No one has a better handle on the effect climate deniers have on the socio-political stage than science historian and author Naomi Oreskes.   Her book Merchants of Doubt charts the path of many of the world’s most notorious deniers, skeptics, shills, PR men and experts-for-hire. Plus, as a trained historian and professor of earth and environmental sciences at Harvard, Oreskes has the ability to take a 10,000-foot view when it comes to climate politics and the turning tide of public opinion.   Oreskes recently visited Vancouver to discuss climate change and climate denial in Canada at a talk organized by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies.     For Oreskes, understanding how climate denial is active in places like Canada involves acknowledging the expansiveness of climate change as an issue, one that cuts across boundaries between government, society and market power.   We asked Oreskes what she makes of Canada’s current political situation — a situation in which our  prime minister announces impressive climate targets on the world stage but then quietly approves B.C.’s first LNG export terminal on a Friday afternoon.   “Of course there is a long road ahead,” Oreskes said. “[Climate change] is a very big issue that reaches into economics, politics and culture.”

“But that does not mean we should discount the very substantial gains that are now being made, especially here in Canada, with the great breakthrough in Alberta.” 

Although new governments on both the provincial and federal level have reinvigorated the prospect of nationwide climate action, Canada has yet to make substantial headway in limiting carbon pollution, Oreskes admits.   A February report from Environment and Climate Change Canada shows the country is not on track to meet its climate targets. Development of oil and gas in both Alberta and B.C. is expected to prevent Canada from getting back on course.   Oreskes says straight-up climate denial is less visible in Canada than it once was, but that doesn’t mean the interests of the fossil fuel industry have disappeared.   A new form of climate denialism is at work, Oreskes argues, one meant to persuade the public that fossil fuels are necessary and renewables unreliable. Alternatives to fossil fuels, Oreskes recently wrote in The Guardian, “are disparaged by a new generation of myths.”   Those myths include the idea that countries like Canada are dependent on new fossil fuel infrastructure for prosperity.   Canada has been beset by a new collective of industry advocacy groups, like British Columbians for Prosperity, Resource Works, Canada Action and Oil Respect, that advance this kind of thinking.   Asked what Canadians should be on the lookout for, knowing that climate denial groups and pro-industry organizations continue to advance a fossil fuel agenda, Oreske said awareness is the first step.   “A lot of groups now are saying, well, yes, maybe there is a bit of climate change, but we can't afford not to fill in the blank: develop tar sands, frack for gas, build new pipelines, etc.”   “This is not a new argument,” Oreskes added. “We've heard it since the early 1990s. I wrote about it back in the 2000s. But we can expect it to be made more strongly post Paris.”   The myths don’t stop there, Oreskes said.   “We are also seeing a line of argument that goes like this: yes renewables are nice, but they are too intermittent and unreliable to be our primary source of power.”   “There are several important recent studies that show this is not true, especially in North America where we have so much solar, wind and hydro.”   One such study, recently published by The Solutions Project research team at Stanford University, outlines how Canada could achieve 100 per cent renewable energy by the year 2050 with a mixture of solar, wind, existing hydro, wave and geothermal energy.   The idea that renewables aren’t reliable has gained a lot of traction, Oreskes said. She added a particularly “egregious and sexist version” of that argument was on full display in Shell’s highly criticized video campaign that compared renewable energy to a fickle woman.   According to a new report by the UK-based Influence Map, Shell spent USD$22 million in 2015 lobbying against climate legislation.   Despite industry-sponsored attacks on clean energy, renewables have taken off in recent years. Nearly $500 billion was invested in clean energy in 2015.   But that figure is overshadowed by global fossil fuel subsidies. The International Monetary Fund estimates government subsidized the fossil fuel sector to the tune of USD$5.3 trillion in 2015 by failing to charge for the climate, environmental and human health impacts of oil, gas and coal combustion.   Oreskes cautions that “because energy is not a free market” we cannot simply rely on market mechanisms to solve the climate conundrum.   “Fossil fuels are still gigantically subsidized,” she said. “So we need to eliminate those subsidies.”   Oreskes added these combined social and political influences driving fossil fuel interests make it dangerous to think the era of climate denial has come to an end.   “It ain't over till its over.”     Image: Naomi Oreskes/TED

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Alberta Conservative Senator Doug Black worries that Canadians are illiterate when it comes to energy and he’s on a mission to educate them.

“If we don’t address the issues facing us now,” he warns, “the prosperity my generation enjoyed will not be enjoyed by the next generation.”

Black is a rarity in the Senate, one of only three senators who were elected by voters in Alberta and then appointed to the Senate by Stephen Harper. Given the discredit that august body has fallen into, though, he may not hold that seat for long.

During the first half of 2015, Black travelled from coast to coast in his quest to educate Canadians about “the development of our energy resources and to discuss ways in which Canada can responsibly maximize its energy resources to benefit all Canadians.”

But it’s an odd crusade. Instead of meeting Canadians where they mostly congregate, in malls, union halls, church basements and community centres, he’s meeting them in posh hotels like the Vancouver Four Seasons, Toronto’s One King West, Edmonton Westin, Montreal Hyatt Regency and Ottawa’s Shaw Centre.

[view:in_this_series=block_1] Black’s Energy Tour

That’s because his “energy literacy tour” isn’t aimed at ordinary Canadians, but at the elites, the people who are already well-educated about energy, at least from the industry perspective. The tour is sponsored by the Economic Club of Canada, whose “audience members are drawn from the most senior levels of Canadian business, industry and government,” the club’s web site informs us.

The site features testimonials from the president of the Canadian Gas Association, the chief lobbyist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank (also a director of the Canadian-American Business Council), and the communications director for an oil and gas service corporation.

They’re certainly up to snuff on energy literacy, which raises the suspicion that the purpose of Black’s meetings with the elite is to promote the industry and further the development of Alberta’s oilsands.

And the Economic Council of Canada has set up blue ribbon panels of industry insiders and experts to help devise strategies to achieve this goal. The Toronto session in April, for instance included executives from Enbridge and Kinder Morgan along with Brian Tobin, vice-chair of the Bank of Montreal (BMO) and former premier of oil-rich Newfoundland and Labrador.

At that meeting Tobin worried that foreign investment is moving to the United States, where the investment review regime is more “flexible” than Canada’s. And Tobin would know about the problems foreign investors face in Canada: BMO acted as an adviser to China’s state-owned CNOOC in its contentious $15.1-billion takeover of oil and gas producer Nexen in 2013.

Kinder Morgan Canada’s Ian Anderson, who was also on the speaker’s bill, said he couldn’t understand why “a couple of hundred” protestors would want to hold up his company’s plans to build a pipeline under Burnaby Mountain. “Where is this opposition coming from?” he asked his audience. “What fear is motivating it?”

But instead of addressing why so many Canadians fear growing oilsands development, the energy elite, with Black in the vanguard, pushed back.

Advancing “Dialogue” on Energy Future

Black, who is one of Canada’s top oil and gas lawyers, has been immersed in the industry for decades and has many leading oil and gas executives as clients. He’s also a senior Alberta Progressive Conservative fundraiser and the party’s former finance vice-president, and he’s not afraid to admit he represents Big Oil in the Senate.

“One of the reasons I ran for the Senate,” he states on his web site, “was to advance a national dialogue on our energy future.” But is it a monologue rather than a dialogue he’s advancing?

Black heard his clients venting their incredulity over the way the public was showing such intense opposition to energy infrastructure, as Alberta Oil magazine explains. How could the public be so ignorant as to not see the connection between energy development and prosperity, the oil executives demanded to know.

So Black set out the make the connection. In 2009 he co-founded the Energy Policy Institute of Canada (EPIC), an organization with “a singular focus on one task: to draft an energy strategy.” It was almost like a service to his clients and the industry.

This rather benign sounding goal masked the real purpose of the organization, which Linda McQuaig saw as “a lobbying vehicle for dozens of extremely wealthy, powerful fossil fuel companies … all hell-bent on developing Alberta’s tar sands.”

Members included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, Canadian Gas Association, EnCana, Imperial Oil, Shell Canada, TransCanada Corp., and many others.

Industry Drafting Legislation

The group released its strategy in 2012 after three years of discussions and meetings with various governments and industry interests. It was pooh-poohed by the corporate media, but an analysis by the ForestEthics Advocacy Association reveals that the oil industry — through EPIC — helped write the rules “that now restrict public participation on the environmental impacts of tar sands expansion projects.” ForestEthics documents the profound impact the EPIC report had in at least one crucial area of energy development — government regulation.

EPIC recommended that the “federal government must develop regulations that restrict participation in federal environmental assessment reviews to those parties that are ‘directly and adversely affected’ by the proposal in question.”

It also recommended that “the relevance and credibility of evidence presented for environmental assessments must be explained.” This precise language is now found in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012, on the National Energy Board’s website, and on the National Energy Board Application to Participate Form, ForestEthics notes. It’s just one example of many in the report.

Such a cooperative government response could be due to the efforts of EPIC’s co-chair, Bruce Carson, a long-time Tory insider who had been a senior aide in Harper’s PMO. Carson brought EPIC’s’ document to Nigel Wright, Harper’s chief of staff, who promised to read it “over the weekend” and urged Carson to “feel free to give me a call at any time.”

Carson reported back to Black that he’d briefed Wright, who “seemed generally supportive.”

“Excellent, Need Nigel on side,” Black responded.

A year later, Carson, who earned a $120,000 annual honorarium for his work, was charged with engaging in illegal lobbying and influence peddling, because he broke the five-year ban on lobbying after leaving the government’s employ, among other charges. Meanwhile Black became a senator and took his seat on the Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, where he could continue his work.

He outlined his mission in his maiden speech to the Senate:

All interested parties now agree that on an urgent basis we must find ways to export our energy products and to help educate Canadians about the importance of market access. For success, we need Canadians to accept that their future prosperity depends on our solving this problem. We must ensure that governments and energy producers have the social licence needed to make the critical infrastructure projects.

Black’s History of Industry Lobbying

Black has fronted for Big Oil before. In 2002 he was chief lobbyist for the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions, a group that appeared on the scene several months before the Jean Chrétien government prepared to ratify the Kyoto Accord. The CCRES was created by Burson-Marsteller, the PR giant that specializes in creating astroturf organizations.

The organization was framed as “a broad cross-section of Canadian industry,” but the money came from Black’s clients in Big Oil. CCRES pulled all the stops in its efforts to derail Kyoto, including expensive saturation TV ads in Ontario. But it couldn’t prevent Chrétien from proceeding with ratification.

Not that it mattered. A decade later, Black’s party was in charge in Ottawa, Kyoto was ancient history, and Black was still furthering Big Oil’s interests, this time by educating Canadians about the need for oil pipelines if we want continued prosperity.

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“Our messages are not resonating,” Natural Resource Minister Greg Rickford told a room full of oil and gas executives in a luxury Rocky Mountain resort last fall. “You are fighting an uphill battle for public confidence.”

Rickford, who attended the meeting at the request of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), encouraged the executives to do more to spread the oil industry’s message to the Canadian public.

“Much of the debate over energy is characterized by myth or emotion,” he said, suggesting scientists and campaigners critical of development in the Alberta oilsands were “crowding out the real facts.”

Rickford made no mention of Canada’s international climate commitments, but he did deride concerns about pollution from the oilsands — the country’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Rickford’s advice, released to Greenpeace via an Access to Information request, marked the beginning of a decisive shift in industry’s public relations campaigns.

As CAPP described it to The Guardian: “The energy industry is embarking on a different level of engagement and CAPP is moving to a ground campaign to activate industry supporters.”

While we’ll likely never know the level of coordination happening behind the scenes, the shared vision going forward was clearly articulated by Rickford: “Those of us here in this room have a responsibility to tell our shared energy story,” he intoned. “We must all be on the same page.”

Of Oil and Patriotism

Rickford’s call for a new “shared energy story” was in October of 2014.

At that point, the narrative that environmental advocates were “un-Canadian” had been seeded in public discourse, most doggedly by blogger Vivian Krause and most famously by key Conservative players high in the political party hierarchy.

The connection between pro-industry ideals and patriotism had been ham-handedly advanced by controversial personality Ezra Levant through his Ethical Oil campaign (which seemed to lose steam after its industry and Conservative-party connections were exposed by DeSmog).

Since then, the attempt to persuade Canadians of the Canadian-ness of the oil industry has ramped up and become much more polished.

A whole host of campaigns designed to advance the agenda of the fossil fuel industry have cropped up: Resource Works, British Columbians for Prosperity, Energy Citizens, Coal Alliance, Canadian Natural Resources Alliance, Pipeline Action, and many others.

But no individual has mastered the art quite as effectively as the oil industry’s citizen activist Cody Battershill, founder of Canada Action.

Described as a “one-man oil sands advocate…in [a] PR war,” last year Battershill told the National Post he wants to create a more “balanced conversation” about the Alberta oilsands.

But DeSmog Canada’s research indicates Battershill and Canada Action appear to have close ties to the oil industry and to powerful campaigners from the Conservative Party of Canada.

Who are Cody Battershill and Canada Action?

Battershill is a young Calgary realtor in the top one per cent of agents in his Canada-wide company. As he tells the story, his oilsands advocacy began in 2010 when he was walking along Vancouver’s Robson Street and noticed that a LUSH cosmetics store had placed some “Stop Oilsands” posters in its window. It caught his attention, he says. He knew nothing about oil and gas but “common sense says that everything in that store is made possible by natural resources.”

Battershill said he decided to get involved to foster “a more informed conversation about resource development.” He started a Twitter account and has been building Canada Action ever since.

His non-profit organization, Canada Action, sells clothing for men, women and children with the statement: “I love oil sands,” designed by Canada Action’s Robbie Piccard.

It echoes a longer-running campaign in the U.S. — run by Alex Epstein from the pro-industry Center for Industrial Progress — that makes a moral case for fossil fuels. Epstein, like Battershill, argues social prosperity relies on the consumption of fossil fuels while overlooking the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows the negative impacts of industrial pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions.

Did you know you can move somewhere where it’s #EarthHour, every hour? (Always enjoy hearing @AlexEpstein speak) pic.twitter.com/7BOSp66buP

— Cody Battershill (@codyincalgary) June 16, 2015

Battershill declined to comment on his relationship with Epstein. Epstein did not respond to an interview request.

Battershill, right on point with Rickford’s advice, has said critics of industry add “a lot of fear and emotion to the argument that’s not supported by facts.”

Alongside his prolific Twitter activity, Battershill writes articles for the Huffington Post, the Calgary Herald and the Journal of the Canadian Heavy Oil Association, where he often opposes the opinions of climate campaigners or other environmental advocates.

Canada Action also produces numerous slick infographics that promote industry views on oilsands development. These are in turn shared by Canada Action sub-groups, Oilsands Action and Pipeline Action, which play an active roll disseminating industry-friendly information to large audiences on Facebook and Twitter.

Not bad for a realtor.

So is Canada Action a one-man band as Battershill would prefer people to believe or is there more than meets the eye?

Deep Industry, Conservative Connections

Canada Action was registered as a federal not-for-profit society in September 2014. With a little help from his friends, Battershill held a launch party at the Woods Buffalo Brewing Co. in Fort McMurray the same day. (Through a corporate registry search, DeSmog Canada discovered Canada Action existed as a numbered corporation between 2012 and 2013 before being renamed Canada Action Coalition in August of 2013.)

Kim Farwell, leader of oilsands extraction at Syncrude and two-time former president of the Conservative Party of Canada’s riding association in Fort McMurray helped Battershill organize the event along with Robbie Picard, Canada Action campaigner. Another organizer, Diane Slater, announced she was retiring as chief administrative officer at the Fort McMurray Chamber of Commerce — whose ranks are loaded with heavy oil businesses — to take on a more active role in Canada Action.

Canada Action’s registration as a non-profit society reveals its board of directors. Most interestingly, Canada Action’s society documentation indicates Battershill brought in an accomplished Conservative campaigner as a director.

Matt Gelinas and the 2011 Robocall Scandal

Although he was only 26 when Canada Action was incorporated, director Matt Gelinas already had a long history of political campaigning and advocacy for conservative causes. In 2006, he supervised phone banks for the Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership campaign of the most right-wing candidate, Ted Morton.

As a University of Calgary political science student, Gelinas helped organize the visit of right-wing, incendiary speaker Ann Coulter to the university campus in 2011. In one of her more famous claims about Muslims, Coulter said, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

By the time he graduated, Gelinas was a seasoned political campaigner working closely with key conservative organizations.

Gelinas went on to work with the Manning Centre, an organization that promotes conservative ideas and politicians. In 2013, before the Alberta provincial election, he presented a workshop at the Manning Centre titled: “Do you know how to get your voters out?”

Gelinas is also an expert consultant on NationBuilder, which provides software for political campaigns, helping candidates organize their online presence. NationBuilder’s power lies in converting social media activity into datasets useful for elections campaigning and fundraising.

Gelinas studied under conservative political strategist, and Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, Tom Flanagan. In his book, Winning Power: Canadian Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century, Flanagan writes that he contracted Gelinas’ company Blue Direct to perform “auto-dialler polls and electronic town halls.”

Blue Direct is still run by Gelinas’ colleague and conservative campaigner Richard Dur who was credited for helping win the 2011 federal Conservative majority. Dur is a trainee of the Koch brothers-funded Leadership Institute, a training centre for “conservative activists” that counts many senior Canadian conservative leaders among its alumni.

According to his LinkedIn account, between 2012 and 2013, Gelinas worked for the Responsive Marketing Group, an automated call service. The company has played a key role in the history of the Conservative Party of Canada and was a central player in the 2011 robocall scandal, before Gelinas joined its ranks.

Gelinas is also listed on Yatedo.com as an owner of Alberta Blue Strategies, a company that provided fundraising, voter identification services and automated calling services to the Conservatives. The Alberta Blue Strategies web address is no longer active, but according to urlmetrics.com the only available links currently redirect to the Blue Direct website.

Alberta Blue Strategies was paid more than $5,000 in 2011 from a Conservative candidate in a riding blanketed with misleading robocalls. The calls in that riding were later traced to an automated phone service provider called RackNine, which claims it provided services to a third-party who tried to “disrupt voting.” Although there is no overt connection between RackNine and Alberta Blue Strategies, Gelinas notes in a client testimonial on the company’s website that he recommends RackNine, which he uses for all his “web solutions.” DeSmog Canada could not confirm if Gelinas was connected with Alberta Blue Strategies in 2011.

Screenshot from the RackNine website hosting Matt Gelinas’ testimonial.

Furthering the connections between Gelinas’ businesses, colleagues and the Conservative Party of Canada, Riley Braun, an employee of Alberta Blue Strategies from 2011 to 2012 went on to become a stakeholder relations assistant in the office of Stephen Harper.

Canada Action’s listed address is the same as Alberta Blue Strategies. It is also the same as Patchwork Investments, owned by Susan Gelinas, the third member of Canada Action’s board of directors. There is little information about Patchwork Investments available online, but it is described on several websites as providing investment advice. Several calls to Patchwork’s listed phone number went unanswered.

Canada Action also shares an address with Data Trek Inc., an oil and gas data service provider. According to LinkedIn, the president of Data Trek is Dave Gelinas, who is a Facebook friend of Matt Gelinas, Richard Dur and Cody Battershill. DeSmog Canada tried to contact Matt Gelinas through Blue Direct to clarify his relationship to Dave Gelinas, but messages were left unanswered. A publicly available phone number for Data Trek is no longer in service.

Following the Money

As a non-profit society, Canada Action’s funders are not on the public record. Battershill says his supporters are ordinary citizens volunteering their time and effort to achieve that more “balanced conversation” about responsible resource development.

When asked who funds Canada Action by Stu McNish, producer of the Conversations That Matter video series, Battershill replied, “I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket.”

“There is nothing astroturf or fake about my passion for my country,” he added. “I’ve put my money, my time and my actions where my mouth is.” McNish did not ask Battershill if he receives industry or political funds.

DeSmog Canada made several interview requests to Battershill, who declined to answer questions e-mailed to him at his request. These included questions about Canada Action’s relationship with the Conservative Party, Battershill’s relationship with Matt Gelinas and whether or not Canada Action is currently or has ever received funding from individuals or groups associated with the fossil fuel industry or the Conservative Party.

In an e-mailed statement Battershill said, “We’re strong supporters of Canada’s oilsands and the resource sector generally because we know how important these industries are to Canada’s present and future prosperity. We believe it’s critical to educate Canadians about the social and economic benefits provided by the resource sector and its commitment to world-class environmental stewardship.”

He added the organization is non-partisan.

“We accept donations from individuals and we sell Canada Action merchandise to support our campaigns,” the statement said.

Food, Shelter, Clothing and Family Vacations. This is what Canada’s resources mean to Matt from Nanaimo, #BC. pic.twitter.com/JYutrG5yws

— Canada Action (@CanadaAction) July 18, 2015

Canada Action “Oversimplifies” Oilsands Issue

Battershill says he is standing up for more balanced and inclusive conversations about Canada’s energy resources. Although to onlookers, Battershill’s shrill criticism of climate and environment advocates may be working in the wrong direction.

In addition to celebrating Canada’s strong economy and its reliance on the extractive industries, Battershill also spends ample time countering the claims of prominent environmental organizations and renewable energy advocates.

In December, Battershill attacked the credibility of the director of Clean Energy Canada, Merran Smith, calling her an “eco-activist” with a “divisive campaign to injure the oilsands in the view of the public.” He has similarly criticized climate campaigner Mike Hudema from Greenpeace, Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein and celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Neil Young who have joined campaigns to advocate for the treaty rights of First Nations in the oilsands region.

Battershill has also taken up the narrative of blogger Vivian Krause who argues critics of the oilsands industry are merely paid protesters advancing the interests of U.S. companies (DeSmog has debunked Krause’s theory in an in-depth post).

According to Ken Chapman, former director of the Oil Sands Developers Group and proponent of triple-bottom line resource development, Battershill’s antics are not part of a constructive conversation.

“I think his intentions are sincere,” Chapman said of Battershill. “The problem is that I think he’s too much of a fan and I think he gets clouded. It’s difficult from Calgary to see the oilsands in perspective. I see lots of people have that problem. It’s also difficult from outside of Alberta to see the oilsands clearly,” he said.

Chapman said pro- and anti-oilsands groups take extreme positions, “like religious beliefs” that dominate the conversation, crowding out the facts.

“And it doesn’t matter what the facts are, it’s the belief systems that are what’s dominating. And quite frankly, they always will. What is open yet is the adult conversation, as opposed to the elementary school recess conversation.”

Chapman said that while Battershill’s “heart is in the right place…he is a little naïve.”

“This guy wants to win an argument. The thing is it’s not an argument. It’s about a design. We have to take a design approach to this thing, not an adversarial approach.”

Chapman added that while he thinks Canada will continue to develop fossil fuels for years to come, “we have a responsibility to do it better.”

He said that he owns an “I love oilsands” button that he wears in Fort McMurray. “I’m an owner of the oilsands. I want to be proud of it. I want to love the oilsands,” he said, adding, “I’m not there yet.”

“People are trying to oversimplify the issue. And people like Cody is well-intentioned on the industry side, but he’s oversimplifying the issue.”

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This is a guest post by Tzeporah Berman, Adjunct Professor York University Faculty of Environmental Studies and longtime environmental advocate. A shorter version of this piece originally appeared on the Toronto Star.

The debate over energy, oilsands and pipelines in Canada is at best dysfunctional and at worst a twisted game that is making public relations professionals and consultants on all sides enormous amounts of money.

Documents obtained through Freedom of Information routinely show our own government hiding scientific reports or meeting secretly to craft PR strategies with the companies they are supposed to regulate, while millions of dollars are spent on ads trying to convince Canadians that the oilsands are like peanut butter and that without them our hospitals will close. *(See change notice at end of article.)

On the other side we march, we rally and we point fingers creating a narrative of exclusion and moral high-ground while acting as though a low carbon transition is going to be a walk in the park.

Enough.

Recently the people of Alberta voted for a change and got a progressive majority government that is not only acknowledging the urgent need to address our climate challenge but is also committing to a new partnership with First Nations, many of whom are in court over the impacts of oilsands expansion to the their Treaty rights — to wildlife, air, water and a safe climate.  And then this month our Prime Minister Harper was forced to acknowledge the critical need for the decarbonisation of our economy.  

It’s time for a new, honest conversation in Canada.

It’s time to recognize that the oilsands are, in fact, a technological marvel that took great Canadian ingenuity and acumen. It’s also time to acknowledge that when we began the exploration of the oilsands we did not know what we know today.

We didn’t understand the cumulative impacts on our disappearing caribou populations, the toxic impact on our lakes and fish, the human health impacts of air and water pollution. We didn’t know that carbon trapped in our atmosphere would create climate impacts as severe as we currently face — the droughts, the floods, the wildfires, the rising intensity and frequency of violent storms. Now we do.

Keeping Canada’s total emissions within a carbon budget that is consistent with our climate commitments while allowing oilsands production to grow as projected would require extraordinary disruption and hardship in the rest of the country.

In order for all of us to see this challenge as a collective challenge, to truly work together and not just move around the deck chairs on the Titanic, we need to face some simple but hard truths:

Basic math shows us that it would mean that every single vehicle in the country has to be electric and run on renewable energy. Or that British Columbia, all the Atlantic provinces and the territories have zero emissions. Honest math shows us that since 1990, Alberta has contributed 73 per cent of Canada’s GHG emission growth, and Saskatchewan 29 per cent, while both Ontario and Quebec have reduced emissions.

I can already hear the arguments for inaction “But Canada’s emissions are only a small part of global emissions."  

Yet Canada is one of the worlds top 10 polluters and, when taking into account emissions from land use and forestry, the World Resources Institute ranks Canada as the highest per capita polluter in the world. 

The hard truth is the oilsands are the fastest growing source of emissions in Canada and Environment Canada projects with current technology and development plans oilsands emissions will more than double over the next decade.

The path to decarbonisation does not come from expanding the fossil fuel industry. I have met many in industry who argue that if Canada doesn’t expand the oilsands, the oil will just come from somewhere else. Not only does that argument deny the impact of disruptive technologies (electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, etc.) will have on demand for oil, it is also an incredibly low bar for moral leadership.

Might as well mine and drill more even though we now know the majority of the world’s scientists and the World Bank have warned we need to stop expanding fossil fuel production because if we don’t someone else will. Is this the best we can do in a time of global crisis?

Isn’t that kind of like trying to justify selling arms to corrupt governments? “Look if we don’t sell it to them someone else will.”

The more pipelines we build, the more projects we bring online the greater the challenge we are creating for ourselves. We need to do everything we can to avoid new infrastructure that locks us in longer to a fossil fuel economy. Our leadership will inspire others and contribute to greater market certainty for renewable energy, electric cars and other innovative technologies.

Yes many of us still use gasoline to fill our cars, we fly in planes and we will continue to for many years. We need to recognize that that will not change overnight and the oilsands will not shut down tomorrow.

There is a long and difficult road in front of us of retraining, of building new clean energy infrastructure, reducing oil demand through efficiency, scaling up public transportation and electrifying transport.

That will take time and we need to ensure that people are not thrown out of work and we do not destabilize capital markets. That requires serious transition planning and it’s not going to be easy or comfortable. It is in fact going to be messy and complicated. We are going to all have to let go of our black and white ‘truths’ and be willing to muck about in ‘grey’ together.

I believe Canadians are up for the challenge. That we have the ingenuity, the knowledge and the creativity to lead a new path forward.

In fact, I suspect that for the majority of Canadians, debating solutions, timelines, the pace and scale of the transition out of the oilsands over time, having the real, hard honest conversations, will be a relief.

* This article originally included a reference to ads trying to convince Canadians that the oilsands are as toxic as peanut butter. Those ads actually compared the consistency, not the toxicity, of oilsands to peanut butter.

Image Credit: Pembina Institute

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When former environment minister Jim Prentice held his introductory lunch with U.S. Ambassador David Jacobson in November 2009, Prentice described to Jacobson how he had been shocked during a visit to Norway to find heated opposition to the Alberta oilsands during a public debate over state-owned StatOil ASA’s investment there.

This information was contained in a cable from Jacobson, which was obtained by WikiLeaks and posted by a Norwegian paper.

Prentice was clearly feeling the heat from a global campaign by environmental organizations to frame oilsands oil as “dirty” because of its energy-intensive extraction, which make for Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The public sentiment in Norway shocked him and has heightened his awareness of the negative consequences to Canada’s historically ‘green’ standing on the world stage,” the cable reported.

An Oilsands PR Makeover[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Given the dismal reputation of the oilsands, the government had three options: (a) clean them up by bringing in environmental legislation; (b) discredit the people creating the negative image; or (c) set up front groups to promote the industry, however dirty it may be.

In his discussion with Jacobson, Prentice suggested he would do (a): “impose new rules on oil sands.” But he never did. The federal government — which has promised to deliver oil and gas regulations since 2007 — offered no help.

Instead Prentice, along with the government of Alberta, got to work changing the oilsands’ image. The campaign began behind-the-scenes with intensive international lobbying focused on fighting the European Union’s proposed ‘dirty’ label for Albertan crude.

While those backroom meetings were taking place, another public strategy was being deployed to revive the image of the oilsands: demean those exposing the environmental disaster unfolding in Northern Alberta.

Shoot the messenger and undermine the message.

A Brief Chronology of the Anti-Enviro Movement  

Enter Vivian Krause.

When Jacobson wrote his cable, Vivian Krause — a former PR specialist for the aquaculture industry — was beavering away in relative obscurity investigating critics of farmed salmon.

Krause had previously worked as a nutritionist for the aquaculture industry, which routinely recruits nutritionists to tout the benefits of all salmon, farmed or wild.

She began attacking critics of aquaculture when she “unexpectedly came across a grant for an ‘antifarming campaign’ with ‘science messages’ and ‘earned media.’”

Within a year of the Prentice-Jacobson lunch, Krause switched to researching the funding of oilsands critics. She says the switch occurred “while going through the tax returns of American charitable foundations to try and figure out who was funding the campaign against salmon farming [when she] happened to notice many grants for a ‘Tar Sands campaign.’”

“That’s when I started to write about the campaign against Alberta oil,” Krause wrote on her blog, Fair Questions.

These claims may be true — “unexpectedly came across,” “happened to notice” — but the timing was fortuitous. It was a message Prentice and his replacements as environment minister, John Baird and Peter Kent, as well as the Harper government and the oilsands industry, all desperately needed, especially as opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline — a major thoroughfare for oilsands crude destined for Asian markets — was growing to unprecedented levels.

Krause was given a podium for her revelations in the pages of the National Post, where she wrote eighteen columns on the subject, magnifying her voice many times over. The Post featured her as “the girl who played with tax data.”

Repetition over the following year established the frame that because Canadian environmental charities are funded by American money, they are not acting in the interests of Canadians or the environment, but for American oil. The message dissolves on close examination, but few outside the environmental community were examining it closely.

Other, Fairer Questions

Some of the questions not being asked were just how Canadian is Enbridge, or the other proponents of the Northern Gateway pipeline? Or, more broadly, just how Canadian are the oilsands?

Enbridge is one of the largest energy transportation and distribution companies in North America. Its head office may be in Calgary, but its operations span the continent — 61 per cent of revenues are earned from American operations. Forty-four per cent of Enbridge’s shares are owned in the U.S.

Three major Chinese corporations, Petro-China, Sinopec and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, are all backers of the Northern Gateway pipeline and, since the project’s delay, have all become major investors in the oilsands.

A 2012 analysis calculated that 71 per cent of oilsands production was owned by foreign shareholders. Even ostensibly Canadian companies — such as Suncor or Canadian Oil Sands — are majority foreign owned.

The Canadian-versus-American oil interest frame just doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

Krause’s research was not difficult to carry out. Many Canadian environmental organizations have obtained charitable status so they can receive grants from philanthropic foundations. These foundations must disclose all the grants they make and this information is assembled in easily accessed web sites where it can be inspected.

Krause herself is not a registered charitable organization so she cannot receive grants from foundations — grants that would be publicly accessible. The money she does receive from corporations and individuals can stay anonymous.

A year after Krause launched her National Post commentaries, she burst onto the political scene. In November 2011, Prime Minister Harper gave an interview with Global TV in Vancouver in which he parroted Krause’s frame, warning that “significant American interests” would be “trying to line up against the Northern Gateway project” which would allow oil companies to export oilsands oil to Asia.

“They’ll funnel money through environmental groups and others in order to try to slow it down but, as I say, we’ll make sure that the best interests of Canada are protected.”

Later in the month, Jim Prentice, by then a vice-chairman at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, echoed this sentiment by telling the National Post that he thought “environmental organizations based outside the country [should] be required to reveal who gives them funding when they participate in Canada’s regulatory process to influence [Canada’s] internal decisions.”

In December, Enbridge president Patrick Daniel joined Harper and Prentice by wondering out loud why “U.S. foundations feel they need to come here to fund opposition to a project that is obviously not in the U.S. national best interest.”

And in the second week of January 2012, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver released his infamous letter warning of “environmental and other radical groups” seeking to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda,” referring to the many groups lining up to speak against the Northern Gateway project at the National Energy Board’s Joint Review Panel hearings.

Oliver’s letter was followed by a slew of ads attacking Canadian environmental organizations mounted by Ethical Oil, the oil industry advocacy group established by conservative gadfly Ezra Levant and Conservative party apparatchik Alykhan Velshi. Ethical Oil acknowledged Krause’s research as a source of information used in their ads as well as the inspiration for several complaint letters submitted to the Canada Revenue Agency questioning the charitable tax status of prominent environmental organizations. Following those complaints, the federal government launched a $13.4 million investigation into charities receiving foreign funding.

On the top of her resume, Krause credits herself for prompting the revenue agency’s audit of charities, which included seven of Canada’s top environmental groups. And a recent investigation by the National Observer argues Krause was given a leg-up by disgraced Senator Mike Duffy, who appears to have played a critical role in advancing Krause’s research in the political arena and connecting her to lucrative sources of industry funding (Krause maintains this is untrue).

Not bad for someone who just “happened to notice many grants for a Tar Sands Campaign.”

Krause insists her work is not funded: “I haven’t been funded by any industry, any company, any political party, any entity of any kind.” She does disclose honoraria she received for speaking to organizations such as the Association of Mineral Exploration in BC, Canadian Energy Pipelines Association and Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Same goes for 2013 & 2014 (so far) "@Garossino: @FairQuestions conceded >90% of her 2012 income comes from resource sector speaking fees."

— Vivian Krause (@FairQuestions) April 27, 2014

Yes. “@Garossino: Are you saying speaking fees to industry also exceeds 90% of your 2013 + '14 income to date? Details?”

— Vivian Krause (@FairQuestions) April 27, 2014

Krause officially closed down her blog, Fair Questions, in June 2012 and wrote what seems to be her last National Post column in 2014. Krause continues to speak at industry-sponsored events.

The Snowball Effect

With Krause’s rise to prominance the work to discredit Canada’s environmental movement was far from over. Since her humble beginnings in 2011, several other organizations stepped in to carry on the “foreign-funded” attack on environmental groups.

One website named “Our Decision” went online the same week Joe Oliver came gunning after “radical” environmentalists who were trying to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline. The site provides no information about the people behind it although donations go to the Ethical Oil Institute, whose directors are Levant and Thomas Ross, an employer-side labour lawyer whose Calgary firm, McLennan Ross, boasts of a relationship with the oilsands industry that goes back to its origins in the 1960s.

The purpose of “Our Decision” is to collect donations to be marshalled in the war against environmentalists: “Will you help us fight against foreign-funded and controlled lobbyists interfering in Canadian affairs?”

“Follow the Money Trail” is a second web site that promotes the Krause conspiracy theory. The site went online in mid-2014 and is sponsored by British Columbians for Prosperity, a new organization which, like Ethical Oil, provides no information about its financial backers, directors, members or advisers. The site helps us to “follow the money trail and explore the U.S. foundation funding hypocrisy that’s impacting Canada’s sovereignty.”

The organization hired one journalist to do the research and another to disseminate the findings. The findings, such as they are, had already been found by Krause.

And on it goes. Repeat this message: American billionaires back Canadian environmental organizations opposed to oilsands expansion and pipeline construction, not because oilsands developments threaten the environment or add to global warming, but because they are detrimental to American oil interests.

A perfect bait-and-switch strategy.

Meanwhile, little light has being shed on the funding of citizen groups defending oil production and export.

Unlike environmental groups, whose spokespeople have a clear public profile and whose organizations have long-standing missions, publicly-known board members and financial records, the same cannot be said of pop-up defenders of oil interests such as the Ethical Oil Institute and British Columbians for Prosperity.

Their activities remain shrouded in secrecy.

Image Credit: Vivian Krause speaks at She Talks Resources. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa

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No one admits to recording Richard Berman’s address to a room full of energy executives in Colorado Springs in June 2014, but it’s an eye-opener.

One unnamed industry executive recorded Berman’s remarks and was offended by them. He provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to the New York Times. DeSmog picked up the story the following day.

If the oil and gas industry is going to prevent environmental opponents from slowing down its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to use dirty tricks, Berman told the executives, whose companies specialize in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

At least four companies with Canadian fracking operations were in Berman’s audience — Devon Energy, Encana Oil and Gas, Ensign Energy Services and Newalta.

“Fear and anger have to be part of the campaign,” he said. “You got to get people fearful of what’s on the table” (what they might lose if environmentalists win) “and then you got to get people angry over the fact they are being misled” (by environmental groups).

Energy executives need to “think of this as an endless war,” he cautioned. “And you have to budget for it,” he warned, as he made a pitch for $3 million to run ads attacking environmentalists in a campaign he calls “Big Green Radicals.”[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Berman is founder and chief executive of Berman and Co., a Washington-based consulting firm that sets up non-profit front groups to attack unions, public-health advocates and consumer, safety, animal welfare and environmental groups.

He admitted that people are always asking him, “How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?” His reply was designed to reassure. “We run all of this stuff through non-profit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for some 20 years now.”

TransCanada’s Dirty War in Canada

Too bad the Edelman PR agency couldn’t guarantee the same anonymity to its client, TransCanada Corp., in its campaign to discredit critics of its proposed Energy East pipeline from the Alberta oilsands to refineries and export terminals on the Atlantic coast.

Documents released by Greenpeace Canada in November 2014 reveal a plan much more ambitious (and likely many times more costly) than Berman’s Big Green Radicals. But the framing is similar; where Berman says “Think of this as an endless war,” Edelman says “It is critical to play offence … We are running a perpetual campaign.”

The plans call for mobilizing 35,000 supporters (in the works), setting up an online hub (accomplished), extensive advertising (happening), researching the pipeline’s opponents (in the works), and recruiting allies and third-party voices (not known).

A week after the documents were made public, TransCanada cancelled its contract with Edelman, its anonymity blown. It’s not known who took over for Edelman, but someone has to do it — the war must go on.

An Anti-Environment History

The endless war began in 1962 when Bruce Harrison, then “manager of environmental information” for the Manufacturing Chemists Association, masterminded the industry’s campaign to discredit Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s book that raised the alarm that DDT and other pesticides were poisoning wildlife and endangering human health.

In their campaign to discredit Carson, Harrison and his colleagues, PR executives from Shell, DuPont, Dow and Monsanto, used the emerging practice of “crisis management,” which has been described as a mélange of “emotional appeals, scientific misinformation, front groups, extensive mailings to the media and opinion leaders, and the recruitment of doctors and scientists as ‘objective’ third-party defenders of agrichemicals.”

Substitute online hubs, Twitter and Facebook for extensive mailings and you have the blueprint for today’s campaigns.

Everything else remains the same.

Carson died of cancer two years later; Harrison went on to become a general in the endless war as a leading light in anti-environmental PR.

The war crossed the Canadian border in the late 1980s to attack environmentalists who were resisting clear-cut logging of B.C.’s old-growth forests. Inspiration for this ten-year-long campaign, dubbed “War in the Woods,” came from the Bellevue, Washington-based Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, whose name says it all.

The centre was funded by oil, chemical and timber companies, including B.C.-based MacMillan Bloedel, whose logging of pristine old-growth forests on the west coast of Vancouver Island was attracting growing opposition.

Leading the counter-attack were the centre’s Allan Gottlieb and Ron Arnold. Gottlieb was a fundraiser for conservative causes while Arnold was the strategist, like Rick Berman adept at setting up front groups. They created the “wise use movement,” a medley of industry groups held together by two principles: private property rights should have primacy over the public interest, and access to public lands for resource use and exploitation should be unrestricted.

Arnold liked “wise use” as a label for the movement: it is short and fits into a newspaper headline, and it is ambiguous enough to mean just about anything. But behind the soothing ambiguity is the iron fist. In his book, Ecology Wars, Arnold wrote, “Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement” — total war, in other words.

In 1988, Gottlieb and Arnold brought 250 groups to Reno, Nevada, to start a movement that would oppose the environmental movement. MacMillan Bloedel flew some executives and the mayors of Port Alberni and Port McNeil to the conference to listen to speeches about how to do battle with “preservationists.”

As Arnold told the timber industry:

“The public is completely convinced that when you speak as an industry, you are speaking out of nothing but self-interest. The pro-industry citizen activist group is the answer to these problems. It can be an effective and convincing advocate for your industry. It can utilize powerful archetypes such as the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community, the natural wisdom of the rural dweller… And it can turn the public against your enemies… I think you’ll find it one of your wisest investments over time.”

He recommended that Canadian timber executives organize grass-roots organizations that could be “an effective and convincing advocate for your industry.”

“Screw The Environment. We Need Jobs”

The executives and mayors went back to B.C. with a plan to draw the residents of resource towns into the fray. A year after the Reno Wise Use conference, a “coalition of people whose livelihoods depend on trees” held a provincial conference to launch a grassroots campaign to oppose the environmental campaign. Logger Mike Morton, an alderman in Ucluelet, a Vancouver Island logging town, stepped up as a spokesman.

Morton became chairman of Share the Clayoquot Society and the following year, executive director of Share BC, an umbrella organization for 22 local “share our forest” and “share our resources” groups (“share” meaning preserve a small portion of the land and “manage” the rest) set up by the forest industry.

Forest executives were able to turn the disaffection of rural and resource industry workers, farmers and small business people into anti-environmental sentiment. Woodworkers were losing their jobs, but not because of the actions of environmentalists. They needed to look to their employers, who were replacing thousands of workers with automated equipment and exporting raw logs instead of processing them in the province.

Environmental opposition built to a climax in the summer of 1993, when 850 people were arrested for blockading a road used by MacMillan Bloedel in its logging operations in Clayoquot Sound. It was billed as the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history.

Eight months later, in March 1994, 20,000 woodworkers and residents of timber-dependent towns massed on the B.C. legislature lawn to decry a B.C. government-commissioned land-use proposal for Vancouver Island that would protect 13 percent of the island’s land base. “Screw the Environment. We Need Jobs,” their signs read.

Labeled the “yellow ribbon campaign,” it was Share’s crowning achievement.

After eight years leading Share, Mike Morton had a new job as director of communications for the BC Liberal caucus. When the Liberals under Gordon Campbell won the 2001 election, Morton became director of communications for the premier, a post he retained after Christy Clark became premier.

By then the war in the woods was over but the war in the Alberta oilsands and in B.C.'s mines was well underway. 

Image Credit: Screenshot of an image of environmentalist Bill McKibben from a "Big Green Radicals" video by the Richard Berman-connected Enviromental Policy Alliance

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In recent years, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for disallowing scientists working for the Canadian government to speak directly to the press. 

An article published in August by The New Republic said "Harper's antagonism toward climate-change experts in his government may sound familiar to Americans," pointing to similar deeds done by the George W. Bush Administration. That article also said that "Bush's replacement," President Barack Obama, "has reversed course" in this area.

Society for Professional Journalists, the largest trade association for professional journalists in the U.S., disagrees with this conclusion. 

In a December 1 letter written to Gina McCarthy, administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the society chided the Obama administration for its methods of responding to journalists' queries to speak to EPA-associated scientists. 

"We write to urge you again to clarify that members of the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) and the twenty other EPA science advisory committees have the right and are encouraged to speak to the public and the press about any scientific issues, including those before these committees, in a personal capacity without prior authorization from the agency," said the letter.

"We urge you…to ensure that EPA advisory committee members are encouraged share their expertise and opinions with those who would benefit from it."

Press NGOs: Muzzling Policy Impacts

Harper maintains similar procedures, with scientists unable to speak directly to the press without prior authorization from public relations higher-ups.

Unlike the Harper rules, EPA Science Advisory Board members do not work directly for the U.S. government. Instead, they serve as advisors for U.S. environmental policy, but almost all members work full-time at U.S. universities, corporations or environmental groups. 

Critics say muzzling of these scientists matters because they make policy decisions with real-world impacts on society.

"Federal advisory committees are generally composed of experts outside the federal government who provide advice to policymakers on a broad range of issues," the Society for Professional Journalists, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Society of Environmental Journalists and others wrote in an earlier August letter.

"Very often, their advice carries great weight and is reflected in final rules, especially when statutes require that regulations be developed based solely on the best available science."

Muzzling Fits into Broader Trends

Due to National Security Administration (NSA) surveillance of electronic communications and the U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaing phone records of the Associated Press' newsroom, the Committee to Protect Journalists — which generally only covers the media of other countries — wrote an October 2013 report about Obama's press treatment.

The committee's report concludes that the AP subpoena and NSA electronic surveillance has gone a step further than the EPA's procedure to route journalists to PR spokespeople for comment. That is, they also want to control and know who journalists are talking to off-the-record or confidentially, which the report concludes has had a chilling effect for both sources and reporters.

"I worry now about calling somebody because the contact can be found out through a check of phone records or e-mails," R. Jeffrey Smith, a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, said in a statement to the Committee to Protect Journalists. "It leaves a digital trail that makes it easier for the government to monitor those contacts."

Due to the report's findings and other related issues, investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill has said on multiple occasions that the Obama Administration has launched a "war on journalism."

Stop Spin, Let Sunshine In 

A July letter written by many free press and open government organizations called on the Obama Administration "to stop the spin and let the sunshine in." 

"You recently expressed concern that frustration in the country is breeding cynicism about democratic government," they wrote. "You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration – politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in."

These groups also demanded the Obama administration reverse course and issue a new, press-friendly policy.

"We ask that you issue a clear directive telling federal employees they’re not only free to answer questions from reporters and the public, but actually encouraged to do so," they continued. "We believe that is one of the most important things you can do for the nation now, before the policies become even more entrenched."

To date, there is little indication a policy shift from Obama is in order in this sphere, though.

Photo Credit: U.S. Department of State

So for now, not only do Canada and the U.S. have a shared bond in that record amounts of Alberta's tar sands now flow into the U.S, but also that the muzzling of scientists, and by extension the press at-large, is a threat to democracy in both countries.

Photo Credit: Vladimir Gjorgiev | Shutterstock

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Canadians are inundated with ads from Enbridge, Cenovus, Kinder Morgan, Shell and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

But we’re also targeted by a more insidious type of PR brought into the spotlight by the New York Times scoop on a speech Richard Berman gave to the Western Energy Alliance.

In that speech, Berman told the group’s members — mostly oil and gas companies — they had to be prepared to "win ugly" in an "endless war" against environmentalists. 

We are now finding out we are also subjected to secretly funded propaganda from groups like the “Environmental Policy Alliance” (whose self-conciously chosen initials are EPA, the same as the U.S. government’s Environment Protection Agency), or the more obviously biased “Big Green Radicals.”

Let’s take publicity-averse oil and gas players like the Koch brothers, for example. They are one of the largest leaseholders in the oilsands, and major contributors to Canada's Fraser Institute. Their combined net worth of $85.4 billion is greater than that of Bill Gates. And they are no doubt secretly spending untold sums of money influencing elections throughout North America, lobbying against environmental groups and attempting to ridicule or “diminish [progessives'] moral authority.”

Loaded Messages and Commercial Warfare

Propaganda, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, is “an organized program of publicity, selected information, etc., used to propagate a doctrine, practice, etc.”

It is regarded as misleading and dishonest. It often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. Propaganda can be used as a form of ideological or commercial warfare.

Enter Vivian Krause, the “researcher” who has spent years attacking Canada’s environmental groups.

Looking at a July 2014 Alberta Oil article penned by Krause, one can’t help but note how she delicately skirts around issues like the value of intact ecosystems and their useful services. She also ignores anthropogenic global warming and instead funnels the entire support system for Canada’s environmental advocacy groups down into her favoured conspiracy theory: the plan to destroy Canada’s fossil fuel industry to protect U.S. interests.

To do this, Krause needs some serious blinders on. For example, she describes a strategy paper called “Designed to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming.” The phrase “global warming” is right there in front of her, in black and white, but she skips around it and zooms in on a pejorative view of the “education campaigns” to shift investment into large-scale renewable energy — as if going from fossil fuels to renewables was just some random, self-serving business decision.

She makes no mention of the concerns of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the American Association for the Advancement of Science or the World Bank (does she see them all as a soft, self-serving and self-indulgent elite?), all of whom think that global climate change is a really big issue, and all of whom have far more credibility than Krause.

Krause writes disparagingly of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, an organization created in 1987 by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the years, it has morphed into a focal point for philanthropic foundations that want to help make a better world. The stated vision of the organization is: “A sustainable, just and healthy future for all life on Earth, advanced by a vibrant and effective philanthropic sector.”

These high-minded goals are of no interest to Krause. All she cares about is that some of the $440 million handed out all over the world by the 64 charitable foundations that compose this organization has gone to Canadian environmental groups and First Nations communities, and some of that portion of their donations has been used to advocate against expansion of fossil fuel extraction, processing and transport.

But the real monstrosity of her claim is highlighted by a look at the bigger picture in which Krause’s critique is placed. 

Adding up all the money that has been spent by American charitable foundations on environmental issues in Canada in the last 15 years — that appears to be the timeframe of Krause’ analysis — the entire sum, from the numbers scattered here and there in her article, is about $500 million.

That may seem like a very large sum of money at first glance, but put in context it’s not. First of all, this is spread across dozens of organizations and across a decade and a half, making the annual grants to any single organization modest.

Secondly, dwarfing these sums is the vast fiscal colossus of the fossil fuel industry itself. While berating environmental groups and their funders, Krause makes no mention of the astonishing wealth taken in and spent by the oil and gas industry on a constant, relentless basis, day in and day out.

In the year 2013, the players in the oil and gas industry who are connected just to the oilsands — let’s call them “the Bitumen Boys” — earned the following astronomical sums:

What is obvious in this table is that the in-and-out totals of the Bitumen Boys, and the profits delivered to shareholders, as well as the total revenue stream, dwarf anything received from philanthropy by several orders of magnitude. Of the 22 companies listed, most profited more in one year, by many multiples, than their non-profit counterparts gained in 15 years.

In fact, the total profits of these 22 Bitumen Boys in one fiscal year — $142.7 billion — is 284 times the entire sum of money given to all environmental groups mentioned by Krause over 15 fiscal years.

Put another way, all the money given to environmental groups over 15 years was 0.35 per cent of the net annual profits of the companies developing the oilsands.

Yet Krause finishes her Alberta Oil article by saying: “For the fossil fuel industries, the battle with environmental activists is no longer David versus Goliath.”

It’s misleading and dishonest and she’s got to know that isn’t the case. Propaganda anyone?

Overlooking Oil Industry Spending

We don’t know the exact amount of money Enbridge is spending on its ad campaigns, because the cost for this public relations blitz is buried in generalized headings like “operating and administrative” or similar non-specific designations.

Krause never mentions oil company expenditures. Couple it with the plethora of opaque front groups like Ethical Oil that play by the Richard Berman playbook, and it’s clear that only the industry's inner circle can find out who pays for what.

Krause casts a blind eye toward oil industry spending, as well as the biological and climatological science that motivates many philanthropic foundations and non-profit groups to take action. She also adamantly skirts mention of the massive profits that motivate the fossil fuel industry.

If Krause wants to opine that global climate change, widespread pollution, population growth, species loss and over-exploitation of biological resources are minor issues, then she and I (along with most other Canadians) part company.

I’m throwing my lot in with the IPCC, with ecological economists like UBC’s Bill Rees, with my colleague John O’Connor whose direct field observations as a physician raise serious concerns about oilsands development, with the economists who are taking climate change seriously and with the public relations industry that has ruled out working with climate deniers.

The question is: who’s left to throw their lot in with Krause?

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Last week internal documents from Edelman, the world’s largest PR firm, were leaked to Greenpeace, exposing an aggressive strategy to target opponents of TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline.

The release of the documents brought TransCanada under fire for using dirty public relations tricks to manipulate public opinion and divide communities on the issue of the company’s 4,600 km Energy East pipeline that will carry 1.1 million barrels a day of Alberta oilsands crude to one small refinery and to export facilities on the east coast.

Today a press release from Edelman confirms the firm is parting ways with TransCanada after “attention…moved away from the merits of TransCanada’s Energy East Pipeline project.”

According to the release, “Edelman and TransCanada have mutually agreed not to extend Edelman’s contract beyond its current term,” which completes at the end of December.

The release also states the communications strategy Edelman devised was meant to “drive an active public discussion that gives Canadians reason to affirmatively support the project.”

But critics have been quick to point out that Edelman has a reputation for dirty corporate campaign strategies.

The leaked documents show the TransCanada strategy included tactics for undermining opponents of the Energy East pipeline and for manufacturing fake grassroots groups, or astroturf groups, that would give the public the impression of genuine community support for the pipeline.

Edelman recommended TransCanada target Energy East opponents by “distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources.”

The firm also suggested the pipeline company work with “supportive third parties who can in turn put the pressure on, particularly when TransCanada can’t.”

Edelman makes reference to other major oil companies, such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Halliburton, that employ similar PR tricks.

The firm also noted its work with other major oil industry lobby groups, such as the American Petroleum Institute to promote the Keystone XL pipeline, malign opponents of fracking and fight climate legislation and renewable energy.

The revelation of Edelman’s TransCanada strategy came on the heels of another major leak that casts a shadow over oil industry PR.

Earlier this month an industry executive leaked a secret audio recording of PR veteran Richard Berman candidly outlining aggressive, high-pressure tactics for manipulating public opinion surrounding environmental and conservation groups.

Berman’s strategy — to “win ugly or lose pretty” — targeted opponents of fracking as well as other climate and anti-pipeline activists.

Berman, who was referred to as Dr. Evil in a 60 Minutes segment, told industry executives to think of the anti-environment battle “as an endless war” that industry must be prepared to pay for.

In light of Edelman’s leaked documents, TransCanada told the Globe and Mail the company was wary of pipeline opponents who have successfully stalled the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S.

TransCanada spokesman James Millar told the Globe that, with Energy East, the company was eager to gain supporters and limit the impact of opponents. Millar also noted TransCanada opted out of some of Edelman’s strategy suggestions, such as secretly funding pro-pipeline citizen groups.

Public opposition to Energy East recently escalated after author and activist Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois donated his $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award to an anti-pipeline online fundraiser. The crowdfunding site has now received more than $330,000 in donations to fight Energy East.

In today’s press release Edelman stated, “We stand by our strategy. It was both ethical and moral, and any suggestion to the contrary is untrue.”

The release concluded: “Unfortunately, the conversation about our efforts has become so loud in certain areas that it is impossible to have an open and honest conversation about the pipeline project. The project is too important and a thoughtful, deliberative conversation is needed more than ever. For that reason we feel that selection of a new partner for the project is necessary at this time so a new conversation on the merits of the project can begin.”

Update: TransCanada also released a statement about the break-up, which you can read in full below: 

The Energy East project makes sense for Canada. For the first time, western Canadian oil will be able to travel safely by pipeline all the way to Quebec and beyond to the east coast, strengthening Canadian energy security and offering direct local economic benefit all along the pipeline route.

Regrettably, recent controversy around our communications strategy has created distraction most notably in Quebec. Media reports have incorrectly suggested that TransCanada’s communications practices are unacceptable. The conversation about Energy East has turned into a debate about our choice of agency partner. We need to get back to a conversation about the project itself and as a result we have agreed that it is in the best interests of the project that we do not extend our contract with Edelman.

In the current environment, we can’t have the respectful conversation that we want to have with Canadians and Quebecers about Energy East. We need to discuss the project on its merits, responding to valid concerns such as how we will protect water and marine life, instead of talking about communications tactics.

We are therefore starting a fresh conversation with all stakeholders. We want to be part of eastern Canadian communities for decades to come, and we want to do everything that will enable us to earn the trust of Canadians for the long-term.

You can also view our statement on the Energy East blog in English or French.

Thank you,

Tim Duboyce

Spokesperson,

Energy East Pipeline Project

Image Credit: TransCanada

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He had no idea he was being taped.

So when influential Washington, DC, political consultant Richard Berman talked about strategy and tactics to the oil and gas industry’s Western Energy Alliance in Colorado Springs this past June, he didn’t mince words.  

“This is an endless war,” Berman said.

The secret tape was published in the New York Times a few weeks ago, released by a displeased oil industry executive, on condition of anonymity.

As he urged industry reps to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, Berman also made one emphatic point:

“People always ask me one question all the time, ‘How do I know that I won't be found out as a supporter of what you're doing?’ We run all of this stuff through non-profit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don't know who supports us. We've been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.”

The Western Energy Alliance, at whose June meeting Berman laid out his cold-blooded strategy, describes membership as “an investment in the future of the independent oil and gas community in the West.” Its members throughout the U.S. and Canada “share and support our commitment to improve business conditions, expand opportunities and move the industry forward.” 

The only government member of the 480-member Western Energy Alliance is the Canadian Consulate.

Deliberately Misleading the Public

What was Berman, chief executive of Berman & Company, doing talking to the Western Energy Alliance? He was there to raise $3 million from energy executives to pay for an advertising and PR campaign named “Big Green Radicals.”

Berman boasts of having more than 25 “non-profit” front groups that launder money from industry players of all sorts, including the fossil fuel sector, with no way for citizens to find out about this clandestine funding.

“I am religious about not allowing company names to ever get used … And I don't want companies to ever admit that because it does give the other side a way to diminish our message.”

Major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.

That strategy sounds familiar back in Canada.

Here’s a deliberately misleading statement that would seem to come straight out of Berman’s manual: “For the fossil fuel industries, the battle with environmental activists is no longer David versus Goliath.”

But this wasn’t a statement from Berman — no, this is the final sentence of an article by Vancouver "researcher" Vivian Krause, who came out of the woodwork in the fall of 2009 when she first started writing a blog called Fair Questions, taking aim at the David Suzuki Foundation’s work on farmed salmon and the support it received from U.S. charitable foundations.

Fun fact: Krause is a nutritionist who worked doing PR for the farmed salmon industry. But it didn’t take long for her so-called “fair questions” to extend to many other environmental issues and organizations.

Instead of searching for a fair answer, Krause settled upon a conspiracy theory. It was to be a story she told over and over again — and it goes like this:

The corporate sector is beleaguered by rich environmental groups bolstered by money from U.S. charitable foundations with a hidden, self-interested agenda — not to do good in the world, or protect the environment, but to attack Canadian competition.

Krause wrote that U.S. foundations were funding work to “demarket” Canadian oil, so the U.S. can control the market. She attacked one of British Columbia's greatest conservation achievements, The Great Bear Rainforest agreement, as part of this conspiracy, calling the forest, "The Great Trade Barrier."

She pursued this theory with blinders on — ignoring all other money in the debate, ignoring all rational explanations for U.S. foundations funding work in Canada and ignoring organizations like Ethical Oil and British Columbians for Prosperity that tout Krause’s arguments but don’t disclose their own sources of funding.

Krause’s work is largely responsible for providing the federal government the ammunition it needed to earmark $13 million for the Canada Revenue Agency to conduct audits of charities’ “political activities.” Diverting the attention of environmental groups to decrease their effectiveness is another strategy out of Big Oil’s dirty PR playbook — as indicated in the Edelman documents outlining a strategy to do just that in the TransCanada Energy East pipeline debate.

Krause has maintained she’s working out of her North Vancouver basement apartment, driven by a sense of injustice to right a wrong. No one was paying her. In fact, she was living on her savings. It seemed an implausible story given the time she put into the work.  

Eventually, Vancouver businessperson and civic advocate Sandy Garossino managed to get Krause to admit on Twitter that more than 90 per cent of her income from 2012 onward has come from resource sector speaking fees.

But this hasn’t stopped her message being picked up verbatim by those who agree with it.

In July 2014, Krause’s work was published in the fossil fuel industry magazine, Alberta Oil, an updated version of the same-old-same-old story.

Her message — now also Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s message — is reinforced by other contributors in the issue of Alberta Oil. There’s Ezra Levant, the abrasive Sun Media host, and author of "Ethical Oil" who asserts: “Some organizations are on the payroll, like the Council of Canadians, that took $1.6 million from U.S. foundations to fight against fracking.”

The editor of Alberta Oil, Sebastian Gault, tells readers that Krause “uncovered an international sponsored scheme [he just about said “conspiracy,” didn’t he?] to stall energy development.”

He adds: “We now have a better understanding of the rise of Big Green and its influence over pseudo-grassroots organizations working against the resource sector.”

"Big Green?" Guess where that term comes from? Straight from Rick Berman, who vowed to wage a campaign he would call “Big Green Radicals."  

Embarrass them publicly, ridicule them, don't worry about playing fair or being honest, the goal is simple: win. That is Berman's message and Krause’s years of attacks on Canadian environmental groups seem to play from his book.

—

Editor’s Note:

We know that upon publishing this article, angry tweets and messages in the form of personal attacks will be aimed at damaging the credibility of DeSmog Canada. 

We know this will happen because this is what Krause and her followers do again and again, straight from the Berman script. This makes many journalists wary of challenging what Krause says and particularly intimidates those she directly attacks.

But DeSmog Canada exists to cut through the spin clouding the debate on important national issues such as natural resource development, the economy and democracy — and we wouldn’t be doing our job if we shied away from this topic. 

Next up: Digging Deeper into Vivian Krause's Disingenuous Anti-Environment Witch Hunt

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.

TransCanada has bought some unlikely support for the company’s public relations astroturf offensive aimed at winning support for the Energy East pipeline.

As first reported by Ricochet, Erin Jacobson, the recent director of communications for the NDP, Canada’s official opposition party, will be helping advise TransCanada on developing the astroturf campaign, bringing her expertise in Canadian public affairs and developing digital political campaigns.

As revealed in documents obtained by Greenpeace (reported Monday on DeSmogBlog), TransCanada hired Edelman, the world’s largest PR company, to create a “grassroots advocacy” campaign to help push the oilsands crude pipeline through the eastern provinces to New Brunswick.

A document prepared by Edelman for TransCanada, titled “Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document,” dated May 15, 2014, lists Jacobson as “Canadian program lead,” and explains that she “will join the Energy East team to provide Canadian-specific advocacy counsel.”

Jacobson started at the NDP in 2008, working first as a communications assistant and rising through the ranks to her position as director of communications. Immediately before leaving to work for Edelman, her title was “Deputy Director of strategic communications” in Tom Mulcair’s office.

According to Edelman’s blog, while at the NDP, Jacobson “was critical to developing the party’s national brand and identity in a period in which it grew from 36 elected Members of Parliament to 100…This appointment is the next step in Edelman’s ongoing efforts to play a bigger role in the Canadian public affairs marketplace, with a focus on political campaign style, digital public affairs advocacy.”

Supporters of the social democratic party, which is generally progressive on environmental and social issues, will likely be surprised to learn that the mind that created the NDP’s iPhone app and designed the website template used by most of the party’s members of parliament is now thinking of ways to convince Canadians that a pipeline, carrying oilsands destined primarily for export, is in their best interest. 

Examples of TransCanada's social media strategy. 

Edelman’s plan, according to the leaked documents, includes “[adding] layers of difficulty for our opponents, distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources,” and argues for developing “supportive third parties, who can in turn put the pressure on, especially when TransCanada can’t.”

The timing of Jacobson’s hire also raises some questions. The Edelman document says that Jacobson would start work on Energy East on June 1, mere weeks after she left the NDP. On June 19th, Edelman officially announced Jacobson’s hire.

Only weeks removed from her position inside Opposition leader Mulcair’s office when officially joining Edelman (and, no doubt, in close communication with the Energy East team no later than May 15th, the date of the “Grassroots Advocacy Vision Document”), Canadians are left to wonder what sort of privileged Parliamentary information could have been passed along to the Edelman and TransCanada teams. Mulcair recently re-emphasized his support for Energy East — though with rigorous environmental review and “transparent, credible process."

According to Ricochet, current NDP Deputy Director of Strategic Communications Valérie Dufour said that Jacobson "was never involved in developing the party’s policy on energy and that she had not contacted any former colleagues on official business since her departure for Edelman." DeSmogBlog reached out to multiple members of the NDP for comment by phone and e-mail, including the office of Mulcair, but none responded by time of publication.  

Edelman did not respond to requests for comment. 

On the Energy East project, Jacobson will be reporting to Edelman Senior Counsel Michael Krempasky, an outspoken right-wing activist with a long history of shady digital PR tactics. Krempasky was a prolific blogger at RedState.org, which he co-founded, and has been tied to many Koch-funded groups like Americans for Prosperity and the Leadership Institute. Krempasky will, according to the documents, be spending a quarter of his full-time schedule on Energy East.

Krempasky put his firm in hot water when it was revealed that he was using fake "grassroots" bloggers for a digital astroturfing campaign that he created for Walmart, a tactic for which Edelman had to apologize. Jacobson will also be working with Nate Bailey out of Edelman's DC office, a self-described "ex-flack and GOP hack," who will be spending between one-quarter and half of his time on Energy East. 

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