With news of the Port of Vancouver ruffling the feathers of the federal government by issuing a permit for a jet fuel pipeline without so much as a heads up, the port authority’s integrity has been thrust into the spotlight yet again.

While the port has apologized to Transport Minister Marc Garneau, the thorny issue of the port conducting environmental reviews of projects, while profiting from the same projects, remains.

Complicating matters, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (which regulates the Port of Vancouver) is a member of the Coal Association of Canada — a lobby group that glosses over the impacts of burning coal on climate change and that has gained notoriety in recent weeks for spreading misinformation about the phase-out of coal-fired electricity in Alberta.

The port authority has also been outed in the past for a covert and intimate relationship with the Vancouver-based Coal Alliance, an aggressive lobby group with a membership that includes rail companies, export terminals and other lobby groups.

Meantime, the port authority was responsible for reviewing the $50-million Fraser Surrey Docks coal-transfer terminal that would export more than four million tonnes of thermal coal to Asian markets — which it approved in December 2015.

“If you’re going to be a member of some other organization or alliance and you approve the projects that are related to that membership, it puts into question the fairness of the decision-making process and leads one to question whether or not they’re biased — whether or not things are predetermined,” says Paula Williams, who co-founded Communities and Coal, a Vancouver-based organization that opposes the export of thermal coal from the port.

Port Authority Part of Coal Lobby, Also Responsible for Regulating

The transportation of coal has been critical to the port’s recent financial successes. In 2015, the port sent out 35 million tonnes of the stuff, compared to 25 million tonnes of grain, speciality crops and feed and 23 million tonnes of forest products — and that was a slow year on the coal front.

If the port authority was just serving as landlord, it would make sense for it to collaborate with coal lobby groups to push for increased exports and generate as much profit as possible for its owners.

But the port authority’s mandate also requires it to fulfill duties such as the “safety and security of all land and waters” and the “permitting of all projects proposed for the use of federal port land.” In a single word: regulating.

“They shouldn’t be doing both,” says Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change (VTACC) director Kevin Washbrook, who notes the port authority has approved every coal export project that’s come before it in recent years.

VTACC is one of four plaintiffs that have taken the port authority to court on allegations of bias and failing to consider climate change impacts when approving the permit for the Fraser Surrey Docks coal terminal.

A federal court is currently evaluating a request by Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and Fraser Surrey Docks to toss out the lawsuit filed against them.

“That’s really why we’re taking them to court: we think the public interest isn’t being met by this dual mandate,” Washbrook told DeSmog Canada.

Port Authority Covertly Sponsored Coal Conference in 2013

A series of disturbing revelations about the port authority’s intimate relationship with the coal industry came out in late 2013, courtesy of digging by Voters Taking Action Against Climate Change.

First came the news the port authority had been swapping e-mails with National Public Relations (a firm connected with the Coal Alliance that has lobbied the federal government on behalf of Fraser Surrey Docks). The Vancouver Sun described the exchange as seeming “as if they were allies, rather than as a public regulator and private proponent.”

In one instance, the two entities traded information on a VTACC protest, with the port authority directing media inquiries to Alan Fryer, a senior consultant for National Public Relations and lobbyist for the Coal Alliance.

A month later, it was revealed the port authority covered up its sponsorship of the 2013 Coal Association of Canada conference, including a $5,000 contribution and golf swag, because it was concerned about “press and public backlash.” The Vancouver Sun noted the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority had publicly sponsored the conference in 2012.

“They get it in the sense that it doesn’t look good,” Washbrook says. “Whether they think that it’s actually a bad thing: I’m not sure.”

Washbrook notes the port authority’s response to pressure for more regional involvement and transparency has been to launch a Twitter feed, YouTube channel and run some TV commercials. None of those PR products mention coal at all, he says.

Tangled Web of Business Relationships 

Williams of Communities and Coal suggests it may also be worth paying attention to some other business relationships that encircle Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and Fraser Surrey Docks.

In 2011, SNC-Lavalin, the embattled Montreal-based engineering services firm, bought a 23 per cent share in AltaLink (an electricity transmission company) from Macquarie Essential Assets Partnership .

The partnership is owned by a subsidiary of the Macquarie Group, a member of which owns Fraser Surrey Docks.

In 2013, Fraser Surrey Docks contracted SNC-Lavalin to prepare the environmental impact assessment, which was described by Vancity credit union as “entirely inadequate” and criticized by activists as being limited in scope.

Then, in 2014, SNC-Lavalin sold AltaLink to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which owns BNSF Railway, the company transporting the coal to the Port of Vancouver. Both BNSF Railway and Fraser Surrey Docks are members of the Coal Alliance.

Williams emphasizes that a trail of prior business isn’t necessarily a problem. But given the port authority’s habit of getting a bit too cozy with private industry, it’s a trend that might be worth paying attention to in the future.

“[Vancouver Fraser Port Authority] should not have a say in the decision of whether or not to approve a project at the port,” she reiterates. “This should not happen. They should be removed from that. They can have an opinion and give their input, but they shouldn’t be part of the decision-making process.”

Citizens Push for More Input

Opposition to the way the port is doing business continues to build.

Washbrook notes that people in North Vancouver are fighting the proposed G3 grain terminal, while folks in Delta are concerned about the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project. Meanwhile, people in Richmond worry about Agricultural Land Reserve property being bought up and the small leaseholders the port is “shaking down” for exorbitant increases in water lot lease rates.

All have common interests, he says: more regional inputs, more representation, a more transparent and open processes.

If the VTACC lawsuit doesn’t get derailed by the port authority and Fraser Surrey Docks, the verdict could help shape the future conversation. But ultimately, solving the issue seems to come back to the federal government and its power to amend the Canada Marine Act to redefine the mandate of port authorities.

“I think there are discussions happening in Ottawa right now about how to reform the ports,” Washbrook says. “The question will be about how much of that is an inside discussion that tweaks things, and how much of it brings about meaningful reform.”

Image: Jason Mrachina/Flickr.

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Alberta Premier Jim Prentice begins an Energy East lobby tour today in Quebec City to try to woo the premiers of Quebec and Ontario into supporting TransCanada's 1.1 million barrel-per-day oil pipeline proposal.

“It is a sign the project is in danger,” Patrick Bonin, a Greenpeace Canada climate and energy campaigner based in Montreal, told DeSmog Canada. “Over 70 per cent of Quebecers don’t want Energy East to be built.”

Ontario and Quebec announced last month that Energy East would have to meet seven conditions to gain the provinces' approval of the 4,600-kilometer pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick. Included in these conditions is a demand for a full environmental assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the pipeline.

An analysis conducted earlier this year by the Pembina Institute, an energy think tank, found the greenhouse gas emissions from extracting the oilsands bitumen to fill the Energy East pipeline would erase all reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by Ontario’s phase out of coal-fired power plants. The analysis did not include emissions from combustion, which would make Energy East’s carbon footprint even higher.

“If Ontario and Quebec are concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change then the Energy East tar sands pipeline project is dead already,” Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager with Environmental Defence, told DeSmog Canada.

Prentice meets with Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard Tuesday and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in Toronto on Wednesday.

Ontario and Quebec's conditions exceed B.C.’s heavy oil conditions

This is not the first time an Alberta premier has travelled to another province on behalf of a pipeline project. British Columbia Premier Christy Clark famously inflamed relations with Alberta with her five conditions for the Northern Gateway pipeline, which resulted in some icy meetings with then Alberta premier Alison Redford.

Clark's demand to receive a greater share of the fiscal benefits from Northern Gateway was a contentious issue between the two western provinces, but she did not go as far as Wynne and Couillard in insisting the pipeline's greenhouse gas emissions be properly assessed.

The National Energy Board's reviews of pipeline projects aren't taking climate change into account, which has left a leadership vacuum that the provinces are stepping in to fill. New pipelines facilitate expansion of oilsands production, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions.

The seven conditions on the Government of Ontario's website.

Bad news for Energy East continues

Prentice’s visit comes during a turbulent public relations spell for Energy East.

Documents leaked to Greenpeace last month revealed TransCanada had hired global PR firm Edelman to work on an aggressive strategy of undermining Energy East opponents through tactics that included creating phony grassroots groups to give the impression of genuine support of the pipeline. The revelations caused TransCanada and Edelman to publicly part ways.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, former Maple Spring student activist and author, announced on Radio-Canada just days after the leak that he was donating his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to an anti-pipeline coalition and encouraged the public to do match it. Donations have reached $400,000 now. 

Yesterday the Committee on the Status of Wildlife in Canada announced the belugas whales of the St. Lawrence Estuary — where TransCanada has plans for an Energy East marine oil tanker terminal — are at greater risk of extinction than a decade ago, forcing TransCanada to halt work on the terminal.   

“It’s good news and bad news,” Bonin says. “TransCanada’s marine terminal at Cacouna probably won’t be built now, but it is sad to find out the beluga population is not recovering."

Image Credit: Jim Prentice via Twitter, WWF Canada

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One of British Columbia’s most effective climate regulations is at risk.

Even though fuel providers make more profit off drivers in B.C. than anywhere else in Canada, industry is requesting the province review low-carbon fuel standards, which require vehicle fuels to become cleaner.

As energy experts recently wrote in an op-ed for the Vancouver Sun, B.C.’s policy has been effective at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from vehicles without people even noticing a change in their lifestyle.

Most British Columbians don’t even realize their fuel is becoming cleaner. By all accounts, the clean fuel rules have been a quiet success story.

And yet, those rules have come under threat.

Fuel providers in B.C. are asking the provincial government to review its ‘renewable and low-carbon fuel regulations.’

According to John Axsen, professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University, some fuel providers “want the B.C. government to weaken [the policy].”

But fully one-quarter of B.C.’s recent success at reducing climate pollution is due to ramping up the use of low-carbon fuels.

In fact, each year low carbon fuels have kept roughly 900 kilotonnes of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere. This has reduced the province’s GHG impact by the equivalent of 190,499 passenger vehicles or all passenger vehicles in the city of Vancouver.

Yet, certain fuel providers claim the rules are uneconomic and are requesting the provincial government review the low-carbon policy.

B.C. pays more for fuel than anywhere else in Canada

Critics have been quick to point out the oil and gas industry is especially profitable in British Columbia:

As the chart above demonstrates, the petroleum industry makes more profit from Vancouver drivers than drivers in any other city in Canada — almost double the national average.

B.C. consumers would have saved $905 million since 2010 if oil companies in B.C. had made the Canadian average profit (for both refining and selling gasoline and diesel) according to data gathered from Statistics Canada.

Despite gaining nearly a billion dollars since 2010 in “extra” profit in B.C., industry is still lobbying against B.C.’s clean fuel rules.

According to Matt Horne, B.C. associate regional director with the Pembina Institute, a clean energy consulting and advocacy group, the province held a workshop with industry representatives around one year ago to discuss the fuel regulations.

“There were lots of concerns expressed that companies weren’t able to comply with the policy,” he said.

“To the extent I’ve looked at it, the concern as I understand it is that it’s not economic to comply with the policy.”

Horne says representatives with the province and with low-carbon fuel providers have argued the policy is in fact economic and works well as it’s intended: as a long-term strategy.

“This policy gives B.C. the ability to plan going forward. It’s a long-term policy, it has a ten-year time stamp and it has a lot of flexibility,” Horne said.

“There are lots of ways to comply with the policy as long as companies get their carbon down.”

He added B.C. has committed to the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy.

“The province made a pretty clear commitment to Washington, Oregon and California that it’s going to stay committed to its low-carbon commitment and I think it will stick to that.”

“I think Washington, Oregon and California are expecting the same,” he said.

Industry pushback

According to B.C.’s Ministry of Energy and Mines spokesperson David Haslam, “petroleum suppliers have expressed concerns regarding their ability to comply with existing standards given options currently available.”

Haslam told DeSmog Canada the review is intended to “identify how to best enable and support compliance.”

”This past spring, the province conducted a thorough consultation process to review the ability of fuel suppliers to comply with existing standards,” Haslam said, “given the options currently available for generating low-carbon fuel credits.”

He said the province will release a report and recommendations based on consultation “shortly.”

Industry can’t afford clean fuels?

The oil and gas industry in B.C. is suggesting it cannot afford low-carbon fuel rules or that such rules are unrealistic, following a pattern of pushback already seen in both Oregon and California.

In fact both the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) launched legal challenges against the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard in 2012, calling renewables “phantom fuels.”

The API even sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a minimum renewable fuel requirement in the U.S. transportation fuel supply.

Canadian oil industry groups have also pushed back against mandatory low-carbon and renewable fuel requirements. In 2011, the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute (CPPI) criticized the federal government’s biodiesel requirements as ‘unfeasible.’

The Canadian Fuels Association maintains “new fuel standards and specifications should be based on sound science and credible cost-benefit analyses,” indicating a strong concern with profitability for industry. When it comes to renewable fuels such as biodiesel, they state “wishful thinking will not get us there.”

It’s worth noting a full 75 per cent of the emissions avoided in B.C. due to the fuel standards resulted from the use of biofuels.

Member companies of the Canadian Fuels Association, which include Husky Energy, Imperial Oil, Shell and Chevron, overlap with both the API and AFPM, which are active in fighting low carbon and renewable fuel standards in the U.S.

Oil industry controls access to markets

Only five companies control 85 per cent of crude refining capacity in Canada. Those companies include Suncor, Imperial Oil, Irving and Shell.

University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach summarizes the ways to deal with this “oil-igopoly:”

“If you want to decrease refinery margins, the only guaranteed ways to do it are by increasing the elasticity of gasoline demand through more public transit, denser communities, more flexible work environments, or by deploying alternative energy sources for means of transportation.”

This last point, “deploying alternative energy sources for … transportation,” is exactly the purpose of the clean fuel rules that are now under threat.

This summer, the B.C. government announced the province met its 2012 climate targets, reducing greenhouse gas pollution even as the economy grew — challenging claims that putting a price on carbon weakens the economy.

Overwhelming public support for clean fuels, climate action in B.C.

Luckily in B.C., good economic management and public opinion agree.

Fully 88 per cent of British Columbians support the clean fuel rule and in a succession of recent polls, a strong majority of British Columbians think hitting the province’s GHG targets is a priority and we should transition off fossil fuels to clean sources of energy.

As for the provincial government itself, not only has B.C. brought in a number of regulations to reduce the province’s contribution to climate change since 2007, it also remains committed to the western states to align carbon pricing efforts and deepen actions to address climate change, including low-carbon fuel standards.

The oil and gas industry has successfully requested the province review the low-carbon fuel standards and elected officials are scheduled to consider the review and recommendations this fall.

Industry is often successful at forcing quiet ‘technical’ changes to important regulations that weaken strong policy.

If B.C. wants to stand behind its climate commitments, it will also have to stand behind its clean fuel regulations.

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The hotel rental for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s September visit to New York City cost Canadian taxpayers a total of $65,582.91 according to documents recently released by CTV News.

“Canada and the U.S. are making important progress on enhancing trade, travel and investment flows between our two countries, including securing our borders, speeding up trade and travel, modernizing infrastructure in integrated sectors of the North American economy, and harmonizing regulations,” Harper said at the event. “But there is much more that can be done, and must be done, to make our economic relationship more productive and seamless.” 

The event, organized by the Canadian American Business Council, gave Harper the opportunity to tell an audience of American business executives that he wouldn’t “take no for an answer” on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, planned to carry tar sands crude from Alberta to oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

The hotel bill for the luxurious New York Palace Hotel, which was mistakenly sent to CTV’s Washington bureau, suggests Harper’s speaking engagement was a staged promotional gathering for the Keystone XL, rather that a typical guest speaker event which are usually paid for by the host.

The hotel charges include coffee services for $6,650.00, room rental for $33,500.00 and audio visual services of $14,709.15. An overall service charge for the room and coffee came to $9,234.50.

According to CTV, the event was co-hosted with the Canadian American Business Council, which claimed to ‘share’ the costs for the event with the Harper Government.

Maryscott Greenwood, senior advisor for the Council said, “the costs were shared…we paid for pieces of it.”

On their website the Canadian American Business Council claims to be “the voice of business in the world’s most prosperous relationship. Established in 1987 in Washington, D.C., the Council is a non-profit, non-partisan, issues-oriented organization dedicated to elevating the private sector perspective on issues that affect our two nations, Canada and the United States.”

Membership to the Council requires a $5,500 annual fee, with conference sponsorships running up to $25,000 per event. Members of the Council include the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Embassy, the Government of Alberta and TransCanada among many other major oil and gas companies.

In 2012, the Council listed “Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring Canadian crude oil to the U.S. gulf refineries” in its top ten ‘list of issues.’

Andrew Shaw, who works for the Council, is also a registered lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline with KcKenna, Long & Aldridge. Shaw was hired by TransCanada to lobby on the topic of "permitting issues regarding the Keystone XL pipeline," lobbying disclosure documents show.

According to further lobbyist documents, Shaw was also hired by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canada’s largest oil and gas lobby firm, to speak with members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives about American environmental legislation or policies that might have implications on the development of Canada’s tar sands.

A recent white paper report released by DeSmog Canada shows TransCanada has spent $2.78 million on in-company lobbyists and $1.26 million on U.S. based lobby firms, including McKenna, Long & Aldridge, since 2010.

The white paper also shows that since 2010-2011 the Harper Government’s spending of taxpayer funds to promote the tar sands and Canada’s environmental performance has increased by 7000 percent with plans to further increase in the 2013-2014 year.

For more information on lobbying for the Keystone XL, see this backgrounder put together by Friends of the Earth or read about the pipeline on DeSmogblog.com.

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In the coming months, European Union environment ministers are set to vote on the proposed Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), which would label tar sands oil as 'dirty' because of its higher GHG emissions in comparison to other fuels, bringing the Harper government and Alberta's years-long lobbying against the law to a decisive point.

As Jason Fekete writes for Postmedia News, this is "a critical few months for the future of Canada's oilsands industry and the environmental movement that has targeted the development."

It's hardly surprising that two senior Alberta government ministers depart Saturday "for a weeklong trip to Europe to trumpet what they say is Alberta and Canada's solid environmental credentials, and have EU countries reject a proposal that would "discriminate" against oilsands-derived fuels," as Postmedia News reports.

Canada has been actively fighting the EU proposal for years now for its labelling of tar sands oil as leaving an especially high carbon footprint. A July 2011 report by environmental group Friends of the Earth Europe documented over 110 lobbying events organized by the Canadian government on the tar sands and FQD between 2009 and 2011.

For example, in October 2011, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver wrote to the EU Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, warning that "if unjustified, discriminatory measures to implement the FQD are put in place, Canada will not hesitate to defend its interests."

In December 2011, David Plunkett, Canadian Ambassador to the EU, wrote to European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard saying that "Canada will not accept oil sands crude being singled out in the Fuel Quality Directive." He added that the Canadian government would "explore every avenue at its disposal to defend its interests, including the World Trade Organisation."

Hedegaard has called the FQD a "science-based and non-discriminatory proposal," and stressed that “studies on the lifecycle GHG intensity of various fuels have been conducted" for it, in a 2011 letter to Minister Oliver.

A 2013 briefing by Friends of the Earth Europe details more recent instances of Canada's lobbying for the tar sands in Europe, including sending two Albertan government ministers on tour in Europe this January to hand out fliers assuring the 11 countries visited that Canada was showing "global leadership in the fight against climate change" despite leaving the Kyoto Protocol and pushing for the tar sands.

The aggressive lobbying efforts by Canada and its EU supporters like the UK have continued unabated since reduction targets were decided on in 2009, forcing the European Commission to undertake an Impact Assessment on the FQD and delaying the vote on the proposal from June 2012 to later this year.

"It has got to be fair, it can't be discriminatory, and it should be based on the facts and the science – and this is not. This is my definition of bad policy," Minister Joe Oliver said of the FQD in an interview last Friday.

Oliver made a similar claim that the proposal "is not based on science and so discourages disclosures and will not achieve its stated objectives," last month in an email to the Canadian Press.

The repeated refrain from the Canadian government that the FQD is not scientific doesn't address the fact that the proposal is based on a 2011 Stanford University study commissioned by the European Commission. The study found that average lifecycle GHG emissions from tar sands oil are 23 per cent higher than conventional fossil fuels.

Image: 'Upstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Canadian oilsands as a feedstock for European refineries,' by Adam R. Brandt.

Since then, research by NGO Oil Change International has indicated that emissions from tar sands oil could be even higher than thought before, because of emissions released by the burning of tar sands refinery byproduct petroleum coke, or petcoke, which is also used as a cheap fuel.

According to the Stanford study, "GHG emissions from oil sands production is significantly different enough from conventional oil emissions that regulatory frameworks should address this discrepancy with pathway-specific emissions factors that distinguish between oil sands and conventional oil processes."

The Pembina Institute also published a June 2013 report confirming that "average oilsands production is significantly more GHG-intensive than conventional oil production," and calling tar sands GHG emissions "the fastest growing source of climate change pollution in Canada."

The FQD sets a mandatory six percent reduction in GHG emissions from transport fuel suppliers by 2020, and assigns default emission values to different fossil fuel feedstocks (the raw material from which the fuels are made).

Tar sands oil production requires more energy than conventional fossil fuels because of its extraction and refining process from bitumen. Because of this, the FQD would give tar sands oil a higher default emission value, making it unattractive to European fuel suppliers, who would be hit with financial penalties and higher carbon offsets if importing it.

The Harper government's plan of making Canada a global energy superpower by opening up the tar sands oil reserves via international trade would be adversely affected by the FQD, which guarantees that the federal government and the Albertan oil industry will continue lobbying against it, and for the tar sands, in full force in the months to come.

Postmedia News reports that EU environment ministers are set to vote on the FQD in mid-October or mid-November. If approved, the proposal would need to be ratified by the European Parliament in 2014.

Image Credit: Pembina Institute / Flickr  

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This is part three in a series on bad arguments in the Canadian public sphere. The aim of this series is to take a closer look at the soft-serve reasoning employed by public leaders in order to see how they are unconvincing and even harmful to open discourse. Get caught up with part one concerning topic laundering and part two on reductio-ad-villainum. 

The present piece is about ‘carrying a concealed motive.’

Carrying a concealed motive: this species of bad argument hides the goals it wishes to achieve and presents other insincere objectives that are more palatable to the public. It consists of the refusal to be forthcoming about the intentions behind an argument, as though that were immaterial to the debate.

Canadians as a whole frequently have difficulty admitting that they want something – we keep our eyes on the last honey-cruller at the office party and when it’s offered to us we say ‘Oh no, you go ahead and have it’ and a little bit of us dies as the last glazed morsel irrevocably vanishes. In political debate, however, it’s necessary to be clear about what we want in a piece of legislation and how we stand to gain by its passage. 

In politics every decision has some motivation behind it – seeking some benefit or avoiding some detriment. The intention behind a proposal is a genuine and important ground on which to evaluate it. A politician might put forward a well thought out piece of legislation but if it involves a conflict of interest it can and should be struck down. Indeed the ‘conflict of interest’ is one of the most heinous forms of scandal because it involves a betrayal of the public trust. It is crucial to an open and democratic society that the public is aware to what ends its leaders are arguing. 

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Consider the Ethical Oil Institute, a not-for-profit registered by Ezra Levant with Calgary lawyer Thomas Ross. The Ethical Oil Institute runs advertisements about Iran’s human rights record in the hopes of gaining political support for tar sands projects in Alberta where human rights are supposedly respected.

Ezra Levant is a private citizen, free (within reason) to pursue his own chosen ends and to express himself.

He is also someone who has been successfully sued for libel several times and is currently under investigation for hate crimes after his racist comments concerning Romani immigrants to Canada. Whatever Ezra Levant’s and the Ethical Oil Institute's reasons are for promoting tar sands ventures (I assume financial gain and political influence), we can be quite certain that they have little to do with championing human rights. 

Carrying a concealed motive ultimately consists of just saying something in order to get what you want. The motive-concealer has already decided on the end result, they just have to pick the most sympathetic reason to get people go along with it.

Carrying a concealed motive invariably involves a form of hypocrisy. It is not a crime to be a hypocrite but we would do well to not take what hypocrites say very seriously, not without first investigating what they get out of arguing a certain point and what they stand to gain if they get their way. 

Hiding one’s motivations is a form of dishonesty that is inimical to open debate. What holds an open discourse together, what makes it productive, is the sincerity of its participants.

When private citizens try to influence us and our leaders while concealing their motives, we cannot fire them from their lobbying jobs or bring them before a tribunal. But we do not have to be convinced by them – we can make their advertisement spending and their rhetoric pointless by seeing through them.

We need only ask: what do you stand to gain? Establishing a motive is a crucial step in any investigation.

In the face of political insincerity I advocate for scepticism above cynicism. A little scepticism goes a long way in promoting rationality and honesty in the public discourse.

Image Credit: Screen Shot from Ethical Oil Ad.

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Oil industry lobbyists in Canada have taken the country by the reins. At least, that's the implication of the Polaris Institute's new report released today. The report, "Big Oil's Oily Grasp – The Making of Canada as a Petro-State and How Oil Money is Corrupting Canadian Politics," (pdf) documents 2,733 meetings held between the oil industry and federal government officials since 2008. That figure outstrips meetings with environmental organizations by a whopping 463 percent. 

The Conservative government has never shied away from defending Canada’s oil and gas sector – whether branding environmental critics as “radicals” for their anti-oil-sands advocacy, lobbying European and U.S. governments to defeat punitive rules and ensure access to markets, or overhauling legislation to provide changes to environmental review processes that were supported by industry.

One way of quantifying the huge gap between the oil and ENGO [environmental non-governmental organization] lobby is to compare the lobby records of one of the largest environmental coalitions in Canada, the Climate Action Network (CAN), with that of CAPP. Over the past four years, CAN has only logged six communications with DPOHs [designated public office holders] while CAPP logged 536. The financial realities of these two organizations are in a different league with CAPP’s membership including the richest companies in the world. It is also clear based on registry communication data that the level of influence and access to politicians and policy makers is also quite asymmetrical and largely favors CAPP.

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