BC Hydro officials and members of Premier Christy Clark and Energy Minister Bill Bennett’s offices were all involved in a coordinated attempt to discredit DeSmog Canada’s reporting on the $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric dam, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

The documents detail a flurry of e-mails following a DeSmog Canada story that quoted former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen saying that Site C was proceeding without due diligence, would lead to escalating hydro rate increases and was “scheduled to become a big white elephant,” a story later referenced by the New York Times.

BC Hydro officials were concerned that major B.C. media would pick up on the DeSmog Canada story, based largely on a BC Hydro progress report to the B.C. Utilities Commission. That report noted that Site C had fallen behind on four out of seven key milestones and outlined project risks and reasons why Site C had spent more money than anticipated by the end of last March, while saying that the project’s overall forecast still remained on track.

“This is expected to generate media interest,” Craig Fitzsimmons, BC Hydro’s manager of communications and issues management for Site C, flagged in e-mails to the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, informing them that numbers in the article came from the Crown corporation’s own report.

The Premier’s office directed BC Hydro to respond to the article immediately even though it was the start of the Canada Day long weekend, a sign of the top priority Clark’s team has placed on controlling the story line on the Site C dam, the most expensive publicly funded project in B.C.’s history.

Two days later, internal Hydro e-mails show, BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald took aim at an opinion editorial that had been published more than one month earlier in the print and online editions of The Province newspaper.

The opinion piece was based entirely on a DeSmog Canada story published the previous day about BC Hydro’s ongoing civil law suit against some of the Peace Valley farmers and First Nations members involved in the Rocky Mountain Fort winter camp, which delayed Site C clear-cutting of a B.C. heritage site for two months. The piece quoted the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association who called the lawsuit, which seeks financial damages for BC Hydro from individuals, a matter of “grave concern” because of its potential to curtail freedom of expression.  

McDonald, saying erroneously that the opinion piece had changed a month after publication and now contained “commentary that is even more misleading than before” asked top staff if it were possible to “dust off” a one-month-old unpublished BC Hydro letter to the editor of The Province and “create a new piece that hits back.”

“I feel this is really important as we head into the Paddle for the Peace which is focused on the Boon’s property next weekend and will be very focused on stopping the federal authorizations based on our supposed unfairness,” wrote McDonald.

McDonald was referring to Ken and Arlene Boon, two of the Peace Valley farmers named in Hydro’s civil law suit, whose third-generation farmland and home were expropriated by BC Hydro in December for a Site C highway relocation. At the time the e-mail was written, BC Hydro was waiting for federal authorizations for Site C that were subsequently granted by the Trudeau government, even though First Nations leaders had requested that the permits be withheld.

According to the internal Hydro e-mails, McDonald said she wanted a statement drafted to say that information in the opinion piece was “inaccurate.” She also wanted her staff to make sure BC Hydro was “closely monitoring” some DeSmog Canada articles and to flag when there were updates.

McDonald wanted it to be made clear that BC Hydro supports freedom of expression and is taking legal action only to prevent people from physically blockading work on the project. But the documents also suggest that BC Hydro wanted to do more.

“I talked to Jessica and she would like to hit Sarah Cox hard for never contacting us for an interview on the issue, continuing to ignore our input, and then ramping up the rhetoric,” said an e-mail written by Danielle Van Huizen, a senior business advisor in McDonald’s office.

That prompted a quick reply from BC Hydro’s Site C spokesperson Dave Conway, who informed colleagues that Hydro had indeed been contacted for comment three times over a five-day period, by e-mail and phone.

Screenshots of documents obtained through Freedom of Information legislation indicating BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog Canada contributor Sarah Cox "hard" for her writing on Site C. 

“We will have to be careful what we write and be sure legal has a look at it,” advised Van Huizen in another email.

Two days later, BC Hydro issued a news release, approved by Bennett’s office and including text from a letter to the editor approved by the Premier’s office, saying there were “inaccuracies” in the five-week old Province opinion piece, and also saying that the piece had been “posted” more than one month later than its actual publication date.

That followed closely on the heels of a BC Hydro news release, approved by both the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, which attempted to discredit DeSmog Canada’s story about Hydro’s progress report to the utilities commission, saying it contained “inaccurate statements.” 

BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog contributor Sarah Cox “hard” for her writing on #SiteC https://t.co/4GNzCYzNyG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2017

At that point, DeSmog Canada sent a registered letter to Simi Heer, Hydro’s manager of media relations and issues management, asking BC Hydro to identify any factual inaccuracies so that they could be corrected. Heer, who later left BC Hydro, did not respond to the letter, or to e-mails and a phone call. BC Hydro has never contacted DeSmog Canada directly to request any story corrections.

Dozens of pages were redacted from BC Hydro’s 1,600-page FOI response on the grounds that they “were penned for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice.” Other pages, including parts of e-mails written by McDonald about the opinion piece, were redacted on the grounds that releasing the full e-mails would constitute an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy.

The FOI documents also reveal how top officials in the Premier’s office and Bennet’s office control other media relations regarding the Site C dam, as reported by the Vancouver Sun last week based on a DeSmog Canada FOI to the Premier’s office that is now publicly available.

Construction of the Site C Dam on the Peace River. Photo: Garth Lenz/DeSmog Canada

The Premier’s office and Bennett’s office directed the timing of various Site C announcements, including an announcement about the completion of a temporary bridge across the Peace River, which Bennett did not want BC Hydro to make too close to an April increase in hydro rates.

Both offices were also involved in the timing for an announcement about the completion of the $470 million lodge for Site C construction workers, which cost BC Hydro customers almost as much as Clark’s pre-election pledge to spend $500 million on affordable housing projects to help alleviate the Lower Mainland’s housing crisis.

The offices also vetted a BC Hydro press release, which included quotes from Clark and Bennett, announcing that a $470 million contract had been awarded to Voith Hydro Inc. to supply turbines and generators for the Site C dam.

According to Luc Bernier, a Canadian expert in Crown corporations, BC Hydro should have more independence from the government to ensure that sound decisions are being made.

Bernier said it is not unusual for governments to be kept apprised of developments on large publicly funded projects like Site C, and to control and to supervise these projects to a certain extent, because they are highly visible.

But directing day-to-day communications can lead to decisions being made for political reasons and not because they are in the best interests of the Crown corporation, said Bernier, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management at the University of Ottawa and is the former head of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. 

“For the proper functioning of Crown corporations it should be more independent. We do put these organizations further away from politics to make sure the main reason to exist — in this case to produce electricity — is not done for political reasons.”

Public sector management expert David Zussman said the question of how independent Crown corporations should be from governments is a contentious issue right across the country.

“In recent years in particular there’s been a distancing of the Crowns from the government,” said Zussman, a former dean of the University of Ottawa’s School of Management and previous commissioner of the Public Service Commission of Canada.

“The trends today I would say are for greater independence of Crown corporations.” Hydro Quebec, for instance, is a far more independent entity than it was 30 years ago and Zussman said to the best of his knowledge it has “almost nothing to do with the government” today.

To achieve good governance, Zussman said Crown corporations “should operate independently from government on a day to day basis,” adding that what exactly that means is open to interpretation.

The FOI request to the Premier’s office also asked for e-mails and documents related to Site C’s most recent budget and timeline, but that information was not forthcoming. Fourteen pages of the response were redacted.

Screenshot of a consent order compelling BC Hydro to release documents requested by DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information legislation.

One internal Hydro e-mail from Michael Savidant, BC Hydro’s Site C commercial manager, addressed Site C project risks outlined in Hydro’s progress report and referenced in DeSmog Canada’s story. But Savidant’s points were not included in Hydro’s news release about the story or in BC Hydro’s list of key messages, vetted by Bennett’s office, for any other media inquiries about the report.

“On the potential for cost overruns — yes if those things happen there will be cost increases,” Savidant wrote to Fitzsimmons and Chris Sandve, Bennett’s former chief of staff who is now BC Hydro’s director of policy and reporting.

“Those risks exist on any project. We disclosed them in the Business Case and at the JRP [Joint Review Panel hearings on Site C]. The key is to highlight that we have contingency to cover most items, and a project reserve to cover the rest.”

The internal e-mails also detail BC Hydro’s concerted efforts to craft messaging for any members of the media who expressed interest in following several DeSmog Canada stories about Site C, including a story about Hydro’s $175 million plan to truck at-risk bull trout upstream past the dam for 100 years when up to 40 percent of the fish are expected to perish in the dam’s turbines while migrating back downstream.

One internal Hydro document with a weekly Site C public affairs summary listed Freedom of Information requests as one of the “on-going risks” to the project. “The Project continues to get a lot of Freedom-of-Information Requests related to various issues. The FOIs can be expected to end up in the public realm, usually through media reports,” the document noted.

BC Hydro only responded to the FOI request, made last August, after a complaint was filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) when the Crown Corporation missed a legal deadline for delivering the documents.

The commissioner issued a consent order, compelling BC Hydro to release the information.

Image: Premier Christy Clark, flanked by BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald and Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, at a Site C contract announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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Dear government spin doctor,

I am working on a story about how the job you’re doing is helping to kill Canada’s democracy.

I know that your role, as a so-called communications professional, is to put the best spin on what the government is or isn’t doing.

That means you often don’t respond the questions I ask, you help elected officials do the same thing and you won’t let me talk to those who actually have the answers.

While this may work out very well for you, it doesn’t work out so well for my audience who, by the way, are taxpayers, voters and citizens.

So your refusal to provide me with information is actually a refusal to provide the public with information.

And if the public doesn’t know what their government is actually doing, it can continue doing things the public wouldn’t want it to do.

That just doesn’t seem very democratic to me. Does it seem democratic to you?

I understand you’re just doing your job.

I did that job before myself before I became a journalist, working as a communications officer for the British Columbia government.

So I don’t think you’re a bad person.

But you should know a few things about me.

My job isn’t to help you put the best spin on what the government is or isn’t doing.

My job is to tell the truth.

And, because that’s my job, you should know a few other things about how I’m going to report this story.

First, if you don’t respond to my questions, I’m going to let my audience know that.

Second, if you respond to my questions with non-answers, I’m going to let my audience know that too.

Third, I’m not going to put those non-answers in my story for the sake of false balance.

That’s because me asking questions about what the government is doing wrong isn’t an opportunity for you to simply tell the public about what government is doing right.

You have a big advertising budget for that.

Instead, it’s an opportunity to explain to the public why the government is or isn’t doing that thing I asked you about.

And, finally, if you refuse, ignore or interfere with my requests to interview public officials, my audience will also find out about that.

This may sound like hardball at best and blackmail at worst. But it’s actually the last and only defense I have against you and your colleagues.

Public relations professionals outnumber journalists more than four to one in this country – and for good reason.

It pays to promote and protect the powerful but it doesn’t pay to hold them to account.

My hope is that more journalists will also start routinely telling their audiences about the strategies and tactics you use to frustrate the public’s right to know.

If that happens then the public might start caring about the damage that’s doing to our democracy.

And, maybe, just maybe you might start rethinking what you are doing.

After all, there was a time when journalists could actually talk to public officials without having someone like you always watching over their shoulder and telling them exactly what to say.

I know it’s a long shot.

But it’s the only shot I can take against the tyranny of your talking points.

Sincerely,

Sean Holman, Journalist

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Maclean’s magazine reports the Department of National Defence is withholding information from the Parliamentary Budget Officer about Operation IMPAC – Canada’s mission in Iraq – on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality. (hat tip: BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

• The National Post reports a Federal Court judge has ruled “media fighting for access to Omar Khadr have failed to show a prison-interview ban was politically motivated and violated their constitutional rights.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• CBC News reports, “Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has personally ordered that documents from all general freedom of information requests be publicly posted, despite serious concerns from the civil servants responsible for implementing the new policy. Critics say the plan – if implemented – represents a major policy change that will seriously undermine the ability of opposition parties and the media to hold the government accountable.”

• “The province is not tracking how many inmates are overdosing in jails across Ontario,” according to the Hamilton Spectator.

• The Vancouver Sun reports, “Soon-to-be mandatory ‘independent’ review boards for tailings dams at B.C. mines may not be answerable to government or open to scrutiny by the public.” The boards were recommended by a government-appointed panel that was struck following the breach of a tailings pond at the Mount Polley Mine.

• The Telegram hopes a committee reviewing Newfoundland and Labrador’s controversial right to know law will recommend a “much needed laissez-faire approach to the release of information.” That committee, led by former premier Clyde Wells, “has missed a couple of promised deadlines. At last check, it was supposed to release its report by the end of January.”

• Kinder Morgan Inc., the company that is looking to expand a pipeline that carries crude oil to the West coast, “has engaged in a protracted fight with the province of British Columbia in an effort to keep its oil spill response plans a secret.” But, according to DeSmog Canada, Kinder Morgan has “willingly disclosed” such plans “south of the border for portions of the pipeline that extend to Washington State.”

• The Globe and Mail reports, “B.C.’s Ministry of Health is withholding the results of scientific research on how oil and gas operations in the province’s northeast communities are affecting human health.” Independent MLA Vicki Huntington’s freedom of information request for that research was denied because its release could be harmful to the financial interests of a public body.

• CBC News reports Saskatchewan’s information commissioner has ruled a 15-page proposal to create a premier’s library in that province can stay secret because it would disclose a cabinet confidence.

• Saksatchewan NDP MLA Warren McCall has told the Regina Leader-Post that the creation of lobbyists registry in that province as proceeding “slower than molasses, uphill, in February.”

• Manitoba’s “Opposition Progressive Conservatives say they’re getting the runaround in finding how much taxpayers have paid to put up at-risk youth in hotels,” according to the Winnipeg Free Press. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• CBC News reports DemocracyWatch founder Duff Conacher’s concerns that “New Brunswick’s right to information law is weak and the fines for breaking the laws are so low, they are meaningless”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Winnipeg’s interim chief administrative officer has resigned after the mayor claimed he had lost confidence in the bureaucrat. But, according to the Winnipeg Free Press’s Dan Lett, no further details have been provided because the resignation is a personnel matter – a “trump card” that is “played way too often in situations in which government doesn’t want people to know what happened.”

• 24 hours Vancouver’s Kathyrn Marshall writes that White Rock, B.C.’s city council has “voted to scrap question period. Just like that, White Rock has obliterated a hallmark of liberal democracy. White Rock residents will no longer have the opportunity to pose public questions to their elected representatives following council meetings.”

• In October, TransLink – Vancouver’s regional transportation authority – began “re-examining current [freedom of information] practices and exploring options for easing the burden on staff.” That review, which was expected to take three months, was announced in a memo signed by the authority’s then-chief executive officer Ian Jarvis and obtained by freelance journalist Bob Mackin.

• The Vancouver Courier reports, “When the provincial government set the rules for the non-binding plebiscite on a sales tax hike for TransLink expansion, it didn’t include any campaign fundraising or reporting regulations.”

• “Toronto police met the mandated [freedom of information] response deadline of 30 days in 52 per cent of requests last year,” according to the Toronto Star. “That’s nearly a 30 per cent drop from 2005 – when 80 per cent of FOI requests were completed within the 30-day timeframe – and down almost 15 per cent from 2013, which saw a compliance rate of 65 per cent.”

• Alberta’s information commissioner has ruled Cold Lake, Alta. was right to release records that disclosed unit prices and hourly wage rates for the companies responsible for a highway twinning project. According to the Cold Lake Sun, a third party had argued that disclosure was harmful to business interests.

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

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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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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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

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Facing criticism in the lead up to today’s UN Climate Summit, which prime minister Stephen Harper is not attending, the Harper Government released a new public outreach campaign through Environment Canada, praising the country’s action on climate change.

The campaign points to four pillars of Canada’s climate progress including efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, investing in climate adaptation, “world-class scientific research to inform decision-making,” and international leadership in climate action.

Already critics are pointing to the apparent disparity between the Environment Canada campaign and Canada’s waning reputation on the international stage for its climate obstruction, the muzzling of scientists, the elimination of environmental legislation and massive cuts to federal research and science programs.

“Reading the Harper government’s claims about its climate efforts is like reading one of Orwell’s books,” Mark Jaccard, professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environment Management, said.

“Eliminating policy is to implement policy. Blocking and abandoning global negotiations is to lead global negotiations. Muzzling scientists is to have science inform decision-making. Working hard to increase carbon pollution is to decrease it. Black is white. Dishonesty is truth.”

Jaccard told DeSmog Canada, “We can no longer say that we are unsure what meaningful action on climate would look like.” Provinces across the country could follow Quebec’s lead and join California’s cap-and-trade system, he said, which would increase the effectiveness of the whole system, “making it much harder for some U.S. politicians to continue to present this as an economy killer.”

Recently prime minister Stephen Harper publicly criticized a polluter pay solution to growing emissions, saying no country would undertake climate action that might harm the economy. Onlookers were quick to critique Harper’s economy versus environment framing, an outmoded way of viewing the transition to clean energy, a growing sector of the global economy.

Katie Gibbs, co-founder of the science advocacy group Evidence for Democracy, told DeSmog the Harper government’s cuts to science positions and research stations prevents the country from responding strongly to the challenge of climate change.

She said Environment Canada “has undergone many staff and funding cuts which means they simply don't have the research capacity that they used to.”

“This hurts the government's ability to make science-informed decisions on many environmental issues, including climate change,” she said. 

Gibbs also pointed out that a special working group within Environment Canada that was tasked with working on oil and gas regulations with industry appears to have been disbanded in early 2013. 

Similarly, the Harper government also disbanded the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE), a government solutions think tank, after the body recommended the government implement carbon pricing.*

“Instead of listening to the experts at NRTEE, the government cut their funding,” Gibbs said.

“The government needs to listen to the experts: scientists, policy analysts and economists all agree that some form of carbon pricing is need to get our CO2 emissions down to safe levels.”

Despite Environment Canada’s claim that Canada is taking climate action, there are no binding emissions regulations for oil and gas development in the country. Canada committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020 under the Copenhagen Accord, although a recent Environment Canada report showed Canada’s current weak emissions reduction measures will prevent us from meeting that target.

“The government has been saying since 2011 that they were going to introduce regulations for oil and gas sectors but it hasn't happened yet,” Gibbs said.

Canada is one of the only major developed nations to have no climate legislation.

According to Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, that likely has to do with the current government’s close ties to the oil and gas sector.

“Our current federal government confuses what is good for oil companies with what is good for Canada and so refuses to recognize all of the amazing opportunities that would be open to us if we started pushing action on climate change rather than desperately trying to hold it back,” he said.

“There are, however, some promising signs at the provincial level such as Ontario's coal phase out and Green Energy Act, B.C.'s carbon tax and Quebec's focus on electrification of transportation.”

But he adds, in order to take meaningful action on climate change, the current government may need to distance itself from industry influence.

A report by the Polaris Institute showed industry lobbyists met with the federal government 463 per cent more than environmental organizations between 2008 and 2012.

“Meaningful action on climate change requires kicking the oil industry lobbyists out of the backrooms so we can get on with finally putting a price on pollution and investing in green alternatives like great public transit, wind and solar power, and more efficient homes, offices and factories,” he said.

* An earlier version of this article stated the NRTEE proposed introducing a carbon tax. They called for carbon pricing.

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DeSmog Canada has obtained leaked copies of Enbridge’s new Northern Gateway Pipeline advertising campaign notes, including a ‘mood board’ that sets the tone for images surrounding the project, outlines and scripts for television commercials, and creative platforms for other advertising materials. The theme of the campaign is “Open to Better.”

The documents also reveal Enbridge’s attempt to convince British Columbian’s that Premier Christy Clark’s 5 conditions, which were set as terms for the project’s approval, have been met. Two characters, Janet Holder, Enbridge's VP, and ‘The Orca,’ are used to express how the Northern Gateway Pipeline will offer British Columbian’s what they want: what is better.

DeSmog Canada will provide more analysis of the new campaign in posts to come, but for now, feast your eyes and ask yourself, is building a pipeline for the export of Alberta’s tar sands oil really being ‘open to better?’ Or is it a refusal to actually be better – at managing our resources, addressing the social and environmental pollution associated with our fossil fuel dependence, and beginning the transition to clean energy solutions?

(Update: Enbridge spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht reportedly said these ads were created by a "consortium of different partners," not solely Enbridge, and the Janet and the Orca television ad is "not an ad that we'll be running, nor have any plans to run.")

BC First Nations, who nearly unanimously opposed the Northern Gateway Pipeline, have made their own version of the proposed 'Janet and the Orca' ad:

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This is a guest post by sustainable energy economist Mark Jaccard, originally published in the Vancouver Sun and reposted with permission. More of his writing can be found at markjaccard.com.

George Orwell used parody and caricature to expose the propaganda lies of the fascists and communists who threatened humanity in the mid-20th century. Today, his talents are badly needed to counter the propaganda of corporate executives who seek self-enrichment by accelerating the burning of the coal, oil and gas here and abroad.

The world’s leading scientists agree that carbon pollution from burning these fuels is rapidly heating the planet, which will cause massive species extinction and great harm to humanity through increased droughts, storms, floods and ocean acidification. We should not be building new coal mines, oilsands plants, oil pipelines and coal ports unless the users of these fuels capture and store the carbon pollution (which is technically feasible).

The obvious necessity is to stop expanding carbon polluting infrastructure while using trade pressure and diplomacy to work with like-minded jurisdictions in preventing this expansion in all countries. We won’t convince the Chinese to burn less oil and coal if we’re trying to sell them more and burning more ourselves. Difficult as this global task is, there is no other way to prevent the harm scientists predict, some of which is already happening.

This scientific reality creates a challenge for people still bent on increasing carbon pollution for self-enrichment: they need to convince us that the bad they are perpetrating is somehow good. They need to apply the doublespeak that Orwell exposed so effectively in books like 1984 and Animal Farm.

Janet Holder is the senior executive at Enbridge responsible for the Northern Gateway pipeline that will expand oilsands production and carbon pollution — in other words that will harm our children. Her opinion piece on Aug. 7 makes sure to say the opposite: “we cherish our extraordinary natural environment and hold very strong convictions about protecting it for our kids and grandkids.” She then explains that her corporation is making sure no oil is spilled on land and sea. She avoids mentioning the devastation to that very land and sea that hers and similar projects would cause through increased carbon pollution and climate change.

Orwell would not be surprised. He would understand that the very person who might — if she succeeds — become the most responsible in B.C. for causing harm to our children and grandchildren would not present herself that way. As he observed, “we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue.”

He would also not be surprised by the litany of false rationalizations used by the promoters of carbon pollution. They tell us “we’re not going to stop using gasoline tomorrow.” In fact, we need to start phasing out the burning of gasoline today so that we won’t be using it in 30 years. Expanding oil infrastructure goes in the wrong direction. Instead, we should be regulating or pricing carbon pollution and using other vehicle and fuel policies to gradually convert our transportation system to some combination of zero-emission electricity and biofuels. And corporations like Enbridge, if they truly had our children’s interests in mind, would be leading the charge in calling for these policies and promoting non-polluting options.

Another false argument is that we need the jobs and tax revenue from oil pipelines and other carbon polluting projects. But should we accept the idea that we can only create a wealth-producing economy in the short-term by destroying our environment and economy in the long-term? Humans have an enormous capacity to generate economic well-being, some of it based on extraction of natural resources in ways that don’t lead to carbon pollution, much of it based on the non-extractive ingenuity unleashed by market economies.

For example, Denmark has the same standard of living as Norway, yet possesses none of its oil. Should we believe that if Norway had forgone exploitation of its oil resources (which it is now deliberately slowing) that its people would today be significantly less well off than their Danish neighbours?

And 10 years ago, BC Hydro believed that we needed to burn natural gas and coal to generate electricity. But in the mid-2000s, our government enacted a zero-emission electricity policy that led to the cancellation of gas and coal projects, and their replacement with generating plants using wood waste, hydropower and wind. These created more jobs and the lights are still on.

The carbon polluters have the self-interest motive and the resources to convince us, and perhaps themselves, that white is black and bad is good. We desperately need another George Orwell.

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.

Ken Wu is executive director of Majority for a Sustainable Society (MASS) and co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. 

For Part 1 of this article, click here.

In the first part of this article, I described what specific challenges the climate movement faces when confronting its own limiting tendencies as well as industry funded public relations campaigns. In this second part I outline what I think are four essential ways the climate movement must evolve in order to overcome these obstacles.

FIRST, we must become a lot more political, in the sense that it’s fundamentally the laws, policies, and agreements that shape our greater society and economy. And it’s our society and economy which are the foundations of our personal lifestyles. What is available, affordable, practical, and possible in our lifestyles is largely a product of the society in which we live – what clean energy sources exist at what price relative to dirty energy, how available public transit is, how well or poorly our cities are designed for walking, cycling, and accessing our needs, how energy efficient our buildings are, and so on.  

No individual is an island unto himself; the way we live is fundamentally shaped by the economy and society in which our lifestyles are nested.  

Western individualism sees each person as an island divorced from society and economic circumstances. As a result, many North American environmentalists instinctively emphasize efforts towards personal lifestyle purity as a fundamental remedy to environmental problems despite being in a system that, at this time, is based on fossil fuels in almost every regard (hence the need for larger societal change). Needless to say this is a virtually impossible task that plays well into the hands of fossil fuel advocates who are bound to find “inconsistencies” and “hypocrisy” in the personal lifestyles of all those who care about the fate of the planet![view:in_this_series=block_1]   Government regulations that shift our energy choices at their sources, that is, at the point of resource extraction or energy production, from dirty to clean energy, or from low to high energy efficiency in our technologies, will automatically be incorporated into the lifestyles of all consumers, whether or not they are environmental idealists.   In addition, studies show that voluntary or “non-compulsory” methods to reduce carbon emissions have a minor impact and real progress occurs through regulations and tax shifting. If we want to change both corporate and individual behaviour, putting an escalating price on carbon, banning coal-fired plants, and strengthening regulations and standards are vital.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t pursue personal lifestyle reforms – just that if the goal is to actually change the outcome for the climate, the major leaps forward will come through regulations, government policies, and political action.   SECOND, as much as the climate change movement emphasizes the problems, we must also emphasize the solutions and a positive vision of a sustainable, low carbon society. That is, how a low carbon society would support ramped-up green businesses and jobs, create more livable cities, foster greater community, improve our health, support global peace and stability, and sustain the natural diversity and beauty of the planet.    After repeatedly hearing about impending disaster, many people tune out. We can’t psychologically stay in emergency mode forever.  If the “inconvenient truth” is always a negative crisis message, it’ll be easier to hear the “reassuring lies” over the long run. However, if the truth is also a positive alternative vision – that we can have a better quality of life in a sustainable society based on clean energy, efficiency, smart planning and liveable communities – it’s a message most people can stay with and promote. That’s not to downplay the need to get the facts out about the real crisis – just that we must lead our message with positive solutions more often.   THIRD, our positive solutions must emphasize the economy, on how people can make a living. The economy is usually the top concern in public opinion polls, with the environment often lagging far behind except in limited “peak years” like 1990 and 2006. As long as the environmental movement fails to emphasize how people can realistically make a living in lieu of stopping destructive industries, it will stay in the margins, always too weak to transform the status quo. Publicly emphasizing the viability of a clean and efficient economy will help expose the falsehood that there is no practical alternative to fossil fuels, a “fact” often assumed to be true due to the alternative’s lack of exposure.   The basic fact also remains that if we don’t significantly shift our economy towards efficiency and renewables, the factors causing the problems will only continue – that is, our huge appetite for energy and jobs in the absence of clean energy alternatives will ensure that burning fossil fuels will always have the popular support to continue until it triggers runaway global warming.   LASTLY, the climate movement must become broader-based, aiming to mobilize the mainstream public, not just progressives and environmental activists – that is, we must actively engage green businesses, unions, faith groups, scientists, farmers, First Nations, and a larger diversity of ethnic communities, among many others. Small groups of angry “activist superheroes” will not save the planet – only an informed, large-scale movement that represents a majority cross-section of society will have the power to fundamentally change it. This will naturally undermine the fossil fuel advocates’ PR claims that the movement consists primarily of “others” who are different from regular Canadians.   The current climate resurgence will be different than the previous surge in 2006. Movements naturally evolve, and hopefully in a way that allows them to make sufficient inroads to change the fundamental outcomes. In 2013, I believe that we’ll see the return of hope.

For Part 1 of this article, click here.

Image Credit: Ken Wu at McLaughlin Ridge by TJ Watts from Ancient Forest Alliance.

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.

Ken Wu is executive director of Majority for a Sustainable Society (MASS) and co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. Read Part 2 of this series here.

After years of apathy and political inertia, North America’s climate sustainability movement has found itself in the midst of a timely resurgence, as is evident by the recent massive expansion of Bill Mckibben's 350.org movement against the Keystone XL pipeline.

With climate change regaining its footing as a central political issue, now is the time to pressure governments to enact the needed laws, policies, and agreements required to curtail runaway global warming. But unless the moment is seized right, climate action will be stymied again – and there is no time to wait for another opportunity.

During his State of the Union address on February 12, 2013, US President Barack Obama stated:

"For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change…We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late."   Recent studies project that the Earth’s average temperature is on course to rise over four degrees this century, far beyond the two degree rise when “runaway” global warming kicks-in due to positive feedbacks that make it extremely difficult to halt.

The question now is if the climate movement will grow strong enough, fast enough, to ensure sufficient government regulations, carbon pricing, policies, and international agreements to stop runaway global warming.

[view:in_this_series=block_1]

The climate movement faces two likely obstacles when tackling global warming issues today: PR pushback from the fossil fuels industry and the movement’s own internal shortcomings. Addressing these issues simultaneously will require a broad-based response that coordinates political action, positive solutions and a smart economic emphasis.

Understanding the Obstacles   It’s important to recognize that the climate movement will have to face up to the influence of industry profit. Highly coordinated campaigns designed by Big Oil and their political backers are crafted to influence both public understanding of complex issues as well as policy creation.

Recent research, for example, has uncovered the efforts of the Koch brothers, US oil industry billionaires, to deny the scientific legitimacy of global warming, to dismantle regulatory bodies like the US Environmental Protection Agency, and to paralyze action on climate change at the international level.   In Canada, campaigns like Ethical Oil and the federal government’s depiction of environmentalists as ‘foreign funded’ ‘extremists’ both operate like the larger climate denial machine, which distracts and detracts from fact-based arguments by calling the credibility of environmental organizations, or individuals, into question.

But you’ll also hear a number of other arguments that seem to be becoming standard fare in climate denial or pro-fossil fuel talking points. You’ll hear, for example:

• that fossil fuels are indispensable for a flourishing economy flush with employment opportunities
• that alternative energy, while a worthy ideal, is just not viable
• that putting a price on pollution through mechanisms like a carbon tax would dismantle the economy
• that even the dirtiest fossil fuels in North America, like Alberta's tar sands, are more environmentally and morally superior than conventional oil from other nations with poorer human rights records
• that emerging technologies will make all fossil fuels clean and safe, including coal and bitumen

 

It's along this last point's line of thought, or wishful thinking, that you see the emergence of "clean coal" and "ethical oil," all of which rely more on rhetorical constructions than breakthrough technologies.

Room for Improvement

While the public relations campaigns launched by fossil fuel funds are undermining progress for climate sustainability, the environmental movement’s own entrenched tendencies might be partially to blame.

Some of these limiting tendencies are, for example:

• An underlying emphasis on voluntary, personal lifestyle reforms instead of the primacy of societal change through politics, laws, regulations and policies that reshape our economy, land-use, cities, and infrastructure.
• Being the movement of “no” or “stop”, that is, too much negative emphasis with proportionately less attention to solutions and alternatives.
• An insufficient focus on the economy, on how businesses can flourish and people can have jobs when destructive industries are restricted or phased-out.
• Aiming to mobilize the “same old, same old” minority, the 20% of strong progressives and environmentalists in society – or the minuscule fraction of activists among them.

  Seeing the Way Forward

By surmounting its own limiting tendencies, the movement can counteract many of the fossil fuel industry's PR attacks and also move out of the margins, beyond the turf of mainly environmental idealists and activists, into a force that moves the much larger mainstream public with the power to change the status quo.

To read Ken's thoughts on how the climate movement might evolve to overcome these challenges, stay tuned for Part 2 of this article.

Image Credit: Ken Wu beside a fallen redcedar near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island by TJ Watts from Ancient Forest Alliance.

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.

Companies responsible for two separate oil spills in Alberta failed to provide adequate oversight for their operations, according to federal government documents released by Environment Canada through Access to Information legislation.

The documents detail how Devon Canada and Gibson Energy violated environmental laws, including the federal Fisheries Act, when their operations cause two oil spills into fish-bearing waterways in 2010.

Gibson Energy, a midstream pipeline operator, spilled a few hundred litres of oil into an Edmonton creek after failing to properly abandon an unused pipeline. According to a warning letter issued to the company from Environment Canada, "Gibson Energy ULC made a business decision to keep the Kinder Morgan lateral full of crude oil and to not purge it with nitrogen."

The pipeline released a "brown foamy substance" into the waterway, indicating the pipeline suffered internal corrosion. "Based on information obtained, I have reason to believe Gibson Energy ULC was responsible for the release of a deleterious substance into (a creek) leading to the North Saskatchewan River and they were not duly diligent in preventing this release," wrote an Edmonton-based inspector and Environment Canada fisheries inspector, Deanna Cymbaluk.

Violations of this kind can encur a fine of up to $1 million or three years in prison in Canada. Similar infractions in the United States are often met with heavy fines and penalties levied against operators.

When Postmedia's Mike De Souza contacted Gibson Energy, communications manager Nicole Collard, refused to comment on the two-year old file, saying "we're not interested in participating in this." The Alberta regulator Energy Resources Conservation Board issued Gibson a "high-risk non-compliance" order for "improperly discontinuing/abandoning a pipeline."

An additional spill, of 350,000 litres, or the equivalent of 3,000 barrels of oil, occurred when a blowout could not be contained for 36 hours by Devon Canada, a major operator in the tar sands.

At the time Devon was conducting steam-assisted gravity drainage oil production, a process that uses steam to heat underground bitumen, allowing the viscous substance to more freely flow up a well-bore. The relatively new technique poses new operational challenges industry may not always be prepared for.

In this instance, Devon lost control of the procedure at its Jackfish facility after a combination of human error and damage cause by sand erosion caused a well failure. According to Environment Canada's Cymbaluk, Devon had "poorly documented protocols" and a "lack of planning for a well failure" at the time of the accident.

Tim Waters, manager of operations engineering at Devon told Postmedia "there were certain risk areas around the well-head and how the wells were operated that we didn't fully understand, quite honestly."

Devon is one of many tar sands operators hoping to improve their image through public relations campaigns. Recently Devon released a series of television commercials intended to highlight the company's environmental stewardship at its Jackfish facility.

Greenpeace's Keith Stewart suggests the commercials can't undo the industry's operational shortcomings: "When the oil industry's poster child for clean water can't stop a blow-out for 36 hours, it makes me wish we had stronger truth-in-advertising laws in this country."

Waters, however, maintains the commercials are accurate and demonstrate Devon's concern for the environment.

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