The federal government has appointed the founding chair of a vocal B.C.-based industry advocacy group to a four-member panel tasked with reviewing Canada’s environmental assessment process.*

The panel is part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s attempt to make good on his campaign promise to restore credibility to environmental reviews of major energy projects — but the appointment calls into question the credibility of the panel.

The appointee, Doug Horswill, is the founding chair of Resource Works, an industry advocacy group with close ties to the BC Liberals that aggressively advocates for the interests of extractive industries in B.C.

Resource Works Connection Presents Credibility Risk

Resource Works claims to promote balanced conversations about B.C.’s resource development, but the group takes a consistently pro-industry position on, well, basically everything: mining, LNG development, new pipelines, climate legislation, carbon taxes, raw log exports, environmental opposition, the Site C dam, oil tankers and the National Energy Board.

The overarching message of Resource Works is that continued extraction of natural resources is essential to B.C.’s prosperity and anything that stands in the way of extraction — local opposition, regulations, taxes — is a threat to that prosperity.

It’s a message they repeat over and over and over.

Resource Works has already jumped on Horswill’s appointment in an attempt to bolster the organization’s credibility. But while Horswill’s new position might make Resource Works look good, should a representative from a voraciously pro-extraction organization really sit on a panel created to re-design Canada’s environmental assessment process?

In all fairness, Horswill is the sole industry-aligned representative on the panel, which also includes Johanne Gélinas, a former Canadian environment commissioner, Rod Northey, an environmental lawyer and Renée Pelletier, an aboriginal rights lawyer.

The panel absolutely should have industry representation, but taking a close look at Resource Works, we’re not convinced the feds chose the right guy.

Resource Works, Industry and BC Liberal Connections

A closer look at Resource Works raises plenty of questions about the organization’s origins, political connections and pro-industry arguments.

Resource Works’ executive director Stewart Muir, who refers to B.C.’s environmental movement as the “anti-everything movement” with “folk-singing, the props and the sloganeering,” is closely connected to the BC Liberals through his former marriage to Athana Mentzelopoulos, who was a bridesmaid at Premier Christy Clark’s wedding, in addition to once serving as deputy minister of jobs, tourism and skills training.

At the time of Resource Works’ launch, Menzelopoulos was the head of Clark’s $26-million Government Communications and Public Engagement department for which the rebranding and promotion of LNG was a priority.

Just before launching Resource Works, Muir worked with the Wuzuku Advisory Group, a PR and lobbying firm aligned with the BC Liberal party. At Wazuku, Muir partnered with Steve Kukucha, Clark’s airplane and bus campaign coordinator during the last provincial election.

Muir also served as the Deputy Managing Editor for the Vancouver Sun for more than 13 years — a time that overlapped with Fazil Mihlar, the long-time editorial page editor who now holds of the post of — wait for it — deputy minister of climate leadership in the Clark government.

Horswill is no stranger to promoting industry interests either.

Before becoming senior VP of Teck Resources, one of B.C.’s largest mining firms, he served as B.C.’s deputy minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources under, you guessed it, the BC Liberals. Teck Resources donated $144,600 to the BC Liberals in 2014 alone. Since 2005, Teck has donated $2.3 million to the party.

Resource Works Big-Time LNG Pusher

The close connections to the BC Liberal party, Clark and corporate interests may explain why Resource Works operates much like a PR firm for the government, especially when it comes to contentious issues like climate action, the development of Clark’s LNG empire and mining in B.C.

For example, Resource Works — contrary to Clark’s own disenfranchised Climate Leadership Team — praised B.C.’s climate action plan, quietly released on a Friday afternoon in August.

While members of the province’s hand-picked team of experts excoriated Clark for undoing much of B.C.’s climate success and failing to implement the panel’s recommendations for climate leadership, Resource Works praised the premier for her “climate leadership.”

Muir, in a column published in the Vancouver Sun, said “B.C. still holds bragging rights on climate” because residents remain some of Canada’s lowest polluting citizens.

What Muir doesn’t acknowledge is that Clark’s pursuit of LNG and her freeze on the carbon tax mean what bragging rights B.C. once held are dramatically slipping away.

When it comes to LNG, Resource Works has been industry’s (and government’s) most unwavering supporter.

The group went as far as to publish a full pro-LNG pamphlet in 2015 called the Citizens’ Guide to LNG that repeats a number of industry talking points, including the notion that natural gas is a clean energy climate solution, a “bridge-fuel” to other low-carbon energy resources and that there is a “moral imperative” to provide Asian countries with natural gas as a solution to coal.

Funnily enough, there’s no mention of fracking-related concerns, such as high water usage, drinking water contamination, methane emissions, wastewater injection induced earthquakes or landslides.

Resource Works’ sponsorship of the LNG industry doesn’t end there. Since its launch, Resource Works has hosted an online petition to “support LNG in B.C.” because the industry will theoretically create 100,000 jobs — a talking point straight out of Clark’s playbook. (The petition now has just over 650 signatures, which, at least, is more jobs than the LNG industry in B.C.)

Resource Works’ promotion of mining follows a similar trajectory although it goes the extra mile to remind renewable energy advocates that mineral extraction is the “real backbone of green technology.”

But why stop there?

Resource Works doesn’t limit itself to just industry promotion: the group also raises questions about the feasibility and practicality of recognizing indigenous rights and mocks the notion of social licence and environmental opposition.

Restoring Faith in Canada’s Environmental and Regulatory Process

Public trust in the National Energy Board is at an all-time low, with the National Energy Board cancelling its Energy East pipeline hearings, in part, to deal with revelations that two panel members had met with TransCanada lobbyist and former Quebec Premier Jean Charest.

Those revelations are a reminder of the extraordinary power industry wields in the Canadian political process. It’s that power, in part, that has led to an environmental assessment process that doesn’t have public confidence.

Meantime, public scrutiny of the federal government — for issuing permits for construction on the Site C dam and failing to restart the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipeline reviews under new rules — is at an all-time high.

Restoring trust and credibility is a tall order for the federal government — and it will be made all the more difficult with a creator of Resource Works on the panel tasked with doing just that.

As Albert Einstein said, we can’t solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

*This article originally stated that Doug Horswill is the current chair of Resource Works, as indicated on Resource Works’ website until after his appointment to the federal panel. After publication, Resource Works informed DeSmog Canada that Horswill resigned from his position with Resource Works before starting his role with the federal review panel. However, as of September 9, 2016 Horswill is still listed as a director on the Resource Works Society documents filed with B.C. Registry Services (excerpt below). Updates to this article made September 8, 2016 07:20:00PST and September 9, 2016 11:35:00PST.

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“Without natural resources we’d be naked” claims a message stencilled on the chests of four nearly naked, muscular young men.

They are the Natural Runners team in the April 2015 Vancouver Sun Run, sponsored by Resource Works, an organization that has raced to the front of the pack of resource industry promotional efforts.

There were no “without tourism we’d be naked” or “without technology we’d be naked” teams in the race, so B.C.’s natural resources had the message box to itself.

No one would likely take this point — revenues from natural resource extraction pay for our clothes, food, education and health care — too literally. But it’s part of a broader strategy to remake the industry’s reputation and, in the process, attack critics of unrestrained resource extraction. Resource Works is a leader in this campaign.

Resource Works and the Christy Clark Government

The message also helps the Christy Clark government, which has hitched its prospects to the resource industry cart. The Resource Works board and advisory council met with the B.C. Liberal Caucus a month before the organization’s launch. What they discussed was not revealed.

Resource Works’ nude runners is just the latest front in the war against environmentalists. And Resource Works’ undisclosed financial backers seem to be budgeting lavishly for it. Witness the dozens of slick promotional videos, the reports, the web site, the meetings across the province, the articles written by former Vancouver Sun journalists, and more.

Resource Works was launched in April 2014 with a mandate, as executive director Stewart Muir claims, “to create a badly needed middle ground conversation about natural resources in B.C.,” middle ground meaning an area of compromise or possible agreement. Such a conversation would recognize the strong resource-extraction component at the core of our prosperity, “but this is achieved with a responsible approach to environmental sustainability.”

But how middle ground is the Resource Works conversation? Does it give equal weight to resource extraction and environmental sustainability as it claims it does in its quest for the middle ground? It doesn’t help that Muir calls environmentalists the “anti-everything movement” with “the folk-singing, the props and the sloganeering.”

Nor do the organization’s publications help. “The Citizen’s Guide to LNG: Sea to Sky Edition,” is an evaluation of the Woodfibre liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant proposed for the Squamish waterfront. The report was also featured on the organization’s weekly video series titled “Higher Ground.”

Christy Clark’s LNG Ambitions

The timing was fortuitous for the Christy Clark government, which seemed desperate to have at least one LNG project underway.

“Confusion, misinformation and fear are part of the mix in the debate over liquefied natural gas in B.C.,” the video declared. “While the province is poised to break through and develop a new LNG export industry, it’s clear many British Columbians feel pulled in different directions when it comes to the use of natural resources.”

“That’s why Resource Works produced the Citizens’ Guide to LNG,” the video states, to address these concerns and present facts sometimes left out of the debate. But instead of providing balance and facts, the report, written by Muir and Barinder Rasode, Resource Works director of social responsibility and a former Surrey city councillor, turns out to be a 67-page paean to LNG:

LNG is a great product; BC will miss out if its LNG isn’t exported; LNG is safe, has little impact on climate, air and water, and has negligible impacts on human health and salmon populations; it will create high-paying jobs, provide ample tax revenues for increased teachers’ salaries and major benefits for First Nations. And we don’t have to worry about health, safety or the environment because B.C. has a first-class regulatory system in place.

Howe Sound tanker safety is a crucial question for residents who live along the route. But Muir and Rasode write reassuringly: “we have not seen evidence that Howe Sound is considered a narrow waterway by maritime professionals.”

They can say this because when they did interview a leading maritime professional, they didn’t ask him about Howe Sound, as Rafe Mair of the CommonSense Canadian points out in a blog post. The professional was Michael Hightower of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whom Muir ands Rasode call “the world’s leading expert on maritime LNG safety.”

Mair relates that local resident Eoin Finn, a former KPMG partner and a chemistry PhD, did contact Hightower, who confirmed he had not been asked about Howe Sound. When Finn asked him, Hightower judged Bowen Island and parts of West Vancouver to be within a one-mile radius of tanker traffic and thus at risk.

Muir and Rasode demonstrate the same flaws in their brief discussion of fracking. They take as their definitive statement of fracking risks an American film titled Gasland. This film, they say, “has led some to fear that the practice is inherently unsafe.” Their response: “we have not found evidence to support a connection between the film’s claims and hydraulic fracturing in British Columbia.”

How could there possibly be a connection? Gasland looks at fracking in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and Texas. Why didn’t they instead ask homegrown critics of fracking in B.C., of which there are many.

Mair is not kind to the organization: “They are obviously flacks for the LNG industry and pretty obviously for the Christy Clark government as well.”

Dark Funds Behind Resource Works

“Are they paid flacks?” he asks, but can’t answer because Resource Works doesn’t disclose its funding, either for the LNG study or for any of its products. The organization did volunteer the information that seed funding came from the B.C. Business Council, which says in its annual report that it “initiated” the organization.

Greg D’Avignon, the Business Council’s CEO is on the Resource Works board, perhaps representing the council’s investment. Other directors indicate a strong connection to the mining industry. Board chair Doug Horswill is a senior vice-president at Teck Resources, B.C.’s mining giant. Before his stint at Teck, Horswill served as B.C.’s deputy minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources. And before that he worked at mining companies Utah International and Inco. It’s B.C.’s version of the revolving door syndrome.

Director Philippa Wilshaw is an audit partner at KPMG and an expert on financial reporting in the mining industry. Then there’s advisory council chair Lyn Anglin, who is former president and CEO of Geoscience BC, a provincially-funded body whose mandate is to attract mineral and oil and gas investment to the province. Anglin left Resource Works after just six months to take a new job as chief scientific officer at Imperial Metals Corp., owner of the Mont Polley mine.

Is Mair correct that Resource Works is a flack for the Christy Clark government? Stewart Muir has been in the news before because of his close connections to Clark. He was married to Athana Mentzelopoulos, Clark’s deputy minister of jobs, tourism and skills training, and before that was in charge of Clark’s “priority” files. Mentzelopoulos is so close to Clark she was bridesmaid at Clark’s wedding, as Clark was at hers and Muir’s.

Muir’s problem arose when he was awarded a $141,000-a-year contract for the job of vice-president of communication at Vancouver Island Health Authority. The job wasn’t publicly posted and tenders were not called. When the news hit the fan, the contract was withdrawn. Then Muir moved to Resource Works.

Geoff Plant provides another link to the Clark government. He was attorney general under Gordon Campbell and was appointed by Clark in 2012 as the government’s chief legal strategist for the Northern Gateway Pipeline Joint Review Panel proceedings — resource development writ large. His expertise is aboriginal law, crucial territory for Clark’s resource-exploitation agenda.

While these industry and government connections are hidden beneath the surface, the message stencilled on the chests of the four nearly naked young men continues to resonate in the media.

Without natural resources, we’d be naked.

We cannot retain our standard of living without the pipelines, tanker traffic, LNG plants, mining developments and coal export projects that industry currently has in the works.

It’s an effective message, but one easy enough to see straight through.

Image Credit: Resource Works

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