver and the credulous media, driving an entire week of news coverage.  

The OurDecision.ca campaign was timed to hit national news just as many Canadians were tuning into this issue for the first time, and this frame (“foreign interests” vs. a “Canadian decision”) could have a lasting impact on how people view one of the most important debates in a generation. 

So how did a small industry front group with secretive funding sources manage to have so much impact on the national conversation? Well, it looks like the Harper government, EthicalOil.org, and Sun Media have coordinated with one another to create an echo chamber that turns industry talking points into national news. We'll show how one digital communications company intimately connects EthicalOil.org, the Harper Government and Sun Media.

Ethical Oil Echo Chamber

The 'ethical oil' echo chamber was built in 2010, after the release of Ezra Levant's book of the same name. As Donald Gutstein writes, Sun papers prominently featured three excerpts from Levant's book, giving it national exposure. Through a series of articles and appearances in Sun-owned papers, the National Post and right wing talk shows, an echo chamber of voices amplified the 'ethical oil' message. Then came bloggers like Alykhan Velshi, who helped to turn Levant's book into the ethicaloil.org website, and before long it reached the mouths of politicians.

From Gutstein's perspective, ideas often take years to percolate through public opinion filters before they end up on national policy agendas. But in this case, it appears that industry and government synced up messaging very rapidly. 

Go NewClear

Last week, we reported an extensive web that connects EthicalOil.org with oil interests, the Harper government, and other conservative leaders and groups. At the centre is Go Newclear, a Vancouver-based digital communications agency with a focus on public affairs and politics. An analysis of the web server hosting of gonewclearproductions.com reveals an intricate network of over 50 websites connected primarily to the Conservative Party of Canada, the Wildrose Alliance Party, EthicalOil.org, and other right wing causes and politicians.

Go Newclear’s President and COO is Hamish Marshall, the husband of current Ethical Oil spokesperson Kathryn Marshall, and a former Conservative campaigner, former PMO staffer and Conservative strategist deeply connected to oil interests. The other two principals in the company have deep connections to the Harper government as well.

One of the principals, Brendan Jones, worked as a website administrator for the Office of the Leader of the Opposition from August 2005-February 2006. Following Harper's election, he worked as the special assistant for the Prime Minister from February 2006-November 2007. Jones then moved to the Conservative Resources Group, or Conservative Caucus Research Bureau, an agency responsible for developing political communication products, branding and marketing decisions and liaising between the federal Conservative caucus and Prime Minister’s Office, until 2009. In that role, he was a television and radio specialist. The third principal of Go Newclear, Travis Freeman, is still listed with the Conservative Resources Group.

Now that we know that EthicalOil.org and the Conservative government are deeply connected, what about the other part of the Conservative echo chamber, Sun Media?

Digital fingerprints

As Evan Leeson, the Principal of Catalyst Internet (which is DeSmogBlog's IT team) and a 19 year veteran of website development writes: 

Developers have their bag of reusable tricks to make coding efficient. In this case, all of these sites use precisely the same CSS reset – same elements, same formatting, down to the character. Many sites will use something similar to this one, but this is exact. It's even used on Newclear's own custom home page. It is highly likely the same developer did all these sites.

Connecting the Dots

Correction: **The aforementioned Sun TV News websites were registered in December of 2008 by videotron, a Quebecor company, prior to Sun Media’s application with the CRTC (the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) in 2010.** When Go Newclear moved the site onto its server in June 2010**, SunTVNews.ca was a promotional website that invited Canadians to pledge to watch the channel when it was launched. It appears that GoNewclear registered these websites while both Brendan Jones and Travis Freeman were working directly for the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau.  

At the time of the website registration, Kory Teneycke was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's director of communications. He had been the director of the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau while Jones worked there. 

On March 30, 2009, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to New York to meet with Rupert Murdoch. The meeting did not appear on Harper's itinerary, and was intended to be secret, according to reporting by Bruce Cheadle of the Canadian Press. The pair were joined by the President of Fox News (and legendary Republican communications expert), Roger Ailes, and Kory Teneycke.

Within four months of this meeting, Kory Teneycke took a contract with Quebecor to explore the creation of a new Canadian media outlet. Then, ten months later, Quebecor launched Sun Media. Teneycke is now the vice president of the Sun News Network.

This new information sheds some new light on this meeting, and provokes a few fundamental questions. Why does a website for our new conservative-leaning media institution, dubbed "Fox News North," appear to have a direct link to government staffers? On whose orders were these websites created by Go Newclear? Were any of these orders from government? From oil companies?

It's time for the media to ask some hard questions about the relationships that are powering the EthicalOil.org echo chamber. 

Check out this funny Rick Mercer video mocking the "foreign influence" campaign:

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.