On Saturday night, Andrew Scheer was elected as the next leader of the federal Conservatives.

At 38 years old, Scheer was the youngest of the 13 candidates in the race (he’d previously served as the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons in the country’s history, as well as a short-lived Opposition House Leader).

Despite his age, Scheer sported some of the most traditionally conservative policies of the bunch, including on the environmental and climate change front.

Here’s a quick rundown on some of the things that Scheer plans to do if his Conservative Party wins the 2019 election, as well as some other key facts to know.

Scheer Wants To Repeal Carbon Pricing

There’s a good reason that Clean Prosperity gave Scheer a ‘D’ in its pre-election “environmental policy report card.”

The main reason for this is his commitment to repeal mandatory carbon pricing, which will hit $50/tonne in 2022 under the federal Liberal plan.

Scheer’s website — which has since been taken down, but can be accessed via the WayBack Machine — argued that carbon pricing “raises the cost of everything and puts jobs at risk while doing little for the environment.”

This contrasts the positions of conservative economists and politicians such as Gregory Mankiw and Preston Manning, as well as a recent analysis of the B.C. carbon tax that indicated the policy had reduced emissions by between five and 15 per cent since implementation in 2008.

Instead of carbon pricing, Scheer pledges to “support a sector by sector approach to reduce greenhouse gases in cooperation with industry and the United States.” It’s rather unclear what that means.

Scheer’s Ties to Ultra-Right Conservatives

Scheer’s campaign team includes some famous faces from the Stephen Harper era.

That includes campaign manager Hamish Marshall — who created and hosted websites for Ezra Levant’s Ethical Oil website, which his wife served as head of — and digital director Stephen Taylor, former director of the National Citizens Coalition (a job Stephen Harper also once held).

As noted by Sean Craig of Global News, Scheer also has associations with The Rebel, a far-right media outlet headed up by Levant, which Marshall serves as a director of.

Scheer has granted The Rebel three one-on-one interviews since late 2016.

Scheer also holds strong anti-abortion views.

Campaign Life Coalition released a statement congratulating Scheer on the win, noting that it demonstrates the “strength of the social conservative movement and importance of pro-life and pro-family voters.” He scored the second-highest ranking from the group after Brad Trost and Pierre Lemieux, both “unapologetic pro-life/pro-family candidates.”

Scheer has promised not to reopen the abortion issue. While he didn’t vote on the 2012 motion to do exactly that, he’s received support from former MPs who did, including Jason Kenney and LaVar Payne.

The Campaign Life Coalition also celebrated Scheer’s commitments to cut federal funding to post-secondary institutions that “do not respect freedom of speech” and “supporting the rights of parents as first educators of their children,” including tax credits for home schooling and independent schools.

As former Sun News pundit Michael Coren noted in a column for NOW: “This is all pretty harsh stuff, to the right of Harper and arguably even Preston Manning and Stockwell Day.”

Scheer has also voted against recent pieces of legislation to enshrine trans rights in the Canadian Human Rights Act and protect Muslim people from Islamophobia.

Despite his age, new Conservative leader Andrew Scheer sported the most conservative policies of the bunch https://t.co/iOyyqevvwQ #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/nlH5Y0h61G

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 30, 2017

Scheer Is Very, Very, Very Pro-Oil Industry

As Prime Minister, Scheer pledges that he would approve TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, which would carry 1.1 million barrels of oil from Alberta to Quebec and New Brunswick.

That’s unqualified support — support he’s pledged regardless of any issues that could be uncovered via environmental assessments or consultations with Indigenous nations.

That same approach is featured in his promise to “prioritize federal infrastructure projects that enhance access to natural resource reserves.”

He’s also pledged to eliminate corporate welfare, including bailouts and subsidies. The obvious example is Bombardier, which has received billions in public dollars in recent decades.

However Scheer has not promised to end the annual awarding of $3.3 billion in subsidies and tax breaks to oil and gas companies in Canada.

In another twist, Scheer pledged to “show Canadians where their oil comes from,” including requiring gas stations to display at the pump when oil comes from “foreign countries.”

According to Scheer, “this would allow Canadian consumers to make the choice to purchase Canadian-sourced, ethically produced oil.”

Sound familiar?

Scheer Has Strong Caucus Support

Unlike other high-profile leadership candidates like Kellie Leitch and Michael Chong, Scheer concluded the race with significant caucus support.

A month before the vote, Scheer sported formal endorsements from 24 current MPs and eight senators, as well as dozens of provincial MLAs and former MPs. Only Erin O’Toole, who placed third in the race, boasted more in total.

This matters a great deal when it comes to successfully leading the party. After all, we’ve seen plenty of examples of what happens when a party dislikes its leader, often resulting in fierce infighting and the creation of huge opportunities for other parties to fill the gap. If Scheer can build on his current caucus support, he could present a strong challenge to Trudeau in 2019.

Funding Massive Projects While Somehow Eliminating the Deficit

A major Conservative attack point against the Liberals is that they’re increasing the country’s deficit beyond what they promised during the election.

It’s a fact. The Liberals promised three years of “modest short-term deficits” of less than $10 billion for the first three years, and a balanced budget in the fiscal year of 2019-2020. But as of the last federal budget, it’s predicted that Canada will hit a deficit of $23.4 billion in 2019-2, dropping to $18.8 billion in 2021-22.

While the verdict is still very much out on whether that even matters given record-low interest rates and a huge infrastructure deficit, it seems a reasonable thing to point out that the Liberals are planning to break another major promise.

So what’s Scheer’s solution? Well, to balance the budget in two years. Unless he plans to raise income taxes or reverse his former leader’s controversial decision to cut the GST from seven to five per cent (which cost the country around $14 billion per year), the only option would be to cut close to $20 billion in annual government spending.

Yet Scheer has consistently pointed to the exporting of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as as a means to reduce global emissions, a process which costs billions in public funding.

Also left unacknowledged is the fact that Canada’s only operational “clean coal” plant, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit #3, relies on a patented Shell scrubbing system — a privately owned technology that can’t be sold off by the government.

In other words, Scheer’s plan to publicly fund the design and retailing of CCS technology would require billions in public funding, rather than making private large polluters pay via carbon pricing.

That sure sounds like picking winners and losers.

He’ll Need To Build Broad Support To Have A Shot

A pre-convention poll conducted by Nanos Research on behalf of the Globe & Mail found that only 4.1 per cent of the general voting population thought that Scheer would make the best prime minister out of all the candidates.

That’s right, 4.1 per cent.

That’s compared to Maxime Bernier, who received 17.4 per cent, and Michael Chong, who received 10 per cent. A massive 33 per cent of people polled answered “not sure.” When asked if they were more likely to vote for the Conservatives if led by Scheer, only 16.6 per cent responded “somewhat likely” or “likely.” That’s almost half as much as Bernier received.

Of course, there’s plenty of time left until 2019, meaning plenty of opportunities for the Liberals to break more major promises or the NDP to pose a challenge from the left. Nothing is set in stone.

But such numbers suggest that Scheer’s got a lot of work ahead of him to convince ordinary Canadians to vote for him.

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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:

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