The depth of the Canadian government’s tar sands PR strategy was further revealed yesterday in a collection of nearly 1,000 pages of emails between Canadian diplomats in the United States. The correspondence dates back to August 2011 when protests movements focused on the Alberta tar sands began to spread across the continent. Toronto-based conservation group Environmental Defence obtained the documents through access to information legislation.

In an effort specifically designed to promote the Keystone XL pipeline south of the border, the government has been targeting journalists from major American news outlets, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Time and prominent trade publication E & E Daily, in order to “develop Canada’s network of reporters covering energy issues.” Canadian diplomats took reporters to lunch and then filed reports about strengthening the relationship between diplomats and journalists.

Chris Plunkett, a spokesperson for Canada’s Washington embassy, indicated these efforts were just par for the course when it comes to activities that have an impact on the Canadian economy. He said the Canadian government “strongly supports the expansion of the Keystone pipeline and the embassy continues to advocate for its approval which will contribute to energy security and economic growth for both Canada and the U.S.”

Adding emphasis to apparent intentions to sway American media, a series of emails going all the way up to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird shows the extent of the Conservatives’ response to negative media attention. An editorial in the New York Times that maligned the Keystone project prompted the department to draft a letter to the editor signed by Canadian Ambassador Gary Doer.

Records also show that Canadian diplomats are keeping tabs on Canadian journalists in the US, warning officials of reports about the Forward on Climate rally that drew roughly 35,000 protestors to the White House lawn on February 17th.

Doer recently downplayed the importance of the thousands of protesters who gathered in Washington, DC, for the historic rally. He dismissed opposition to the pipeline among Americans saying those opposed to Keystone are no more than an “outspoken minority” and that 65 percent of Americans are in favour of importing Canadian oil.

The documents show that some Canadians are also displeased with Doer’s use of their own media to lobby for Keystone, responding to an editorial he wrote in a Canadian newspaper with emails telling him to “get his facts straight.”

This information is the latest in a string of reports and documents that point to the Harper government’s attempts to expand the tar sands while downplaying their negative impact on the environment.

Since taking office, Harper has been roundly criticized by the international community for his stance on climate change, but instead of responding with a commitment to developing green energy sources, the Conservative government put together a task force to further push Canadian oil down south.

Last year, in response to a US campaign to combat Alberta tar sands development led by conservation group ForestEthics, Harper launched a campaign of his own, sending a delegation of Canadian diplomats to target Fortune 500 companies to combat so-called misinformation. The documents gave no indication of what that misinformation might be.

In addition to highlighting the Conservative government’s continued push to promote the export of Alberta crude even in the face of massive opposition in both Canada and the US, these documents also once again underscore the flaws in the federal freedom of information policies.

Under Canadian Access to Information legislation, the documents should have been released no later than 30 days after the application was made. Environmental Defence filed the request more than a year ago, and the documents they received were heavily redacted.

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We’ve heard it all before: get your oil from Canada, or get it from the devil.

Okay, well, maybe not the devil, but if you aren’t dealing with Canada, you’re dealing with despots, tyrants, oppressors of women and suppressors of democracy.

This is the pervasive pseudo-logic brought to us by conservative commentator and Sun News correspondent Ezra Levant. In his book Ethical Oil, which eventually grew into the Ethical Oil Institute, Levant poses Canadians with a false dichotomy: either we support Canada’s ethical oil – which is democratically developed in an environmentally responsible way – or we support conflict oil.

The argument is a classical for-or-against proposition meant to polarize Canadians on a complex issue. And it is Canada’s latest export to America.

In the current media volley between American and Canadian leaders on President Obama’s upcoming decision to either approve or deny the Keystone XL pipeline border crossing, this deceptive ‘you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists’ argument is on the loose, begging the overall question: is Canada taking its talking points straight out of the Ethical Oil playbook?

Let’s begin with Canada’s Ambassador to the US – Gary Doer. During the February 17th Forward on Climate rally in Washington DC – the largest climate change rally in US history – Doer claimed protestors lacked “logic.”

The ‘outspoken minority’ who oppose the Keystone XL, said Doer, don’t express American wishes; they just happen to get more media attention than the “65 percent of Americans that prefer to get their oil from Canada rather than Venezuela or the Middle East.”

Doer followed up with an interview this week with Postmedia News where he posed the issue this way: “If you ask the question: Do you want your oil from Hugo Chavez or Alison Redford, I think I know the answer.”

“If you look at the fundamental criteria for presidential legacies,” Doer said, commenting on the idea that Keystone XL is Obama’s legacy issue, “it’s peace and prosperity.”


“I would argue that that means less reliance on Middle Eastern oil and more jobs building the independence here in North America.”

Doer’s sentiments were echoed this week by Alberta Premier Alison Redford whose column in USA Today stressed “Alberta is the safest, most secure and responsible energy supplier to the US.”

“The same cannot be said for the other foreign countries and regimes that currently feed US energy demand.”

Levant himself has been somewhat more forthcoming with his thoughts on the subject, claiming nearly one year ago that the Keystone XL is “a pretty straight swap of Canadian ethical oil for Venezuelan conflict oil. And Obama chose Hugo Chavez over us.”

“Blocking the Keystone XL isn’t going to stop a single American car trip. It will simply ensure that car is fuelled by Hugo Chavez and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who must have been popping champagne while laughing at Obama on TV.”

Around the same time Ethical Oil spokesman Jamie Ellerton wrote “every drop of Venezuelan oil that Americans buy, is more money that ends up helping Venezuela to help support Syria’s massacre of its own people. Conflict oil is fuelling more conflict.”

As much as a year ago, conservative staffer and Ethical Oil campaigner Alykhan Velshi suggested “Americans are still stuck supporting…Chavez. Sanctions won’t stop that; working on replacing every last drop of Chavez’s Conflict Oil with Canada’s Ethical Oil, will.”

The argument loses full steam however, when you consider Canada imports a tremendous amount of Venezuelan crude. That’s right – imports.

As reported yesterday by DeSmogBlog’s Kevin Grandia, “a May 2011 Natural Resources Canada report notes that Canada imported 33,000 barrels per day of crude oil from Venezuela in 2009. That works out to about 12 million barrels of oil that year.”

Those imports were valued at $778 million for the year and made up roughly 86 percent of Canada’s total imports from Venezuela.

As Grandia notes, Canada imports oil from other countries – like Algeria, Angola, Iraq and Nigeria – that suffer worse human rights records than Venezuela.

So Canada, if anything, represents a layover for Venezuelan oil.

And Canada’s oil (whether developed domestically or imported), like any other oil, is merely looking for a cheap and easy access to the global market, where it can fetch a higher price.

Albertan oil is landlocked and desperately needs an export strategy. Canada isn’t offering the US an ethical escape from conflict oil. We’re just looking for a path – any path – to an export terminal. And if the US allows it, we’ll track our oily footprints all over the national carpet on our way. 

Americans should be on their guard against Canada’s dirty exports – whether of the bituminous or rhetorical kind.

Image Credit: visionshare via flickr.

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As the Obama administration revisits its decision on whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, DeSmog Canada decided to take a look at how the project became a cause célèbre.

We asked ourselves: Of all the environmental causes to fight, what was it that mobilized Hollywood celebrities, renowned scientists, environmental activists and a handful of Texans to face jail time protesting a proposed pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast?

What’s more: How did a decision on the project – which Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper once brushed off as a “no-brainer” – get sidelined by the U.S. government ahead of a crucial 2012 presidential election?

While the Stephen Harper government has been quick to point fingers at so-called foreign-funded “radicals” and First Nations, we believe the answer lies much closer to home.

In fact, if the Obama administration decides to reject TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, the Harper government will need to face facts: Its own environmental policies and PR tactics will be largely to blame.

Its pro-pipeline campaign, which vilifies environmental groups and suggests Canadians must choose between the economy and the environment, is backfiring. Keystone XL could very well be the first failure case study, followed by other anti-pipeline movements such as the one organizing against the Enbridge Northern Gateway.

Where exactly did the Harper government go wrong? The bungling of the issue dates back to 2006, when the newly elected Harper administration began backing away from the Kyoto Protocol climate change agreement, going against the trend of most other developing nations.

At a time when climate change concerns started to resurface as a top issue for Canadians, the Harper government was signaling its plans to loosen environmental targets for heavy-polluting industries, in particular oil and gas and tar sands. Its argument was that the targets were unrealistic and uneconomic.

That said, as the 2008-09 recession took hold, the pro-development message resonated with many Canadians. While climate change concerns remained, polls taken during the global financial crisis showed those worries took a back seat to the economic worries.

However, as the economy recovered in 2010 and 2011, so too did environmental concerns. Still the Harper government continued to drive home its commitment to expanding the Alberta tar sands and played down the importance of meeting emissions targets.

When it officially withdrew Canada from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011, amid international backlash, the Harper government and its friends in the oil industry continued to treat climate change not as an environmental issue, but as a public relations problem.

Once the U.S. announced it would delay the Keystone XL decision, the Harper PR machine went into overdrive. Instead of seeking collaboration with environmental groups and First Nations, the government doubled down, ramping up its rhetoric about environmental “radicals,” while at the same time increasing its advertising spending to promote the Harper administration as environmentally responsible.

Consider the response to a February 2013 report from the federal environment commissioner, Scott Vaughan, which found shortcomings in how the government protects citizens from pollution risks associated with resources development. Commenting on the findings in his final report Commissioner Vaughan said, “we need a boom in environmental protection in this country.”



Instead of responding with a commitment to do better the Harper Government sent Canadian Ambassador to the US, Gary Doer, out to the media to suggest that Keystone XL critics have overblown the estimated net increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the Keystone pipeline project.

He was quoted by Postmedia News saying: “If you ask the question: Do you want oil from (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez or (Alberta Premier) Alison Redford I think I know the answer.”


With all due respect to the Ambassador this is just a bad political shell game that has already backfired once. People can see that he is asking the wrong question. What Americans want to know is: Why isn’t the Harper government working quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands and other sectors of the Canadian economy?

In its newest advertising campaign, the government continues to promote itself as greening the tar sands, even though its emission targets remain largely unchanged. This greenwashing only serves to inflame the critics, as we’ve seen with the fresh round of Keystone XL climate change protests in Washington.

Now, as a result of the Harper government’s muted response to environmental concerns, Keystone XL has become about much more than just a pipeline. As a recent opinion piece in The Guardian points out, Keystone XL will become a climate legacy issue for the Obama administration at a time when the environment has once again become top-of-mind for many Americans, particularly in the destructive aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.

Instead of attempting to address society’s growing concern about climate change, the Harper government’s response has been to try to spin its way out of the issue through denial and misleading PR campaigns. What’s worse, these government-sponsored ad campaigns are being funded by Canadian taxpayers, many of whom disagree with the Harper administration’s position on the environment, according to polls.

Still, as global climate change concerns continue to grow, the Harper government continues to dig in its heels. It’s that stance that is fuelling environmentalists not just with Keystone XL, but Northern Gateway and other resource projects across North America.

Opposition to Canada’s tar sands expansion efforts is growing globally, and the Harper government has only itself to blame.

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A Sunday report from the Globe and Mail gives a rather undersized account of what prominent environmental organizations are calling the largest climate rally in American history, suggesting Canadian media might be trying to downplay the extent of public opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline planned to cut across the U.S. to reach refineries and export markets.

In the wake of the massively successful display of North American opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington DC on Sunday, February 17th, perhaps some Canadians are refusing to receive the message, or admit the significance of Canada's contentious, bituminous role in the whole ordeal.

Organizers for the event estimate 35,000 or more individuals attended Sunday's event, with some accounts citing figures as high as 50,000.

But as Paul Koring and his co-authors present the rally in the Globe and Mail, organizers only claimed 35,000 participants attended the protest, but "turnout seemed significantly smaller."

Some protesters even "voiced disappointment at the numbers" after traveling across the country to be in Washington for the monumental day. An unofficial policeman's estimate, the article states, said the turnout amounted to perhaps 10,000, a meagre total evidenced by the unused portable toilets and protesters who skipped out early to leave nothing but a "straggling column" to march on the White House a mere two hours into the rally.

Sounds rather unimpressive. I suppose Canadians can rest easy, knowing rumours of growing tar sands opposition south of the boarder are exaggerated. Right?

An anticipatory article by Koring in the Globe had already set the tone on Friday with misgivings about organizer ambitions to deliver "tens of thousands" of "people to decry efforts to build a pipeline." And in a follow-up article Koring claimed "the raucous Keystone XL pipeline argument is drowning out serious discussions about bigger, broader and far more important choices."

Sunday's article, co-authored by Koring, Barrie McKenna and Carrie Tait, runs with the headline "U.S. Protest Paints Keystone as Emissions Villain." The overarching message is this: the opposition may have drawn their line in the sand, but it's the wrong line. Protesters who "vilified Keystone" on Sunday, need a reality check: the pipeline itself isn't the issue – climate change is the rallying cry.

Exactly.

What Koring and other commentators have failed to grasp is the intentionally principled nature of the protest. The Keystone XL protest isn't just about the pipeline itself – which Koring meaninglessly states "would produce virtually no emissions" – it's about the fossil fuel empire; it's about the tar sands; it's about manmade climate disruption.

The event itself was called "Forward on Climate." 

And given the pipeline's direct link to Canada's climate quagmire, the Alberta tar sands, it isn't at all surprising that Americans have seized the Keystone question as an opportunity to call out Canadian shortcomings. And it also isn't surprising that some might try to dismiss the importance of that altogether. 

Gary Doer, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., also downplayed the rally, claiming the protesters lack "logic." Speaking on Energy Week TV Doer referred to a number of high-profile arrests in the leadup to Sunday's rally, including that of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and actress Daryl Hannah, saying "twenty people protesting do get more attention in the media than the 65 percent of Americans that prefer to get their oil from Canada rather than Venezuela or the Middle East," an argument seeming to emerge from out of the Canadian 'Ethical Oil' playbook. 

"So am I concerned with the fact that the media will go with the picture as opposed to sometimes logic? That's just part of how issues are covered. But when you look at it, public opinion supports [Keystone]."

Doer might be somewhat behind the times, however. As the recent post-State of the Union poll demonstrated, the majority – 65 percent – of Americans feel climate change is a serious problem and support President Obama's use of authority to curb carbon pollution. Keystone XL presents Obama with the opportunity to do just that, whether or not Canadians are on board, and whether or not Canadians keep apprised of American popular sentiment.

Doer suggests the Obama administration ignore "the 20 people who are out there" and choose instead to "proceed with logic."

But whose logic would that be?

Image Credit: JennaPope.com

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