An article published last week in the National Post that claims a “secret” deal was struck between oil companies and environmentalists has ruffled many feathers — from corporate big wigs in Calgary to environmental activists on the West Coast.

According to Claudia Cattaneo’s story, Alberta’s climate change plan — which introduced a carbon tax, phased out coal-fired electricity and put a cap on oilsands emissions — was “the product of secret negotiations between four top oilsands companies and four environmental organizations.”

I’m not sure how secret any of that was given that all of those players could clearly be seen on stage with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley when she announced the plan, but the story goes on to state: “The companies agreed to the cap in exchange for the environmental groups backing down on opposition to oil export pipelines, but the deal left other players on the sidelines, and that has created a deep division in Canada’s oil and gas sector.”

The remainder of the story goes into how various oil companies have their knickers in a twist over the deal.  You’d think environmentalists would be dancing in the streets about that, but no — it’s actually hard to say who’s more outraged: environmentalists, who bristle at the idea of a secret deal and who don’t think the agreement is strong enough, or oil companies, who don’t think the new regulations will help them gain the market access they’re so desperately seeking.

Let’s just all hold our horses for a second.

First off, let’s look at the source. Cattaneo has spewed quite a bit of industry drivel over the years and her interpretation of Canada’s energy politics leaves much to be desired. Has she exhibited much understanding of how social movements actually work? Nope.

Secondly, was there a deal to stop opposition to oil export pipelines? There were at least five environmental groups on stage for the announcement: Forest Ethics, the Pembina Institute, Clean Energy Canada, Equiterre and Environmental Defence.

Forest Ethics has publicly stated that its campaign against Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline won’t change.

Environmental Defence’s executive director Tim Gray told DeSmog Canada that its work on pipeline issues from a climate, water, biodiversity and community impact perspective will continue. The organization is now looking to the feds for a revised review process for pipelines, which includes a climate test that takes into account all infrastructure, including trains, and respects Alberta’s cap on oilsands emissions.

The Pembina Institute’s executive director Ed Whittingham told DeSmog Canada that Pembina’s oilsands advocacy work will continue. Pembina’s advocacy around pipelines has always been out of concern for upstream impacts — not surprising for a group founded in Alberta, on the heels of a deadly sour gas well blowout.  While many of Pembina’s climate-related concerns have been addressed by Alberta’s climate plan, “lots of air, land and water concerns remain,” Whittingham said.

Clean Energy Canada never campaigned against pipelines in the first place. And Equiterre couldn’t be reached, but I’d hazard a guess they’re in the same boat as the others.

So, sounds to me as though there was no deal of the sort that Cattaneo described.

Thirdly, even if there was a deal, a deal with four environmental groups wouldn’t be worth the hypothetical notepad it was jotted on given the breadth of opposition to new oil pipelines in this country — from municipalities like Vancouver and Burnaby to First Nations to grassroots activists to the umpteen environmental groups that weren’t on that stage.

“People who think climate policy in Alberta will ‘buy market access’ through B.C. don’t understand concerns around Indigenous rights, tanker traffic, oil spills or the grossly unequal distribution of economic risk and benefit,” said Kai Nagata, energy and democracy director at B.C.-based Dogwood Initiative.

It’s not helping the industry’s case that a landmark study released on Tuesday by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences confirms that diluted bitumen, such as that carried by Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, sinks in water if not cleaned up immediately, making for a nightmare scenario.

The study, Spills of Diluted Bitumen from Pipelines: A Comparative Study of Environmental Fate, Effects, and Response, concluded that diluted bitumen poses unique risks compared to other blends of crude oil.

Which brings me back to my point: the pipeline deal-breaker in B.C. has always been the risk of oil spills. Alberta’s action on climate change doesn’t move the needle on that.

Now, to the climate plan itself. Many environmentalists aren’t terribly impressed with it. Take this revealing infographic by Barry Saxifrage, which shows how Alberta’s emissions will continue to grow until 2030. (Canada has promised to reduce emissions 30 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030.)

However, we must take into consideration that Alberta has already issued permits for another six million barrels a day of oilsands production. The new cap means that, at current emissions levels, three million barrels of those barrels will stay in the ground. That’s a seriously bold move in a province that has an economy 70 per cent based on oil — and that has already seen 40,000 layoffs in the energy industry this year.

All of the enviro grousing of late has reminded me of Rebecca Solnit’s stellar piece in The Guardian a few years back, written to her dismal allies on the U.S. left.

“If I gave you a pony, you would not only be furious that not everyone has a pony, but you would pick on the pony for not being radical enough until it wept big, sad, hot pony tears,” Solnit wrote. “Can you imagine how far the civil rights movement would have gotten, had it been run entirely by complainers for whom nothing was ever good enough? To hell with integrating the Montgomery public transit system when the problem was so much larger!”

Environmentalists are fighting the richest industry in the world — an industry that has spent millions of dollars to confuse the public about climate change science. They are finally starting to see some victories. The climate change plan enacted in Alberta was unimaginable a year ago. It has the “100 per cent” support of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam.

If we want any policy to stick — not to be struck down like former Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s royalty review — it needs to have broad support. Part of the job of the environmental movement should be to help build that support.

To quote Solnit again: “Being different (from the radical right) means celebrating what you have in common with potential allies, not punishing them for often-minor differences. It means developing a more complex understanding of the matters under consideration than the cartoonish black and white that both left and the right tend to fall back on.”

The fact industry and environmental leaders met informally over the past year, found some common ground and ended up standing on stage together to announce a major step forward on Alberta climate policy is a great thing. (And saying that does not mean I don’t acknowledge that while great, it’s not sufficient for Alberta to do its fair share to keep the planet from warming more than two degrees.)

As Tzeporah Berman, adjunct professor in the faculty of environmental studies at York University, wrote recently: “To say a policy is great does not mean there is not more work to be done.”

Without further ado, may the pipeline battles continue.

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With U.S. President Barack Obama expected to deny a permit to the Keystone XL pipeline this fall, Canada’s oil industry is looking for someone to blame.

The National Post’s Claudia Cattaneo wrote last week that “many Canadians … would see Obama’s fatal stab as a betrayal by a close friend and ally” and that others “would see it as the product of failure by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to come up with a climate change plan.”

The latter is the more logical conclusion. Obama has made his decision-making criteria clear: he won’t approve the pipeline if it exacerbates the problem of carbon pollution.

Even the U.S. State Department’s very conservative analysis states the Keystone XL pipeline would “substantially increase oilsands expansion and related emissions.” The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed.

While Canada’s energy reviews take into account “upstream benefits” — such as jobs created in the oilsands sector as a result of pipelines — they don’t even consider the upstream environmental impacts created by the expansion of the oilsands.

For all the bluster and finger-pointing, there’s no covering up the fact that Canada’s record on climate change is one of broken promises.

Oil and Gas Regulations Promised Since 2006

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised since 2006 that he’ll regulate oil and gas emissions. Those regulations still haven’t materialized nearly a decade later —and there’s only one person to blame for that.

In recent years, Harper has taken the approach that Canada can’t regulate its oil and gas sector unless the U.S. does too. This argument is fundamentally flawed.

First, it presumes that Canada should outsource its climate policy to another country. On issues from health care to acid rain, Canada has moved independently from the U.S. and prospered as a result.

Secondly, copying U.S. climate policy has never really made sense from a greenhouse gas perspective because the countries have very different emissions profiles.

Chiefly, the oil and gas sector only accounts for about three per cent of U.S. emissions, so it isn’t a top priority for the country to regulate. Instead, the U.S. is focused on reducing emissions from power plants — including coal and natural gas-fired electricity — which account for one-third of emissions.

In Canada, the oil and gas sector accounts for nearly 25 per cent of Canada’s emissions, hence the need for a focus on that sector when addressing emissions.

What’s more, while coal-fired power plant emissions in the U.S. are already dropping, oilsands emissions are projected to more than double from 2010 to 2020, making them Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas pollution.

Canada and the Copenhagen Accord: More Broken Promises

Let’s not forget: when Canada has aligned itself with the U.S. on climate commitments, it has broken those promises.

As part of the 2009 Copenhagen agreement, both countries agreed to reduce their carbon emissions by 17 per cent by 2020.

The U.S. has implemented a plan to meet those commitments by aggressively tackling its biggest source of emissions (coal-fired power plants), along with a range of other actions, including taking on methane emissions, which account for the majority of emissions from its oil and gas sector.  

Meantime, Canada is on track to substantially miss its Copenhagen commitments, due in large part to its unchecked support of oilsands expansion.

Instead of actually addressing growing emissions from the oilsands sector, the Canadian government has focused on PR — spending millions to lobby internationally for approval of new pipelines and undermining clean energy policies in Canada, the U.S. and the European Union. More than that, the federal government has eliminated environmental protections and undermined public review processes.

Harper would have better served the interests of all Canadians (including the oil industry) by investing that time and energy into writing climate regulations, instead of sticking his head in the sand.

Harper Treats Climate Change as Race to Bottom

All in all, it’s little wonder that Obama is expected to refuse the Keystone XL pipeline when Harper has treated Obama’s chief concern, climate change, as a race to the bottom by employing the faulty logic that because we can’t solve the whole problem, we should do nothing.

If our leaders had employed that same logic in the 1940s, Canada would never have sent troops to the Second World War, where Canadians accounted for just two per cent of the Allied effort.

After a summer of unprecedented wildfires and drought across North America, it’s never been more apparent that climate change is already costing us all.

Citibank just released a new report showing that taking action now against the growing threat of climate change would save $1.8 trillion by 2040. And yes, that report takes into account the potential lost revenue from leaving resources in the ground — including 80 per cent of coal reserves, half of the world’s gas reserves, and a third of global oil reserves — and still concludes that the global economy would see a net gain.

While the fossil fuel industry continues to pay off pseudo scientists and unethical PR firms to create confusion about climate change, the science is clear. And the time to act is now.

The federal government’s utter failure on climate change has given rise to fruitless, polarized pipeline debates, such as the prolonged one over TransCanada’s Keystone XL. The only person who can be blamed for that is Harper himself.

Main image: A 2009 Greenpeace billboard calls on world leaders to secure a fair, ambitious and binding deal at the Copenhagen Cimate Summit. Via Flickr.

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During her recent election campaign, Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley pledged to raise Alberta’s minimum wage from $10.20 an hour to $15 by 2018, which would make the province’s minimum wage the highest in the country — by far.

Not so fast, objects economist Ron Kneebone. In a National Post commentary a week after the election, Kneebone argues that raising the minimum wage will do little to fight poverty. He suggests other, less achievable, policies.

Notley’s platform also included a pledge to raise corporate tax rates, review oil and gas royalties and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Not so fast, objects economist Jack Mintz. In a National Post article published the day after Kneebone, Mintz asks, “how many times can you skin the cat?” If Notley raises corporates taxes, capital will take flight, he predicts. “Some companies are planning to shift profits out of Alberta if the rate goes up to 12 per cent,” he says, as if profits don’t already leave the province because the energy sector is mainly foreign owned.

A third promise Notley made was to promote the upgrading and refining of Alberta’s natural resources within the province to deliver better value to Albertans.

Not so fast, objects economist Trevor Tombe. In a National Post commentary six days after Mintz, Tombe calculates that oil and gas extraction adds more value per job than refining. But the real comparison should be refining in Alberta compared with refining — and adding value — elsewhere.

Aside from being economists, having serious problems with NDP proposals and getting major play in the National Post, Kneebone, Mintz and Tombe share something else: they are associated with the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy (SPP). Mintz is school director, Kneebone director of the tax and economic growth program, and Tombe an economics department academic who publishes frequently through the SPP.

In just one month, the SPP had taken three swipes at Notley’s platform.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

And there will be more to come because the SPP isn’t just a degree-granting academic institution, it’s also an industry-supported think tank embedded within the university.

Like all industry-backed think tanks, the SPP’s purpose is to produce research that supports the industry and the free market. If Notley strays too far afield from industry consensus, rest assured the SPP will be on her case.

Industry’s Big (Reputational) Problem

Canada’s oil and gas industry has had a big problem: it’s the least trusted source of information about energy issues.

This was a key finding of a survey commissioned in February 2015 by Alberta Oil, a magazine, as DeSmog’s Emma Gilchrist points out, “destined for the desks of the energy sector’s senior executives and decision-makers.”

These energy sector executives may oppose minimum-wage and corporate-tax hikes and increased oil sands refining in Alberta, but it’s futile for them to fulminate publicly about Notley’s plans, if the Alberta Oil survey is to be believed.

Only 14 per cent of survey respondents found energy company executives to be a credible source of information on oilsands development, and just 11 per cent trusted industry information about carbon emissions.

Perhaps the tens of millions of dollars Enbridge was spending to promote its pipelines and the millions more spent by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to persuade Canadians about the amazing benefits of oil sands development were well and truly wasted.

But Alberta Oil’s survey did reveal a ray of hope for the industry. At 53 per cent, respondents regarded the academic community as the most trusted and credible source of information. So if industry executives can’t speak for the industry, perhaps academics can.

The School of Public Policy, Born of Oil Money 

The School of Public Policy was established in 2008 with a donation of $4 million from James Palmer, one of Canada’s leading oil and gas lawyers, Palmer perhaps recognizing industry’s credibility problems. At the time, all three major Alberta political parties were calling for higher royalties.

Who would speak for the industry?

With Palmer’s money the university hired tax specialist Jack Mintz, CEO of the corporate-sponsored C.D. Howe Institute, to head the SPP. Like C.D. Howe, corporate influence in the SPP is heavy. The connections to one company in particular — Imperial Oil — are extensive. (This is not to suggest that industry money can buy supportive academic research, but that academics sympathetic to business and conservative viewpoints are recruited for such positions.)

Mintz himself is an Imperial Oil director and a director of the Imperial Oil Foundation, that doles out $6-to-$7 million a year to organizations in communities where Imperial Oil operates, to build good will. Like all directors, Mintz is obligated to advance the best interests of the company, as former Alberta Liberal leader Kevin Taft points out. “The directors, in exercising their powers and discharging their duties, shall act honestly and in good faith with a view to the best interests of the corporation,” says Imperial Oil’s 2014 Management Proxy Circular. As head of SPP, Mintz’s loyalties seem murky.

Palmer was one of Canada’s most celebrated energy lawyers (he died in 2013), specializing in corporate mergers and acquisitions. He was on the boards of numerous oil and gas companies and for a few years lobbied the federal government for Imperial Oil and its parent company, ExxonMobil, promoting their oil pipeline proposals.

Imperial Oil CEO Tim Hearn had just retired and joined the SPP’s advisory council; his company donated $1 million to the school and another $200,000 several years later. Hearn’s successor, Bruce Marsh, was a featured speaker at SPP’s kick-off conference. Jean-Sébastien Rioux, recruited to lead the SPP’s Master’s program, had previously headed Imperial Oil’s lobbying and public relations efforts.

The school seems a marriage of business, ideology and politics. A decade before it was established, a group of political scientists, historians, and economists at the university emerged as the intellectual backup for neoliberal and social-conservative causes.

Advancing the Conservative Agenda

Dubbed the Calgary School, these academics coalesced around arguments to slash social programs, downsize government, promote business, deregulate the economy, and cut taxes. Led by political scientist Tom Flanagan, the Calgary School had enormous influence on federal policy and politics.

It helped shape the direction of the Reform Party and Canadian Alliance and dominated the thinking of Stephen Harper, who studied under Calgary School professors, selected one — Flanagan — as a close adviser, and picked the student of another — Ian Brodie, who studied under political scientist Ted Morton — as his first chief of staff.

After the school was up and running, the entire Calgary School migrated into its ranks. Brodie became director of research, Flanagan a distinguished fellow and Morton an executive in residence. Economist Robert Mansell, a Calgary School associate who had been one of Harper’s professors, became the SPP’s academic director.

Four SPP program directors, including Kneebone, are, or were, Fraser Institute fellows. SPP receives about $200,000 a year from Peter Munk’s Aurea Foundation, which has emerged in recent years as paymaster to the right through its funding of the Fraser Institute and other neoliberal think tanks.

And there are the political connections. Flanagan is well-known as a mentor to former Wildrose leader Danielle Smith; Morton was a minister of Energy in the Ed Stelmach government; and Jean-Sébastien Rioux was chief of staff to Jim Prentice when he was federal minister of Indian Affairs and Industry.

Given the funding and the lineup of personnel, it’s not surprising that SPP’s research is hostile to Notley’s program.

They’ll be carefully monitoring the NDP’s moves on the energy and environment files. SPP authors have already sounded the alarm that Alberta must get its bitumen to markets in the Pacific Rim as quickly as possible, or risk losing out to competitors. Canada needs to get on with the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain expansion projects as quickly as possible, the authors urge.

A paper by Trevor Tombe about “the facts” on Canada’s energy trade presents as one fact the claim that promoting energy trade “requires lowering investment barriers and creating a predictable and stable investment climate for foreign direct investment,” certainly not the capital flight that Jack Mintz threatens.

Notley will be looking across the legislative aisle for clues to opposition strategies. She should also be looking over her shoulder to the School of Public Policy for the “research” and policy that will provide the real opposition to her government.

Image: Industry Minister James Moore speaks at a Calgary School event via Flickr

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The B.C. Supreme Court awarded $50,000 in damages to climate scientist Andrew Weaver in a ruling Friday that confirms articles published by the National Post defamed his character.

The ruling names Terence Corcoran, editor of the Financial Post, Peter Foster, a columnist at the National Post, Kevin Libin, a journalist that contributes to the Financial Post and National Post publisher Gordon Fisher.

Four articles published in 2009 and 2010 refer to Weaver, now MLA for Canada’s Green Party, as an “alarmist” who disseminates “agit-prop” and a “sensationalist” that “cherry-picked” data as “Canada’s warmest spinner-in-chief.” Weaver was previously a lead author on a number of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports.

In the damages section of the ruling (attached below), Madam Justice Emily Burke notes, “the defamation in this case was serious. It offended Dr. Weaver’s character and the defendants refused to publish a retraction.”

Justice Burke concluded the defendants “have been careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts,” adding, “they were more interested in espousing a particular view than assessing the accuracy of the facts."

Weaver told DeSmog Canada he’s “thrilled” with the ruling.

"I am absolutely thrilled with today's B.C. Supreme Court judgment in my libel case against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, Kevin Libin and Gordon Fisher.”

Weaver said he initiated the lawsuit in 2010 when the National Post refused to retract the offending articles “that attributed to me statements I never made, accused me of things I never did, and attacked me for views I never held."

“I felt I had to take this matter to court to clear my name and correct the public record. This judgment does precisely that.”

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, said the ruling “is a victory for climate scientists everywhere.”

There is “an extremely long history of efforts by climate deniers and contrarians to attack not just climate science, but climate scientists: to smear their scientific reputations, to distort their statements, and to make false and defamatory accusations,” Gleick told DeSmog Canada.

Gleick said defamation “has been a standard tactic for years, especially as the science of climate change has continued to strengthen and solidify.”

The attack on Weaver’s credibility is unfortunately only one of many examples, he said.

“While I'm sure the ruling will not stop the continued assault on climate science and scientists, it should certainly put people on notice that there is a responsibility to avoid such irresponsible attacks and a real cost for failing to do so. I hope this ruling has that effect."

Weaver said he is looking forward to the defendants “publishing a complete retraction and removing the offending articles from electronic databases.”

The four articles in question, as listed in the court ruling, can be seen below. Three of these articles still appear on the National Post’s website at the time of publication.

As part of his suit, Weaver also argued the National Post should take responsibility for the articles republished on third-party sites.

“I further look forward to them withdrawing consent given to third parties to re-publish the articles and to require them to cease re-publication,” Weaver said.

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“All media requests are not equal.”

Journalists from small, alternative and independent media outlets have long believed that’s why they get no response or a delayed response when they contact the government for information. That can make it more difficult for them to break stories, frustrating the public’s right to know.

But it’s also an adage you’d never, ever expect to see the government write down — until spin doctors at the federal department of citizenship and immigration did exactly that in a document I obtained via a recent access to information request.

Was it a pique of honesty that led them to put those words in black and white, an error or just plain indiscretion?

Well, according to a department representative, the document — a 16-page draft guide prepared for citizenship and immigration’s spokespeople — was never approved and doesn’t reflect how media requests are actually handled.

But, even with that caveat in mind, the guide may give us a glimpse inside the mind of a government spin doctor.

It states, “Inquiries received from major media outlets must receive greater attention and effort…than calls received from minor media sources or student journalists.”

Similarly, “calls from major international media outlets (i.e. Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times) as well as calls on sensitive issues,” demand even more attention.

In other words, according to the guide, the department should give more help to foreign reporters — and their audiences — than some Canadian reporters.

But, in an e-mail, citizenship and immigrations media relations advisor Nancy Caron used capital letters to stress the “DRAFT” nature of that document.

The first page of the document stresses the same thing, adding “procedures are constantly evolving to meet changing circumstance.”

It then goes on to state that the guide is simply meant to provide “a snapshot of where we are today. It reflects how the DG of communications, the Director of Ministerial Events and Media Relations and the Minister’s Office wish us to process media calls.”

Nevertheless, according to Caron, the document was “never presented to, nor approved by CIC’s management.”

Indeed, she stated her department “provides all media outlets with the same service level and attention. Media requests are triaged and addressed based on deadlines for publication…In fact, in the first quarter of the current fiscal year, 90.7% of journalists’ deadlines were met, regardless of their outlet.”

But journalists I spoke with say the “all media requests are not equal” approach matches their own dealings with the federal government.

Jeremy Nuttall, national reporter for the online magazine The Tyee, has said that, “Forget about the back burner, it feels like you’re not even on the stove.”

An example: back in 2012, when Nuttall was reelancing for The Tyee and covering the government’s controversial decision to approve the use of temporary foreign workers by HD Mining International Ltd. in British Columbia.

He said the citizenship and immigration “answered at first…then darkness” when the story “heated up.”

“I’ve worked for larger places and there is more of an effort [by government] to get your replies,” said Nuttall, who has also reported for the Canadian Press, CBC News and the Globe and Mail.

Parliament Hill freelancer Justin Ling said he’s had similar experiences. “I’ve been doing a lot of stories for Vice News recently and I can tell you the departments don’t care about Vice News,” he said. “It’s not their demographic, they just don’t give a shit.”

“The departments definitely have targeted approaches based on who you are calling from and who you are,” continued Ling, who has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post and Maclean’s.

“The consequence is that it reinforces the consortium of news outlets that people go to for news. It’s unfortunate.”

It is — especially at a time when those outlets are on the decline, with journalists outside the “consortium” trying to investigate stories the mainstream no longer can.

By treating those journalists as second-class reporters — either in policy or in practice — the government is once again frustrating the public’s right to know.

Because if members of the fourth estate can’t get the information they need from the government, neither can Canadians — keeping voters in the dark and their elected officials unaccountable.

This post originally appeared on Sean Holman's Unknowable Country.

The Media Call Process at Citizenship and Immigration

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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

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Paid advertisements for the oil industry have run unlabelled as editorial content on the websites of the Vancouver Sun and Regina Leader-Post — yet Canada’s ad regulator has decided not to rule against Postmedia, the company that owns the papers.

DeSmog Canada filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada on March 4, regarding a story published on the Vancouver Sun’s website on Dec. 4, 2013, with the headline “Born to the Challenge: Janet Holder’s B.C. roots make her the perfect lead on Northern Gateway.”

The article told the tale of how Holder came to be Enbridge’s VP of Western Access, responsible for pushing the Northern Gateway oil tanker and pipeline project. Holder recited the economic claim that Canada is losing $50-million a day due to limited export markets

Economist Robyn Allan read the article and took issue with that economic claim. When she submitted an opinion piece in response, she was informed it couldn’t be run because the article she was responding to was actually a paid advertisement.

“It was clear that the page was set up to look like arms length reporting — even more so on the web than in the printed version of the paper,” Allan told DeSmog Canada. “I had prepared my opinion piece from the web ‘article’ and when I saw the printed version, I became confused—was it reporting or paid-for propaganda? The Sun editorial staff confirmed the page was paid content.”

DeSmog Canada’s complaint with the ad standards agency cited Clause 2 “Disguised Advertising Techniques,” which states: “No advertisement shall be presented in a format or style that conceals its commercial intent.”

After two months, Advertising Standards Canada sent a written reply to DeSmog Canada indicating that it had decided not to issue a ruling against Postmedia.

Since the complaint was filed, the article has been removed from the Vancouver Sun’s website.

A screen grab of the paid article on the Vancouver Sun website, before it was removed.

However, on March 7, the same thing happened again, this time with a paid advertisement from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).

When the ad ran online in the National Post, it was clearly labelled with this disclaimer: “This content was developed by Postmedia’s advertising department in collaboration with a client. Though it does not mention the client’s products or services, the client was involved in the creative direction of the content and reviewed it before publication.”

On that same day, that CAPP advertorial ran in the Regina Leader-Post with no disclaimer. (UPDATE: On June 25th, the story — shown in the screen grab below — was removed from the Regina Leader-Post website.)

The unmarked, paid story begins: “Major Canadian oil sands companies have come together in an unprecedented move to collaborate and advance technologies to accelerate the pace of environmental performance improvement.”

Postmedia owns nearly every broadsheet daily in the country, including the Vancouver Sun, The Province, the Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal, the Regina Leader-Post, the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, the Ottawa Citizen, the Montreal Gazette and the National Post.

Consequences for news industry

Sean Holman, founder of Public Eye and a journalism professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, says media organizations undermine their own value by undertaking such ventures without ensuring content is clearly labeled.

“What I do find tragic is, as we go down this route that we seem to headed down, it is eroding the societal and political value of the content that media institutions are supposed to be producing,” Holman told DeSmog Canada. “I’m not sure the media has thought through the ramifications of that.”

Postmedia, like most newspaper publishers, is in serious financial trouble — laying off staff, shutting down presses and losing tens of millions of dollars.

“Media organizations are trying to do the best job they can to figure out how to make money in this new environment. But I think some of these ventures go down the wrong path,” Holman said. “We enjoy the access that we do because we are supposed to be serving not an advertising purpose, but a political purpose, not a business purpose, but a societal purpose.”

At the same time, Holman asks how news organizations are supposed to make money in a society that does not value journalism in the way it once did.

“Journalists bear some of the blame, media organizations bear some of the blame, but we as citizens bear some of the blame, too,” he said.

Postmedia to work with CAPP to amplify “energy mandate”

Earlier this year, the Vancouver Observer reported on a Postmedia presentation that outlined a content strategy that includes several Financial Post “Special Report” sections, with topics to be arranged by Postmedia and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

The partnership also includes 12 single-page “joint venture” features in newspapers across the country. Those are different from “special reports” in that CAPP fully directs the topics and Postmedia writers just pen them.

If the features were properly marked as paid content, that would be one thing — but at least two paid articles appear to have slipped between the cracks.

Add to that the tone of the leaked Postmedia presentation, which is graphically designed to follow the route of a cartoon pipeline (snazzy!) and includes this note from Douglas Kelly, the publisher of the National Post:

“From its inception, the National Post has been one of the country’s leading voices on the importance of energy to Canada’s business competitiveness internationally and our economic well being in general. We will work with CAPP to amplify our energy mandate and to be part of the solution to keep Canada competitive in the global marketplace. The National Post will undertake to leverage all means editorially, technically and creatively to further this critical conversation.”

Huh. You almost get the impression that Postmedia sees itself as being on the same team as CAPP — which is rather disconcerting.

Let’s say a Postmedia reporter ran across a contrary piece of information, like the fact the oilsands industry only actually accounts for about two per cent of Canada’s GDP, a quarter of the contribution of the charitable and non-profit sector? How would that fit into Postmedia’s “energy mandate” to keep “Canada competitive in the global marketplace?”

To be fair, the presentation to CAPP was meant to cajole an advertiser to spend big bucks, not for public eyes. Even the unlabelled articles online could very well have been left unlabelled by error.

But the fact is, it doesn’t look good. Readers expect news organizations to maintain their first loyalty to citizens. As outlined in the Pew Reseach Centre’s nine core principles of journalism:

While news organizations answer to many constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders, the journalists in those organizations must maintain allegiance to citizens and the larger public interest above any other if they are to provide the news without fear or favor. This commitment to citizens first is the basis of a news organization’s credibility, the implied covenant that tells the audience the coverage is not slanted for friends or advertisers.

When media companies appear to lose track of that commitment to the public interest, they lose the trust of their readers — which undermines their own business. But more than that, it casts a pall over the good work of their journalists who continue to serve the public interest even as the traditional media industry crumbles around them — and that’s likely the biggest tragedy of all.

 —With files from Emma Gilchrist.

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.