The 2014 financial reports from B.C.’s political parties are out and my face hurts from all of the eyebrow raising.

Donations to political parties from corporations are banned federally, but here in B.C. — the wild west of political donations — the corporate cash is free-flowing.

Here are the Top 5 disconcerting revelations from this year’s disclosures. (Thanks to Integrity BC for drawing my attention to many of these.)

1) Let’s start with the $40,950 that accounting firm KPMG gave to the BC Liberals in 2014. KPMG is the company BC Hydro hired to “independently review” the costs of the $8.8 billion Site C dam. The B.C. government has pointed to the KPMG report to defend its decision to ignore an expert recommendation to send the project to the B.C. Utilities Commission for review.

Since 2005, KPMG and its related companies have given $284,994 to the BC Liberals and $13,150 to the NDP.

2) In the words of IntegrityBC’s Dermod Travis “the 2014 Award for Incredibly Bad Taste in Donations goes to Imperial Metals, owners of the Mount Polley mine.”

The mining company donated $7,150 to the Liberals, including a $1,500 cheque in October and another for $250 in November, in the months following the company’s enormous Mount Polley tailings dam failure.

“The spill may have been toxic, but Imperial's cash wasn't,” Travis quipped.

3) Oil and gas transportation companies got in on the action, too, with Kinder Morgan ($4,500), TransCanada Pipelines ($5,600), Coastal GasLink Pipeline ($12,500) and Enbridge Northern Gateway ($13,450) all filling up the Liberal’s bank account.

Woodfibre LNG, which is proposing a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Howe Sound, gave $28,000 to the Liberals and $8,000 to the B.C. NDP. Woodfibre also spent more than $18,000 on newspaper and radio ads in Squamish during the November 2014 local election.

4) As the high-stakes Metro Vancouver waste debate raged on last year, BFI Canada gave the Liberals $91,300 and Belkorp Environmental Services gave $37,200.

Those companies didn’t like Metro Vancouver’s garbage plans, so they also hired lobbyists to pressure the provincial government. According to B.C.’s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, Belkorp hired John Les, former MLA for Chilliwack, and BFI hired lobbyist Dimitri Pantazopoulos, who was the Liberals’ chief pollster during the 2013 provincial election.

5) Perhaps the most bizarre donation of all is one for $28,750 from the Alberta Newspaper Group to the Liberals.

Alberta Newspaper Group has no papers in B.C., but is run and partially owned by British Columbian David Radler. Yes, that David Radler. The one who went to jail, along with his business partner Conrad Black, after being convicted of defrauding their company Hollinger Inc.

Alberta Newspaper Group is a subsidiary of Glacier Media, which owns the Victoria Times Colonist. Radler was named the acting publisher of the Victoria Times Colonist a year ago.

Radler also runs Continental Newspapers, which publishes the Kelowna Daily Courier and Penticton Herald.

As traditional media players face unprecedented hardships to stay alive, it’s a wonder how any newspaper company can afford to scrounge up tens of thousands of dollars to curry political favour.

Sadly, this is far from the first time a B.C. media company has donated to a political party. In 2013, Postmedia — which owns the Vancouver Sun and The Province — donated $10,000 to the BC Liberals. In 2009, Glacier Media gave $100,000 to the Liberals. And between 2006 and 2011, Black Press — which owns more than 70 community newspapers in B.C.— contributed $5,430 to the BC Liberals.

It’s exactly the kind of impropriety that would typically set the press off on a feeding frenzy — alas, the only organizations to escape the news media’s often savage scrutiny are the news media themselves.

Photo: Mary Crandall via Flickr

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Postmedia has struck a $316 million deal to buy 175 of Quebecor’s English-language newspapers, specialty publications and digital properties, including the Sun chain of papers, according to a report in the Globe and Mail this morning.

If it passes regulatory hurdles, the deal will mark a step further down the path of media concentration in Canada.

What does this mean for Canadians in practical terms?

In Calgary, for instance, the Calgary Sun would be owned by the same company as the Calgary Herald. In Toronto, the Toronto Sun and 24 Hours would be owned by the same company as the National Post. In Ottawa, the Ottawa Sun would be owned by the same company as the Ottawa Citizen. And in Edmonton, the Edmonton Sun would be owned by the same company as the Edmonton Journal.

It’s Vancouver that takes the cake for media concentration though — Postmedia already owned the Vancouver Sun and The Province, but if the deal goes through it will take over the free daily 24 Hours as well.

In a statement, Postmedia president and CEO Paul Godfrey said the company intends “to continue to operate the Sun Media major market dailies and their digital properties side by side with our existing properties in markets with multiple brands as we have in Vancouver with the Province and the Vancouver Sun for more than 30 years.”

Sean Holman, journalism professor at Mount Royal University, says the deal means three major things for the Canadian public.

“First, I think the Canadian public should be worried about what this potential sale could mean for press freedom,” Holman says. “If you have one media owner with the capability to dictate editorial policy across almost every single major newspaper in the country, that is not a healthy thing. There may be assurances of newsroom editorial independence, but we have seen over the years that newsroom independence has been violated by Canadian media owners.”

Holman also notes that as media companies encounter more financial trouble, business reasons are increasingly being used to compromise editorial standards. Case in point: In June, DeSmog Canada revealed that Postmedia had been running unlabelled oil advertorials.

The second major reason Canadians should be worried about this deal has to do with press criticism, Holman says.

“Right now, the Canadian media is not held to a very high level of accountability,” he says. “You look down in the States at the amount of media analysis and media criticism there is there and we simply can’t hold a candle to that. This potential sale will make that worse.

“If there is only really one major employer behemoth, how reluctant are newspaper journalists going to be to criticize one of their few major potential employers?”

Thirdly, Canadians ought to be worried about the capacity of the media to cover the important issues, Holman says.

“[Postmedia CEO] Godfrey has said that the chain won’t be closing any of Sun Media’s properties in major markets. I note that that statement does not include minor markets. Without further clarification, at this point in time, we could see closures there…We could see layoffs.”

“And as we reduce those newspaper resources and newsrooms themselves, that erodes the capacity of the media to perform its societal role which is to hold power to account.”

Media capacity is getting to such a point in Canada that Holman says Canadians need to be having a serious national conversation about how we are going to hold power to account in the absence of companies that seem to be concerned with that.

“I think this is certainly going to increase the pressure on independent and activist media to perform some of those tasks, which mainstream newsrooms may not be able to fulfill,” Holman says.

At DeSmog Canada, we are trying to fill that gap and hold power to account. Please give what you can today.

Photo: Rachael F. via Flickr

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A recent poll found only six in 10 British Columbians have heard of BC Hydro’s $8 billion proposal to build a third hydroelectric dam on the Peace River.

But the decision about whether to build the Site C dam will directly affect all of us — from the implications for our electricity bills to the flooding of some of B.C.'s best agricultural land.

After more than 30 years on the books, the provincial and federal governments are expected to decide on the project by Oct. 22..

“I only want to build Site C if it makes the most sense for the people of the province,” B.C.’s Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett told the Vancouver Sun on Sept. 10.

So, does Site C make sense for the people of B.C.?

Someday, B.C. will need more energy. “The question is when,” wrote the joint review panel assessing the project. “A second question is what alternatives may be available when that day comes.”

Unable to answer those questions, the panel asked the province to refer the project to the independent B.C. Utilities Commission — something that has not happened.

“Justification must rest on an unambiguous need for the power and analyses showing its financial costs being sufficiently attractive as to make tolerable the bearing of substantial environmental, social and other costs,” the panel’s report said.

There are five key reasons why the Site C dam isn’t justified.

1. It's bad business.

Big hydro dams tend to cost a lot of money, take years to build and bring one massive lump of power on-line in one fell swoop.

The Site C dam is no exception. With a price tag of $8 billion, Site C is the largest proposed infrastructure project in Canada. In its first four years, the dam is expected to lose $800 million while it sells surplus power at a third of what it costs to produce it.

“We have absolutely no confidence that this is the least cost plan,” says Richard Stout, executive director of the Association of Major Power Customers of B.C.

Building Site C would take eight years — an eternity in the world of energy markets. Consider this: in the past five years, solar costs have dropped 80 per cent, while wind costs have dropped 35 per cent.

2. There are cost-effective alternatives.

The Clean Energy Association of B.C. recently put forth a portfolio of renewable options it says would cost $1 billion less than Site C over the next 70 years.

What’s more, the joint review panel took the B.C. government to task for failing to pursue research into B.C.’s geothermal resources over the last 31 years (the last time Site C was rejected).

Even with next to no research, BC Hydro has estimated geothermal energy could economically replace two-thirds of Site C’s power.

3. The power isn't needed.

The joint review panel said BC Hydro failed to prove that Site C’s power is needed in the immediate future.

Even if the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry takes off, it wouldn’t justify building the dam. LNG plants are likely to be powered by natural gas and, even if they did use electricity, the power would be required before Site C became operational circa 2024, according to the panel.

4. We can't afford to flood farmland.

The Site C dam would impact 13,000 hectares of agricultural land — including flooding 3,800 hectares of farmland in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), an area nearly twice the size of the city of Victoria.

That’s roughly equivalent to taking the agricultural land base in Delta out of production. Those Peace Valley lands could produce fresh fruits and vegetables for a million people, says agrologist Wendy Holm.

5. The Peace has paid its price.

“The project would be accompanied by significant environmental and social costs, and the costs would not be borne by those who benefit,” wrote the review panel.

B.C.’s Peace region is already home to two mega hydro dams and 16,267 oil and gas well sites.

“We have become the cash register for the province…Now our way of life is going to be interfered with again,” Liz Logan, Treaty 8 Tribal Association Chief, said.

West Moberly Chief Roland Willson has vowed to challenge the decision in court if an environmental assessment certificate is granted.

In a nutshell: while mega dams may have been a bright idea in the 1960s, in 2014 there are smarter ways of generating electricity. Instead of toiling over an outdated project, let’s move on to 21st century energy solutions.

Read DeSmog Canada's 12-part series on the Site C dam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consequences for news industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

Postmedia to work with CAPP to amplify “energy mandate”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 —With files from Emma Gilchrist.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

It is always difficult to know what to publish on Earth Day. It’s been around for 34 years, which means that much of what’s worth writing about has already been covered. Then there’s the question of whether to inform your readers with facts, inspire them with positive stories about solutions or just overwhelm them with the beauty and wonder of nature.

Despite the challenge, it’s still a little perplexing why one of Vancouver’s two major newspapers published, on Earth Day, a column about climate change that is so poorly written, so haphazardly argued, so lacking in any genuine concern for the truth, that had a freshman submitted it in one of the university courses I teach, I would have given it an F.

The column to which I refer, “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” was published by The Vancouver Sun on April 22 as a “guest editorial” by Michelle Stirling-Anosh. Nothing I read in the mainstream media shocks me anymore, and most of it doesn’t even deserve a response, but Stirling-Anosh’s contribution to the climate change debate is worth some critical attention, if only as a warning to others.

Although she did cobble together a few of the selective and decontextualized “facts” commonly used by climate change deniers, Stirling-Anosh’s real currency is fear. Earth Day, she claims, is nothing but an insidious opportunity to “bombard” us with treacherous “appeals to protect the earth for our children.”

This may seem like a laudable goal to most of us — I’d certainly like my daughter to enjoy a planet at least as healthy and livable as the one my parents bequeathed to me — but Stirling-Anosh is quick to point out this irresponsible barrage of dangerous information is part of a campaign of “agenda-driven indoctrination” to brainwash our children “that would make Stalin proud.”

To support her claim equating climate scientists and activists with mass-murdering dictators, she cites a report, published by a UK non-profit with close ties to fossil fuel companies and the climate denial community, which reached the terrifying conclusion that “global warming/climate change propaganda has infiltrated every aspect of education.”

Apparently, the 'Climate Change Cult' has convinced universities not to push students into “hard sciences like petroleum engineering (sic) or geosciences” (you’d never know it from a stroll around the University of Calgary). Elementary schools, too, “have successfully destroyed the basics of scientific inquiry in children,” though she forgot to provide a reference for this ‘factoid.’

Putting aside the factual inconsistencies, you’re just left with the vague and nefarious “they” who are out there in our schools, terrorizing children with the terrifying consequences of climate change, inducing in them a psychological state, similar to Stockholm Syndrome, that leaves them bereft of critical thinking skills and “unable to liberate themselves from their tormentors.” Which, of course, then allows the ‘Climate Change Cult’ to tell them how they “should live, as well as … what they should think.”

Who would spend the time and energy writing such a hopeless piece of drivel? According to her byline, Stirling-Anosh is communications manager for Friends of Science. Ah ha. Five minutes of research on the Internet indicates that she is, as one might have deduced by now, an ideological soldier in the legions of faithful climate change deniers.

Friends of Science is a controversial public relations project, funded by Big Oil through the University of Calgary, whose raison d'être is to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific evidence that indicates human activity (namely, burning fossil fuels and levelling forests) is causing the temperature of the planet to rise dangerously high. (In case you missed it: 97 per cent of the world’s climate scientists agree that manmade global warming is real and that the burning of fossil fuels is a significant factor.)

She is also a research associate for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, another think tank that goes out of its way to debunk reputable climate science. On LinkedIn, she calls herself a “creative writer,” not in the realm of novels and poems but in the dark art of “corporate communications.” 

(Read more background information on the Friends of Science and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy)

Perhaps most enlightening is her blog, DarkGreenDevils, dedicated to the “dense network of interests keen to manipulate markets and make you, the taxpayer, pay for ideological dreams of ‘free’ and ‘clean’ energy.”

To quote from one among many paranoid rants, Stirling-Anosh argues that, “Self-important artists pose a threat to life as we know it. Such as using their advanced communications skills to advocate for eco-causes, the science of which they know nothing about, they are killing industry and causing global warming through all their hot air.”

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Stirling-Anosh. In a way, I almost feel sorry for her. It’s as if she’s the one who has been indoctrinated into a cult, the Cult of Free Market Extremism, where ideologues dispense with imagination and critical thinking and gather together to worship at the altar of the mythical “free” market. It is this unassailable belief, rather than the falsity of the causes and costs of climate change, that makes the notion of regulating greenhouse gas emissions out of existence (and creating a clean energy economy) such a heresy.

But none of this explains why The Vancouver Sun would publish this column at all, never mind on Earth Day. When I first read the headline “Earth Day is cult indoctrination,” I thought the paper was putting us on, a late April Fool’s joke of sorts. Or perhaps the editors were aware of just how absurd it is and were trying to be ironic. But then I discovered the Sun’s sister newspaper, The Province, published a similar column by Stirling-Anosh two weeks earlier.

The Province column is another attempt to convince us that “global warming stopped before [the] Kyoto [Protocol] was even implemented,” and that, the “overall benefits of ‘carbon’ far outweigh the alleged social costs.” Both of which are patently untrue.

In a democracy where freedom of speech is sacrosanct, there’s little to be done about voices like Stirling-Anosh. But the editors of the Sun and the Province should know better. Please don’t insult the intelligence of your readers by printing baseless propaganda written by PR hacks lurking in the darkest corners of the oil industry. Climate change is too dangerous and we’ve already dithered for too long. Leave what little space you have for climate coverage for those with more honorable intentions.

Jeff Gailus is the author of Little Black Lies, about the use of propaganda in the war over the future of the tar sands. Originally from Alberta, he now lives in Missoula, Montana. 

Image Credit: Edward Musiak via Flickr

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A strange chain of events played out in the Vancouver Sun in the past couple of weeks. 

First, on Feb. 5, the newspaper ran the results of a poll commissioned by Dogwood Initiative and three other B.C. non-profits that found 64 per cent of British Columbians are opposed to bringing oil tankers into B.C.’s inside waters, including 50 per cent who are strongly opposed.

(Full disclosure: I’ve worked both for Dogwood Initiative and Postmedia, the company that owns the Vancouver Sun.)

Let’s get one thing straight right away: all polls should be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone who has followed the Enbridge Northern Gateway debate closely has watched all sides of the debate trot out surveys with vastly different results. They all claim their poll gave the respondents the undisputed facts and the people have spoken. And they’re all right — in a sense.

When Enbridge itself asks the question, they focus on the pipeline, ensure respondents know it’ll be underground (I'm sure they focus-grouped the living daylights out of that one) and include lots of technical detail about things like condensate. And when Enbridge asked the question that way in late 2011, they came out with a result indicating more British Columbians were in favour of the pipeline than against it (48 per cent to 32 per cent). What you don’t see in that result is how many different ways and different times they had to ask the question to get there.

On the flip side, when environmental groups ask the question, they tend to focus on oil tankers in inside coastal waters and the threat of an oil spill. And when they ask the question their way, they tend to find 65 per cent of British Columbians opposed to Enbridge’s oil tanker proposal. They too have honed in on how to ask the question to get the result they want, but they have a lot less money both to focus group questions and to poll continually until they get a desirable result.

Given the fickleness of any given polling result, the Vancouver Sun’s initial treatment of the latest Dogwood poll was fairly circumspect. While it didn’t give Enbridge a chance to respond directly to the findings, it did quote December’s B.C. Chamber of Commerce poll (PDF), which used Enbridge’s polling question, and analyzed the way the question was asked.  The sub-headline even read: “Results not surprising in survey commissioned by environmental groups.”

It should be noted that when the Vancouver Sun covered the release of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce poll, the results ran un-refuted — with nearly no analysis of the polling question and no response from environmental groups. (That poll found 47 per cent of British Columbians support the project and 44 per cent oppose it — a 12 per cent jump in opposition in the two years since Enbridge released its poll with exactly the same question. The Sun didn’t make that connection.)

So, here’s where things get weird: in response to the latest poll commissioned by enviros, Enbridge whipped up a two-minute video refuting its findings and released it exclusively to the Vancouver Sun on Saturday Feb. 8. The Vancouver Sun ran an entire story dedicated to Enbridge’s argument, including embedding the video on its website. The story had no commentary from the environmental groups who actually commissioned the poll.

Enbridge execs had their knickers in a twist because the poll referenced oil tankers entering the inside passage, which the company disputes. To be clear: oil tankers will cross through the inside passage and throughout B.C.’s inside coastal waters, but they won’t sail up and down the inside passage. Sure enough, the wording could have been better, but it hardly warranted the Sun running a two-minute video response, which was essentially an ad for Enbridge.

It seems the good folks over at the Vancouver Sun had that realization later on because the story that went to print on Tuesday Feb. 11 included fulsome rebuttals from both Dogwood Initiative and Justason Market Intelligence, rather than straight-up PR spin from Enbridge. The story noted that at the end of the poll, respondents were asked what type of organization they thought sponsored it — more than 50 per cent thought the research was sponsored by a group either in support of Enbridge’s proposal, or neutral. So while Enbridge may claim bias, the citizens involved in the poll didn’t get that sense.

A day after Enbridge’s attack on their poll, Dogwood Initiative invited Enbridge to collaborate on a new poll with them.

“In the spirit of the balanced and fair public conversation . . . Enbridge and Dogwood Initiative could develop a question that describes the full scope and location of the proposal and then work together with an independent polling organization to field it,” the statement says. “We could split the costs and release the results publicly. This is a sincere offer, and we hope Enbridge will accept.”

So far, Dogwood hasn’t heard back from Enbridge — and their challenge hasn’t received much attention. Perhaps newspaper editors are too embarrassed by the way it shines a light on the budget constraints that prevent them from commissioning their own polls these days?

I’m sure the Vancouver Sun’s spotty coverage of the polling debate has much more to do with a lack of resources and the rush to get stories online than it has to do with the millions of dollars Enbridge and the oil industry spends with Postmedia — but the optics aren’t good.

The poll fiasco went down in the same week Postmedia laid off its top environment reporter Mike De Souza as part of a downsizing of its parliamentary bureau and a leaked presentation gave indications of a slightly-too-cozy relationship between Postmedia and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Readers could be forgiven for wondering what exactly drove the Sun to embed Enbridge’s video rebuttal in its story. Perhaps the best way to find out for sure is for environmental groups to issue a video rebuttal to the Vancouver Sun the next time industry releases poll results — and then to sit back and wait for it to run in its entirety. It may not have the same production values as the Enbridge video, but surely the fact Enbridge neglects to mention oil tankers in inside coastal waters (the very issue British Columbians are most concerned about) is worthy of a response?

Image Credit: Kumravel via Flickr

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Mercury levels have risen to 16 times the regional "background" levels in an area around oilsands developments in northeastern Alberta, according to Environment Canada researchers.

Environment Canada researcher Jane Kirk, who presented the as-yet unpublished report at a Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) conference in Nashville last November, told Postmedia News the affected area encompasses 19,000 square kilometres around oilsands operations.

Margaret Munro of Postmedia News reports that Kirk told the conference the area is "currently impacted by airborne Hg (mercury) emissions originating from oilsands developments."

The mercury levels fall off gradually with increasing distance from the oilsands "like a bull's eye," said co-researcher Derek Muir, head of Environment Canada's ecosystem contaminants dynamics section. The highest mercury loadings, which reached up to 1,000 nanograms per square metre, were found in the "middle of the bull's eye," covering around 10 percent of the impacted area.

In October, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq signed a global treaty pledging to decrease mercury emissions.

The federal researchers stressed that the findings were still lower than mercury levels found in southern Ontario and southern Quebec, where toxins from incinerators and coal-burning power plants are affecting the environment.

But the scientists said that mercury is "the number one concern" when looking at toxins released by oilsands production, with "indications that the toxin is building up in some of the region's wildlife." The contamination is further worrying to environmental groups and First Nations concerned about the oilsands' impact on fishing, hunting and wildlife.

Environment Canada wildlife scientist Craig Herbert told the toxicology conference that the eggs of several species of waterbirds downstream of the oilsands have been showing increasing levels of mercury, with levels found in the majority of Caspian Tern eggs in 2012 exceeding "the lower toxicity threshold."

Kirk's team measured contaminants in cores of the snowpack collected from over 100 sites near the oilsands every March, to calculate how much pollution enters the ecosystem at spring melt after gathering in snow over winter.

The team's 2011 results confirmed that "aerial loadings" of 13 priority pollutant elements including mercury were 13 to 15 times higher at sites within 50 km of the upgraders that convert bitumen into synthetic crude oil, and "highest within 10 km of the upgraders," according to the presentation abstract.

The results "support earlier findings that the bitumen upgraders and local Oil Sands development are sources of airborne emissions to the Alberta Oil Sands Region."

The researchers also found up to 19 nanograms of methyl mercury per square metre near oilsands sites, which is 16 times the region's background level. Postmedia News reports that this is the first finding of this more toxic form of mercury in snow. The finding is significant because, as the abstract explains, "methyl mercury is a neurotoxin that bioaccumulates through foodwebs."

"Here we have a direct source of methyl mercury being emitted in this region and deposited to the landscapes and water bodies," Kirk told Postmedia News. "So come snowmelt that methyl mercury is now going to enter lakes and rivers where potentially it could be taken up directly by organisms and then bioaccumulated and biomagnified though food webs."

Muir said that microbes in the snow could be converting mercury into methyl mercury, or that it could be coming from "dust and land disturbances," though there is currently no data to support this.

"To our knowledge, emissions data from blowing dusts due to various landscape disturbances (open pit mines, exposed coke piles, new roads, etc.) and volatilization from tailing ponds are not publicly available," the researchers said.

The research shows that zinc, nickel and vanadium levels in lake sediments peaked in the 1990s following oilsands development, but have fallen off since, which Kirk attributes to "improvements in the air pollution catcher technology at the upgraders."

But levels of mercury and other "crustal elements" in lake sediments have been "going up more or less continually" with the expansion of the oilsands, said Muir, with open pit mines and coke piles possibly contributing to the pollution.

The fact remains that more research is required on why mercury levels are going up and the impact it's having on ecosystems.

"Is it affecting fish levels and is it going to result in increasing fish consumption advisories? We don't know," said Kirk.

But Environment Canada's latest results only confirm the need to further study and address the serious impacts of oilsands development.

Image Credit: Elias Schewel / Flickr

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