We’ve all seen a chart like it: logos of corporations connected by thin lines to other logos, linking dozens of subsidiaries to spin-offs of even larger companies.

But such diagrams — whether they attempt to illustrate the concentration of media ownership or linking music record companies to arms manufacturers — rarely involve Canada or the fossil fuel companies that dominate lobbying and other political efforts.

The Corporate Mapping Project, co-directed by Shannon Daub of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and William Carroll of the University of Victoria, aims to remedy that.

“We need to have a conversation about how these forms of concentrated power can be problematic for democratic processes in terms of decision-making and the citizenry collectively determining its future,” says Carroll, sociology professor at the University of Victoria.

“To the extent that you have very strong concentrations of corporate power in key sectors of the economy, it limits the boundaries of permissible discourse: what can be said, what can be discussed openly.”

Project Maps 238 Fossil Fuel Companies in Canada

The Corporate Mapping Project, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, just concluded the first of its six years.

In that time, the project analyzed more than $50 million in corporate assets and “mapped” 238 Canadian corporations centred in the fossil fuel sector (which linked out to a total of 1,258 total corporations based in Canada and abroad).

Going far beyond simply connecting, say, Suncor and Syncrude, the project examines companies at the level of governance, tracking what Carroll dubs the “elite networks” of corporate executives and directors.

The project features another three strands that will be explored over the course of the next half-decade.

One will examine the reach of corporate influence into civil and political society, impacting and helping shape entities like think tanks, foundations, industry groups, lobby groups, universities and research institutes. A subsect of that will explore how corporations push certain discourses via advertising, corporate social responsibility reports and press releases.

Another will look at commodity chains, how power is organized within chains of production and the “flashpoints” of protest such as anti-Northern Gateway blockades and less place-specific movements such as fossil fuel divestment campaigns.

Corporate Connections to be Posted on Wiki Community

Rounding out the quartet will be the actual collection and transmitting of the learnings.

Carroll says an online interactive tool will be developed with a wiki community to keep it up to date, similar to how data is presented by the Public Accountability Initiative (a U.S. nonprofit that research connections between corporations and government).

There are a dozen or so co-investigators that form the core team for the Corporate Mapping Project. Partners include Unifor, the University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, the University of Lethbridge and the University of Regina.

It’s a sizable project. As Carroll notes, such resources are much needed given the changing landscape of new provincial and federal governments, the collapse in the global price of oil and the recent Paris climate change agreement.

Then there’s the fierce debate over TransCanada’s Energy East pipeline, pitting Alberta’s NDP government against Indigenous communities, climate activists and the provinces of Québec and Ontario.

TransCanada used ‘Bullying’ and ‘Attempts to Buy People Out’

It’s a situation that well represents why the Corporate Mapping Project is so needed, and why its organizers are bringing Éric Pineault — sociology professor at Université du Québec à Montréal and author of the recently released "The Energy East Trap" — to Vancouver and Victoria for a series of free lectures titled “Extreme Oil: Corporate Power, Tar Sands Expansion, and the Capitalist Pressure to Extract.”

Pineault says TransCanada started its pitch for Energy East to local residents with “bullying and trying buy people out.”

Documents leaked to Greenpeace show TransCanada hired public relations giant Edelman to concoct a fake grassroots advocacy campaign designed to persuade the public to support Energy East. The scandal led TransCanada and Edelman to eventually part ways.

Since the federal Liberal government was elected, the company has entered a “seduction phase,” according to Pineault. But the underlying intentions of the company — which also owns the proposed Keystone XL pipeline — is the same: to increase shareholder value.

Such an ownership structure means the “progressive extractivism” agenda that suggests increased hydrocarbon production is required to fund the transition to a “greener economy” is almost doomed to fail.

“It ties you in and can co-opt…your transition.” He added, “I think [Alberta’s] Notley government is going in that direction.”

Private Ownership Makes Transition to Renewables Far More Difficult

Pineault argues that pipelines such as Energy East will likely be around for many decades and suck up investment, research efforts and competent workers that could otherwise be directed to renewable projects. In addition, efficiencies may be developed to “green” hydrocarbon production instead of cutting down on emissions from heating and transportation.

“If it was a publically controlled sector, then you could plan this phase-in, phase-out approach,” he says. “You can’t do that with private capital: they consider they’re sitting on assets that are worth billions and the value of these assets must be realized on a 60- or 70-year cycle.”

“They’re going to do everything they can to keep that cycle going as long as they can.”

Which is why it seems fairly important to know who’s calling the shots, what kind of tactics are being deployed and what entities are being potentially harnessed to promote a company’s agenda.

That’s where the Corporate Mapping Project comes in. After all, it’s pretty difficult to break those thin lines if you don’t even know they exist.

Tickets to Pineault’s free lectures are available online. RSVP details below:

Vancouver:

Wednesday May 18, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

SFU Harbour Centre (Hastings & Seymour)

Free but you need a ticket: http://www.ccpabc.ca/extreme_oil_van

Victoria:

Friday May 20, 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Legacy Gallery (630 Yates St)

Free but you need a ticket: http://www.ccpabc.ca/extreme_oil_victoria

Image: Suncor/Facebook

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Ditching fossil fuel stocks and replacing them with green energy investments will have little effect on greenhouse gas emissions until there are government and institutional policy changes, according to a new report.

The white paper, written by two University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers working with the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, finds that even if divestment campaigns – now being waged at more than 30 Canadian universities – are successful, there will be minimal impact on emissions, partially because governments, rather than shareholder companies, control the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves. If conventional energy companies were serious about avoiding surpassing the 2 degrees Celsius temperature limit recommended by scientists and policy makers, that would require "deep structural changes," the authors, Hadi Dowlatabadi and Justin Ritchie, argue.

However, the good news for those fighting for divestment, is that, with the right policies in place, divestment could speed up the change to a low carbon economy and change social norms when it comes to investing, the researchers concluded.

“Divestment movements are socially significant, but currently exert little influence on financing transition to sustainability," Dowlatabadi said.

“A lot of very well-meaning people put a lot of energy into the divestment campaigns and they are our friends – we believe that the symbolic value of their activities is significant,” Dowlatabadi told the Globe and Mail. “But for that symbolic value to be translated into progress towards decarbonization of the economy, all sorts of supported policies are needed.”

One of the reasons divestment may not be enough to tackle climate change is that fossil fuel energy is integrated into multiple areas, including low carbon industries.

“This means that divestment may end up being greenwash, when money is taken away from fossil fuel companies and reinvested, for example, in banks, which, typically, fund such companies anyway,” Dowlatabadi said.

Among policy changes suggested for municipal and provincial governments are the creation of an energy transition bank that could offer bonds and help ease investors into the low carbon economy while supporting B.C.’s green tech sector, a low carbon transition investment tax credit and support for public fund managers.

Universities and other institutions should set timelines for divestment, review their goals and screening of investments and use in-house expertise to come up with divestment strategies.

Those working on divestment campaigns should consider launching a separate low carbon or fossil free endowment fund so the performance can be compared to traditional funds, possibly with crowdfunding help, and explore how investment returns fit with broader campus sustainability goals, the paper says.

The University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University are circulating student and faculty-led divestment petitions and more than 200 UBC professors recently voted for the university to divest from the 200 most polluting companies over the next five years. The UBC Faculty Association is currently voting on whether the endowment fund should divest.

In December, Concordia University committed to divest itself of $5-million of fossil fuel investments and has plans for a new sustainable investment fund.

Image Credit: Daily Collegian via Flickr

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Professors at the University of Victoria (UVic) are demanding the school’s administration freeze all new investment in fossil fuels and initiate a three-year divestment of all fossil fuel holdings.

The university endowment fund has approximately $21 million currently invested in fossil fuels.

In an open letter addressed to Lisa Hill, Chair of the University of Victoria Foundation and copied to university president Jamie Cassels, faculty members voiced concerns over the ethical and financial viability of fossil fuel investments, noting “the growing North American movement, led by students, to see their universities act as moral leaders for their communities by disinvesting from such companies.” The full list of signatories can be seen here.

Kelsey Mech, Divest UVic student organizer and chair of the UVic student society, said such strong faculty support for the campaign comes as a surprise. “I am floored. I am so blown away,” she told DeSmog Canada.

“Our goal was to have 100 faculty sign on by April 30th. We just blew that target out of the water as we are already at 160, representing just shy of 20 per cent of faculty,” she said. Nearly 2000 UVic students have signed a petition in support of the divestment campaign.

“I’ve been organizing on campus at the University of Victoria on various environmental issues for the past five years, and I have never seen something light up the campus like divestment has,” Mech told DeSmog Canada. “I’m beyond thrilled, and so grateful for everyone who is willing to take a public stand for our collective futures.”

In their open letter faculty members state “the science is clear” on human-caused climate change, which is expected to cost the Canadian economy $5 billion per year by 2020. The adverse effects of a warming planet, they note, has already killed thousands and creates vulnerable environmental refugees. The burning, transportation and refinement of fossil fuels, they add, perpetuates these negative impacts. 

“We should not support, let alone profit from, companies responsible for this suite of effects.”

The divestment campaign will be presented to the board of the endowment fund and the board of governors at UVic this summer.

Environmental studies professor and letter signatory Jessica Dempsey said faculty support for the initiative is growing: “everyday there are more signatories as more faculty become aware of the issue.”

“I think both students and faculty are looking for ways to seriously engage and confront the climate crisis, in a time when we have no governmental leadership, and no signs of it on the horizon,” she told DeSmog Canada.

Although there has been some resistance on campus, says Dempsey, the majority of it has not been against divestment in principle.

“There is pushback on campus, of course,” she said. “But what is surprising is how much of that pushback – at least so far – comes not in terms of outright disagreement, but rather is focused on the difficulty of implementation. A common refrain is that ‘it’s complex.’”

The UVic endowment and pension investments are managed by trustees with a fiduciary duty “that legally enshrines them to maximize returns,” Dempsey explains, leading to questions about how these and similar funds can account for ethical considerations as well as their legal mandate to maximize returns to the beneficiaries. Pensions, she notes, are governed separately from the university's endowment.

According to Kelsey Mech “the university has asked fund managers to consider environmental, social and governance factors when deciding on investments, but there is no formal or mandatory screening process to follow.”

These kinds of investment ‘complexities’ should be confronted, according to Dempsey, and the university is an ideal place to do so.

“Surely fiduciary duty needs to be revised, or reinterpreted so that we don’t retire to an increasingly uninhabitable planet,” she said.

And concerns surrounding investment in fossil fuels bring up a host of other considerations for Dempsey, especially in terms of employee pensions.

“If you can believe it, my faculty pension has no ethical screens. We can invest in arms, tobacco, and so on. It’s outrageous, really. But of all places in society, the university is well-positioned to lead, to find creative solutions to these complexities.” She clarified that her UVic pension is not, as far as she knows, invested in arms or tobacco, but there is no screen in place that would prevent the pension trustees from doing so.

She added, “who is better placed than UVic law faculty and students to innovate and propose concrete changes to currently unethical but legal mandates like fiduciary duty to maximize returns?”

James Rowe, another professor at the School of Environmental Studies and lead organizer for the campaign, said there is also a strong financial case to be made for divestment.

“The current valuation of oil companies includes huge reserves of fossil fuels that cannot be burned if humanity wants to avoid run-away climate change. When policy making inevitably catches up with the scientific consensus on climate change, share prices for oil companies will be negatively impacted, generating losses for investors,” he said.

Investment in fossil fuels “conflicts” with the university’s environmental leadership role on campus, the open letter states, including the housing of the influential Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

“As with the movement against apartheid in South Africa, students have challenged the university to fulfill its role as a leader on issues of justice. And as with the anti-apartheid movement, this movement will not retire until it has succeeded,” the letter reads.

Divestment, according to Mech, is not only practical, but gives institutions like the university a productive way to move the climate conversation forward.

“Divestment is an extremely impactful way to shift the narrative around our reliance on fossil fuels and to force people to recognize the urgency of the climate change crisis,” she said.

“When major institutes, like universities, choose to divest from these dirty industries it sends a strong message that we are no longer willing to accept the status quo and are demanding a transition to a clean energy future,” she said.

More than 300 other North American universities are currently home to a divestment campaign. Recently the Simon Fraser University Faculty Association voted to create a fossil fuel free option in their pension and the City of Seattle voted to divest from fossil fuels.

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This week a group of climate experts published a letter detailing the climate impacts of the proposed tripling of the Trans Mountain pipeline which carries oilsands diluted bitumen and other fuels from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver. The group represents 27 climate experts – a mix of economists, scientists and political and social scientists – from major British Columbian universities who were recently rejected from the pipeline hearing process because they proposed to discuss the project’s significance for global climate change.

According to Simon Donner, associate professor from the University of British Columbia and climate variability expert, “the government is ignoring the expertise of not just scientists, but policy analysts and economists.”

“You'd have an easier time finding a seat at Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals than an expert who thinks the energy policy is consistent with Canada meeting this government's own promised emissions target,” he told DeSmog Canada.

For Donner, the exclusion of climate experts from National Energy Board (NEB) pipeline hearings throws the legitimacy of the environmental assessment process into question.

“The NEB and the federal government want to make a decision about the environmental and social impact of the pipeline expansion without considering one of the biggest long-term threats to the environment and society – climate change,” he said.

In the letter the group of experts said the Trans Mountain pipeline “alone is expected to lead to 50 per cent more carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year than all of British Columbia currently produces.”

They also pointed out that “the purpose of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion is to increase the oil sands’ access to global markets…additional bitumen production needed to meet the pipeline capacity would increase Canada’s annual CO2 emissions by over 27 million tonnes.”

To meet our 2020 target – to reduce emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels – Canada must significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Oilsands represent the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and are expected to account for a full 78 per cent of emissions growth by 2020, the letter states.

Increases in oilsands production are canceling out the emissions gains made in other sectors, including the transportation sector. The authors point out that, despite repeated promises, the Canadian government has failed to regulate emissions from the oil and gas sector.

“The problem is that Canada has no system to deal with greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector,” Donner said, putting greater pressure on the need to account for climate impacts on a project-by-project basis. 

“If we had a system for evaluating if proposed carbon-intensive projects are compatible with our federal emissions target, then the National Energy Board's decision [to reject climate experts] would be reasonable. But with no federal policy, these hearings are the only option.”

Full list of ousted climate experts and letter signatories:

• Simon Donner, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia;
• Kathryn Harrison, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia;
• George Hoberg, Professor, Department of Forest Resources Management, University of British Columbia;
• Laurie Adkin, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Environmental Studies Programme, University of Alberta;
• Phil Austin, Associate Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• Kai Chan, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia;
• Jay Cullen, Associate Professor, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria;
• Lori Daniels, Associate Professor, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• Peter Dauvergne, Director, Liu Institute for Global Issues and Professor of International Relations, University of British Columbia;
• Ken Denman, Professor, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria;
• Erica Frank, Professor and Canada Research Chair, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia; 
• David Green, Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia;
• Kevin Hanna, Associate Professor of Sustainability, I.K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• Sara Harris, Senior Instructor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• Milind Kandlikar, Professor, Liu Institute for Global Issues and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia;
• Karen Kohfeld, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University;
• Ken Lertzman, Professor and Director of The Hakai Network for Coastal People, Ecosystems and Management, School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University;
• Alan Lewis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Zoology and Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• Jane Lister, Senior Research Fellow, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia;
• Ian McKendry, Professor, Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science Program, University of British Columbia;
• Karin Mickelson, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia;
• R. Dan Moore, Professor, Department of Geography and Department of Forest Resources Management, University of British Columbia;
• Rashid Sumalia, Professor and Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, University of British Columbia;
• Douw Steyn, Professor, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia;
• David Tindall, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Department of Forest Resource Management, University of British Columbia;
• Hisham Zerriffi, Assistant Professor and Ivan Head South/North Research Chair, Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia;
• Kirsten Zickfeld, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University.

Image Credit: TransMountain

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Not even a month has passed since the federally appointed Joint Review Panel (JRP) released its official report recommending approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline, pending the fulfillment of 209 conditions. Yet already two separate suits have been filed against the integrity of the report, with groups requesting cabinet delay a final decision on the pipeline project until the federal court of appeals can assess the complaints.

One of the suits, filed today by the Environmental Law Centre on behalf of B.C. Nature (the Federation of British Columbia Naturalists), requested the panel’s report be declared invalid and that cabinet halt its decision on the pipeline project until the court challenge is heard. The second suit, filed by Ecojustice on behalf of several environmental groups claims the panel's report is based on insufficient evidence and therefore fails to constitute a full environmental assessment under the law.

Chris Tollefson, B.C. Nature’s lawyer and executive director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, says “we have asked that the federal court make an order that no further steps be taken by any federal regulator or by Cabinet until this request is adjudicated.”

“We’re confident that the federal court will make that order because we’ve raised some serious issues with the legality of the report and if the report is flawed then it can’t go to cabinet, and it shouldn’t go to cabinet,” he said.

B.C. Nature has identified almost a dozen legal errors that bring the legitimacy of the panel’s recommendation into question.

“The two [errors] that we think are the most serious among those are the finding with respect to justification of serious harm to caribou and grizzly and the ruling with respect to a potential major oil spill and its consequences. We say that in both of those areas there is a glaring error that’s occurred that has to be addressed by the federal court of appeal,” Tollefson said.

A federal recovery strategy for humpack whales on the B.C. coast released in October cited potential increased oil tanker traffic as a danger to dwindling populations. The recovery strategy, released after a five-year delay, also noted the danger toxic spills posed to critical habitat. 

A federal caribou recovery strategy is expected by the end of the month.

“Both those federal strategies have to be considered by the cabinet when it ultimately rules on this [project]… For caribou this pipeline has some serious consequences and it will be interesting to see what happens when the federal strategy comes down.”

For Tollefson, the inadequacy of the official JRP report points to a failure of the Northern Gateway hearing process.

“It’s disappointing for everybody involved on the intervenor side, how this has unfolded. The report is not only legally flawed in relation to the specific issues that we’ve raised but I think there’s a more general flaw, which is that it’s failed the test of transparency, it fails test of intelligibility. It basically doesn’t grapple with the evidence,” he said.

The report reaches its conclusions “without setting out its analysis,” Tollefson says, “without discussing the evidence that forms the basis for those conclusions.”

“So we think there’s a basic rule of law issue here: does this report even conform with the basic requirements in terms of intelligibility and transparency that we expect from tribunals?”

“And we say that it doesn’t.”

Tollefson anticipates that the request will delay cabinet’s 180-day decision period, saying it would be “very difficult” for cabinet to address and respond to B.C. Nature’s complaints within that timeframe.

For Tollefson a delay in cabinet’s decision isn’t only foreseeable, it’s appropriate.

“Cabinet after all has to make its decision based upon the findings and the recommendations that arise out of this report.” Without a reliable report, what kind of decision can British Columbians expect?

The errors in the report could send the federal panel back to the drawing board.

“If we’re upheld on any of our arguments, that report will have to be sent back to the JRP, redone, and we’ll basically be starting, potentially, back where we were in June. In those circumstances, it makes little sense for cabinet to make a decision given that level of uncertainty around the future of the report.”

Image Credit: Mike Baird via flickr

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