One of the comments to the CBC article on ASRG FB page:
Grant Collies: Tom Olsen from this point onward shall be known as Stupid Goebbels.
Most liked comment of the over 4,700 comments (as of 8:20 pm) at CBC, with a few reponses to it:
Arthur Vandalay
It’s not a war room against anti-oil types. Its a war room against truth.
David Mccaig Reply to @Arthur Vandalay:
The media, someone of prominence needs to publicly ask Jason Kenney , how can Alberta right now be the 5th largest producer of oil in the world and claim they’re broke. I can tell you, they’ve negotiated deals with oil cartel , that not only give them most of the tar sands oil money, but theres a hidden agenda to make the Canadian tax payer pay for the cartels externalities like pipelines. [and all the clean up and abandonments, and illegally frac’d aquifers and and and]
Can you imagine the gall of a man under RCMP investigation accused of rigging his own election, declaring war on anyone who opposes his political agenda which encompasses some of the most radical changes to Canadian society or his threatened support of WEXIT separatists if anyone in any of the other provinces oppose him and using our taxes to carry out that war.
Don Cheer Reply to @Arthur Vandalay:
$195,000 a year clearly proves being a friend of Kenney has it’s benefits
He’d have made less as a MLA but Albertan’s rejected him
THE ‘WAR ROOM’ FINALLY LAUNCHES: $30-MILLION AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS LOUSY WEBSITE? by David Climenhaga, Dec 12, 2019, Alberta Politics
The mighty voice of Alberta’s beleaguered oil industry, the long promised and much-touted $30-million “Energy War Room,” stumbled out of the starting gate yesterday after a news conference in Calgary graced by the presence of Premier Jason Kenney and Energy Minister Sonya Savage.
At least, as the self-described purveyor of a “fact-based narrative about Canadian energy” that “will reject what is false and promote what is true,” it was embarrassing the inaugural online message from Canadian Energy Centre Ltd.’s $200,000-per-annum CEO included an error serious enough to require an immediate official correction.
Have they no fact checkers? Wasn’t that the idea?
Still, it’s nice to know it’s not just the rest of us who are confused about whether the rebranded War Room is a government agency, a Crown corporation, or a provincial corporation sneakily set up to avoid accountability under Alberta’s Freedom of Information and Privacy (FOIP) legislation.
The confusion, obviously, extended to CEO and Managing Director Tom Olsen, a former Calgary Herald reporter, Progressive Conservative political staffer and United Conservative Party candidate whose inaugural “column” on CanadianEnergyCentre.ca stated unequivocally that CECL is a Crown corporation. [Roaring laughter! It likely is. Was their statement a slip of the freudian tongue? FOIP Kenney/Olsen’s War Room anyways, no matter what promises/statements gov’t makes that the room is unFOIPable.]
This resulted in some head scratching, as most earlier news coverage reported it was set up as a private corporation, albeit one owned by the government, to avoid being FOIPed.
By early afternoon, though, a correction appeared on the website explaining “an earlier version of this column identified the Canadian Energy Centre as a Crown corporation. In fact, it is a provincial government corporation. This column has been updated to reflect that fact.”
As for whether the new entity is subject to FOIP requests, that remained unclear. [FOIP it anyways, let the Commissioner rule on that. Although Kenney will likely fire her too] At the news conference, Ms. Savage told reporters it would be open to FOIPs, CTV reported. The premier’s press secretary, Christine Myatt, said in a statement it would not.
Yesterday afternoon, CECL spokesperson Grady Semmens, one of four former Calgary Herald staffers on the War Room’s eight-member staff, said in an email to AlbertaPolitics.ca that CECL is a provincial corporation, wholly owned by the Government of Alberta, and not subject to FOIP.
The other CECL employees, according to the website, are former Postmedia columnist Claudia Catteneo, administrator Joanne Birce, former Fraser Institute commentator Mark Milke, former Herald reporter Shawn Logan, Indigenous relations specialist Gregory John, and researcher Sophie Gaussiran-Racine.
While there was plenty of media at the news conference at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and lots of students clad in trades apparel to provide a suitable backdrop [how big were the bribes and or Christmas bonuses?] for Mr. Kenney and Ms. Savage, very little was said that was not included in the Energy Minister’s Oct. 9 press release announcing the plan or the news coverage that followed its publication.
The website itself, designed to look like a bit like a typical newspaper site, is underwhelming.
The dozen stories posted there yesterday read like business features from the Calgary Herald in the 1980s, around the time Mr. Olsen and Content Director Catteneo were working there. As an alumnus of that newspaper at the same time, I can assure readers this is not a compliment. [As a reader of the paper at that time, I can also assure readers that is not a compliment!]
Here is a summary of the entire contents on the site last night:
- A long lead story based on controversial claims about emissions from natural gas extraction that makes the counterintuitive assertion “expanding access to Canada’s vast fossil fuel resources will significantly lower global greenhouse gas emissions.”
- A similarly longwinded feature claiming [frac’d!!] liquid natural gas exports are good for the planet, and that people who say otherwise are mistaken.
- A feature on a First Nations businessman behind a pipeline proposal.
- Another about a parent employed by a Calgary oil and gas exploration company who is riled up by an environmental group’s presentation at his child’s class. (Does the Alberta Teachers Association have a take on this, I wonder?) [I wonder how much the parent got paid]
- A gee-whiz feature that reveals artificial limbs often contain parts made from petrochemicals. Who knew?
- Another about a company that uses solar panels to power a drilling site. Takeaway: “Solar can’t stand on its own.”
- A clickbait-style What’s-Your-Energy-IQ quiz.
- An oilsands FAQ rich in opportunities for environmental groups to dig in and do some fact checking of their own. Takeaway: billionaire Bill Gates thinks divesting oil stocks won’t do anything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
- A first-person story on an Alberta trade mission to Japan by four Indigenous business people.
- A feature on greenhouses that reveals … wait for it … they can use natural gas to keep the tomatoes from freezing on cold nights!
- An interview with a university of Alberta engineering professor who thinks there’s too much anger in the debate about the oilsands — on one side, anyway. “Dirty oil or tar sands are not helpful words at all.”
- A feature on a young engineer now completing an MBA who loves working in the oilpatch.
The site also includes an infographic that lists all the wonderful things that can be made by the contents of a barrel of oil (rubber ducks! shampoo! medical syringes!), a video (“Canadian oil and gas makes our world better! It just does!”), and a couple of links to friendly stories in the Financial Post and Globe and Mail.
And, um, that’s about it. Notwithstanding Mr. Kenney’s promise we Albertans “will no longer passively accept a campaign of defamation seeking to landlock one of Canada’s greatest assets,” there was not much that was particularly hard hitting on the site yesterday.
It’s all very well to publish obsequious feature stories about people you agree with. It’s quite another to get anyone to read them, a prerequisite to their having much impact. This site, as written yesterday, is not going to win a lot of converts.
Of course, CECL’s $30-million budget is also supposed to pay for a “rapid response unit” headed by Dr. Milke that will fire back at arguments the government disputes, and a research unit to supply data to investors like the Swedish central bank who are selling holdings in carbon-intensive economies like Alberta’s.
But if this is supposed to live up to Premier Kenney’s vow yesterday that Albertans “refuse to sit here and be a punching bag anymore,” he may want to come up with a Plan B.
If this is the most convincing we can be, he might want to ask Matt Wolf, his “executive director of issues management,” to tear up some bedsheets for use as white flags.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney launches ‘energy war room’ to take on oil critics by Emma Graney, Dec 11, 2019, Calgary Herald
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has launched his government’s long-awaited “energy war room,” armed with a $30-million budget to target environmentalists, journalists and anyone else it believes is spreading “misinformation and lies” about Canadian energy.
Mr. Kenney launched the Canadian Energy Centre Ltd. in Calgary on Wednesday, making good on an election promise to establish an oil industry war room to bolster and counter criticism of the sector.
Mr. Kenney said the CEC will be composed of a rapid response unit to “issue swift responses to misinformation about Canadian energy,” an energy literacy unit to create original content about the sector and a research unit to analyse oil industry data targeting investors, researchers and policy makers. [Nothing new here except the huge money stolen by Kenney from Albertans, to pimp for the polluting oil patch]
Kopy Kat Kenney Check:
2012: Energy Literacy in Canada by the School of Public Policy, University of Calgary
End Kopy Kat Kenney Check
The Premier roundly rejected the suggestion the CEC will be a propaganda arm for the government and oil sector, even though it is already producing its own content.
The CEC website, launched Wednesday, includes a story about an Alberta dad “irked” by an environmental presentation about oil and gas to his son’s class, another story tying artificial-limb advancement to the petrochemical industry and opinion pieces.
Other governments have faced similar criticisms after producing their own quasi-news content, including Ontario Premier Doug Ford with his caucus-funded Ontario News Now communications service.
Mr. Kenney also rejected the notion the CEC could impinge on free speech as it targets what he believes is an international environmentalist campaign against Alberta’s oil sands.
“If there are organizations that use their free speech to put misinformation into the public sphere, we will respond. That’s not attacking free speech, it’s responding to the content of the speech. That’s called public discourse, and the CEC will do it with respect, civility and professionalism,” he said. [Since when does Kenney tell the truth?]
“When they lie about us, we are going to tell the truth. When they seek to mislead people, we will offer people the facts.”
One third of the CEC budget comprises funds redirected from government advertising. The rest comes from Alberta’s carbon tax on large emitters, the Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction system, which also funds green technology research.
That the war room uses TIER cash and therefore strips valuable dollars from emission reduction research [That’s the intent!] is a problem for Duncan Kenyon, Alberta director of environmental think tank the Pembina Institute.
The oil sector needs as much disruptive innovation as possible to let it stay in the global energy game, he said in an interview, and those technologies rely on investments from TIER.
Instead of using $30-million to fight global climate change and economic issues facing the oil sector, Mr. Kenyon suggested the government should acknowledge those “immovable realities.”
“You’re fighting against a tide. You can’t win,” he said. “They are absolutely jeopardizing the financial and economic health of this province by not acknowledging that and not talking about solutions.”
Ultimately, Mr. Kenyon said, “the war room is doomed.”
The war room’s managing director, Tom Olsen, was adamant his organization will “offer a narrative based on fact.”
Mr. Olsen, a former journalist and [loser] UCP candidate, said Wednesday the CEC would be “part new media organization and part think tank research hub” that will use all available tools at its disposal to spread its message, from tradition and social media to advertising.
“Where falsehoods are spread, we will respond,” he said.
The war room has been factored into the Alberta budget for the next four years. After that, Mr. Kenney said, it will receive a performance evaluation to determine whether it has been effective.
The province registered the CEC as a private corporation rather than an Crown agency in order to shield it from access-to-information laws, which the government says provides it with a “tactical” advantage.
Alberta’s energy ‘war room’ launches in Calgary, The program aims to fight what the government calls misinformation about the province’s energy industry by Drew Anderson, CBC News, Dec 11, 2019
Premier Jason Kenney’s $30 million “war room” officially launched in Calgary today — an effort to combat what his United Conservative Party government calls misinformation about Alberta’s energy industry.
The operation, set up as a private corporation and officially titled the Canadian Energy Centre, will be headed by former UCP candidate Tom Olsen, who lost to the NDP’s Joe Ceci in the recent provincial election.
“Our starting point is that Canadian oil and gas makes the world a better place,” said Olsen at the launch.
“There will be a demand for fossil fuels for years to come and Canada, with its focus on [VIOLATING] environmental rights and human rights, is ideally positioned to meet that demand.”
The war room will have three sections:
A “rapid-response” unit to issue “swift responses to misinformation spread through social media.” [Ha, roaring laughter! Good luck trying. Greta is leaving lying Albertans in their frac fumes, $30 Million lying war room, witch hunt and all.]
An “energy literacy” unit to “create original content to elevate the general understanding of Alberta’s energy sector, and help the province take control of its energy story.”
A “data and research” unit to centralize and analyze data “to reinforce this story with factual evidence for investors, researchers and policy makers.” [ROARING LAUGHTER! MORE THAN TOO LATE. INVESTORS HAVE BEEN ESCAPING THE OIL PATCH AND THE BIG LOSSES FOR A WHILE NOW. Investors also do not want to be hung with Alberta’s hundreds of billions of dollars in intentional (set up by CAPP, AER and govt) oil patch liabilities.]
Those three sections will produce social media, television ads and campaigns targeting investors in cities like London and New York.
Broader campaign
The war room is part of an aggressive push by the UCP government to promote the province’s oil and gas industry, the primary driver of Alberta’s struggling economy.
“We were not doing nearly enough to tell the truth in response to a campaign of lies, of defamation and disinformation based on torqued, dated and incomplete and out of context attacks on our energy sector,” said Kenney at the launch. [“Stupid is, as stupid does.”]
“What I personally, and I think Albertans, find unacceptable is that our industry has been placed in a double standard compared to energy produced in places like Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.”
In addition to the war room, Kenney’s government also has launched a public inquiry into what it calls the “foreign funding of anti-energy campaigns,” a popular rhetorical target for the government.
Critics
Despite the repeated references by the inquiry and the premier to “foreign-funded radicals” lobbying against Alberta’s energy sector, Olsen said the energy centre will have a “hopeful, unifying and uplifting” tone. [How? Walking Calgary streets, singing Christmas carols to AER and CER staff in their homes?]
Critics have called the war room a government propaganda operation. Kenney rejected that argument on Wednesday, arguing the new operation will counter propaganda from those who oppose oil and gas development.
One of the environmental groups targeted by Kenney and the UCP is the Pembina Institute, a think-tank that works with the oil and gas industry on responsible development of energy resources.
“It is very useful to have enemies when you’re trying to have a polarized approach to success,” said the organization’s Alberta director Duncan Kenyon. [Oh Pembina, you know you’re in on the Kenney scam and have zero credibility anymore.]
“And it’s easy to characterize, to paint everyone as one, and Pembina gets sort of lumped into an ‘enemy’ bucket.”
Kenyon said now is the time to have hard conversations about the future of the province and its current business strategy, and about how to move forward on climate change. Instead, he said, “we are actually entrenching in this game of PR sound bites and polarization.”
He said he thinks Alberta is well placed for a de-carbonized future and has the technology to move forward, as long as the government is committed to the change.
The war room will be funded by pulling $20 million per year from the province’s new carbon tax and $10 million per year from the government’s existing advertising fund [If that’s true, then the war room is FOIP-able!], according to the recent provincial budget.
Olsen will receive a salary of $195,000 per year to head the organization.
The newly launched Canadian Energy Centre website lists eight additional staff, but Olsen says that number will grow. [UCP losers like Tom Olsen or maybe those punted from the AER recently, eg Mark Lying Taylor?]
Kenney’s $30-million war room vows to fight clean by Don Braid, December 11, 2019, Calgary Herald
On May 5, 2018, thousands of UCP conventioneers howled with glee when Jason Kenney promised “a fully-staffed, rapid-response war room in government.” [Ha ha ha! Jokes on the idiots. Now, they’re watching Kenney give billions of dollars in freebies to billion dollar profit raping — mostly FOREIGN — oil and gas companies while decimating health, education, and more as the jobs continue vanishing, Kenney’s economy flushes down into Alberta sewers with hydrocarbon contaminated water and the hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities and abandoned wells and messes continue to grow.]
It would “quickly and effectively rebut every lie told by the green left about our world-class energy industry,” said Kenney, then the Opposition leader.
This “world-class?”
Above are comments to an Andrew Nikiforuk article in the Tyee in 2019
And here it is. The name is tame — Canadian Energy Centre — but it’s no less fierce of purpose and has $30 million to spend.
“We refuse to sit here and be a punching bag,” the premier said during the CEC launch at SAIT on Tuesday. [Kenney has no ethics, no integrity, no honesty, no guts, no morals and no class – corrupt to the core, even content to rot Alberta youth by launching his CAPP Wish ‘n Hit Project at an education institution after decimating education’s budget.]
“We’re in the fight of our economic lives right now.” [Alberta ain’t seen nothing yet. Investors are educating themselves and running far from oil and gas, notably frac’d and tarred]
Hard-line climate advocates hate the whole idea, of course.
They call it a threat to their free speech, which evidently means that only they can speak, since they are always entirely correct. [Yikes, Mr. Baird, what taudry dribble. It sounds like Encana wrote this piece or maybe Gwyn Morgan.]
The Centre also alarms Albertans who want a softer approach.
Some say $30 million is a lot to spend on a publicity drive when the amount is about equal to, say, the funding cut to the Calgary Board of Education.
One thing nobody wants — including Kenney, it seems — is for this project to descend into daily name calling and insults on Twitter and other social media. [Ha! Too late again! Kenney and his war room slime has been in the gutter since CAPP ‘n Kenney first pimped the ego-overloaded arrogant idiotic waste of money propaganda project.]
None of that, please. But if the CEC really can widely spread the word about responsible oil and gas, along with constant environmental improvement [Way over the top Mr. Baird! Kenney’s war room must be paying you a mighty bonus to write dishonest shit like this], it is certainly worth doing.
For more than a decade Alberta has been savaged by unfair, inaccurate attacks — from within Canada and elsewhere.
The oilsands have been likened to Mordor. Film star Leonardo DiCaprio blamed a routine chinook on climate change. And we know all about pipeline opposition.
Alberta’s image is so tarnished that some think this whole vast province is a polluted wasteland.
Alberta pushback isn’t new. Various private and hybrid organizations have mounted rebuttals on social media for years.
Right now there’s the Canadian Energy Network, which promotes industry benefits and environmental improvements.
The Canadian Energy Research Institute, founded in 1975, has provided detailed analysis for all that time.
The Canadian Centre for Energy Information, backed largely by Encana and started in 2002, promoted industry efforts for some years.
(In a bizarre irony, the identical name now belongs to the federal government, visible on a website that “supports our efforts to meet our climate commitments.”)
But there has never been a well-funded, government-backed body with the sole mission of convincing people that Canadian oil and gas are responsible, environmentally progressive and essential to the economy.
On the first day, the CEC website carried stories about First Nations backing energy development, and advanced artificial limbs made possible by plastics and much else.
Government branding exercises have flopped miserably before — the 2014 provincial uprising against a new licence plate being a prime example, although trivial by comparison.
But Alberta’s economy now faces foes who don’t just oppose oil and gas. They believe the entire industry is illegitimate and should not even have a public voice.
This thinking has been building for the past decade and has now seeped into the Trudeau government.
You might notice that as soon as liquefied natural gas exports became a talking point this week, the broadsides began.
It’s impossible to win against such an entrenched mentality. Even to speak is to be wrong. The only option is to flood the moderate middle with a reasonable, credible and forceful counter story. [If Alberta oil and gas was responsibly developed – without lies and intentionally frac’d drinking water aquifers – there’d be no need for a war room and propaganda]
On Tuesday, Kenney noted that in the face of such opposition Alberta politicians felt that “if we just keep our heads down and didn’t rock the boat all that would just go away.
“That was a huge strategic mistake.”
The whole idea of the CEC is to rock the boat. As a strategy, it can’t possibly be less successful.
Some of the comments to the Herald article:
Ken Morgan
Wow didn’t know we have our version of Trump in Canada. I guess he will be defending Asbestos next?
null null
honestly I don’t think that the rest of Canada is going to appreciate Kenney’s language (“war room” very irresponsible naming it that) and taxpayer funded attacks on the media and others. This will come back to bite them (UPC) and unfortunately taint “every Albertian” with a negative view about how the province is run.
jim gayton
There is absolutely nothing about Kenney that is “clean”. This propaganda machine will only be effective in Alberta. They are the only ones in Canada who refuse to see the the detrimental affects of their tar. They care more about money today that future generation’s air. So noble. Be proud.
Rose Steinmeier
Kenney vows to fight clean? He couldn’t even win the leadership of his party “clean”.
James Tripp
More like a committee on how to spread misinformation and false positives on the benefits of the oil industry while simultaneously trying to completely silence any discussion of the environmental costs to the continuation of fossil fuels,
Those will be the two main purposes of this committee!
Daniel Enkidu
“Kenney’s $30 million war room vows to fight clean [energy]”
Mackenna Wilson
The headline – Kenney’s $30-million war room vows to fight clean – can be read two ways.
- A lie. Kenney employs ratfrackers who abuse the truth.
- The truth. They are literally fighting cleanliness.
Albert Westerman
Such a sad sad day for Alberta’s honorable image when outsiders read and hear all about it creating a “War Room”. I wonder if we’ll see a spoof of it on SNL this weekend? All of that money spent on spin doctors and in the meantime Alberta cuts it’s support of Alberta Best (because I guess they are true artists??? and maybe someone might paint an “Alberta War Room” scene???)
James Ozon
$30 million is a lot of money in tight times to be spent just countering nasty comments and accusations hurled at us from environmentalists. The current downturn has several real causes, business and legal, but none of them involve vocal environmentalists. [The downturn is mostly caused by industry’s own greed]
… Well no, science cannot be ignored even by the likes of Jason Kenney. But what could be possibly worth $30 million? This is a make-work reward to loyal UCP supporters.
Rob Davies
$30M / year will set up a lot of bots and hire more flunky loyalists to control the comments on sites like this. Expect to see more thumbs down when any discord that doesn’t favour the UCP.
How can this guy be trusted?
Colossal error we made electing these rogues
Sam Laroche
The Kenney effect: lay off THOUSANDS of public servants including nurses, teachers, civil servants and countless lives who depend on them. Maybe Alberta should cap redneck jobs at $65k and take the rest to pay for their pensions and kids’ education.
Claude DeRoche
$30 million!
Enough to hire 500 nurses!
Daniel Enkidu IN REPLY TOClaude DeRoche
Or 100 UCP party sycophants who need a little post election graft.
Gary Prusakowski
Kenney, fight fair? Let’s talk about hoe he came to claim the leadership of the UCP and why he fired the ethics commissioner. Let’s talk about all his election promises that he has broken. Yeah Kenney we all believe what a fair honest guy you aren’t.
Mark Houston
Cue the eye rolling…once again Alberta stumbles along in an oafish attempt to protect it’s masters from the patch. Things are bound to get amusing watching these Keystone Kops trip over their own two feet.
Geoffrey Pounder
That’s pretty rich coming from an industry that over the decades has spent multi-millions of dollars funding the climate change denial machine, spreading disinformation, sowing doubt, attacking science and scientists, obstructing climate action, delaying and weakening regulations, all to protect its profits. Now pretending to be the victim. Tough sledding when you don’t have the science on your side.
Bob Mac
Thirty million taxpayer dollars a year. What a delusional waste of our money.
Half a dozen personnel, desks, phones and computers would suffice. The are plenty of office vacancies to choose from. Office furniture included I bet. Be sure to label that floor as the “War Room” on the elevator directory. Post an Alberta Provincial Police officer at the entrance.
The rest of the population (except for corporate folks) need to be frugal and tighten their belts, We must face service cuts in essential services and watch the PC mismanagement go on.
The monkeys are running the zoo again.
War room officially opens; Canadian Energy Centre ready to target ‘lies’ and ‘misinformation,’ The Alberta government formally launched its energy war room Wednesday, tasking the now operational Canadian Energy Centre with pushing back against what Premier Jason Kenney called a “campaign of lies” targeting the province’s oil and gas industry by Amanda Stephenson, Dec 11, 2019, Calgary Herald
… “We were not doing nearly enough to tell the truth in response to a campaign of lies — of defamation and disinformation based on torqued, dated and incomplete and out-of-context attacks,” Kenney said. “We refuse to sit here and be a punching bag anymore. When they lie about us, we will tell the truth.”
The Canadian Energy Centre will be headed by managing director Tom Olsen — a former journalist, unsuccessful UCP candidate and press secretary to former premier Ed Stelmach — and has seven other employees, according to its newly launched website. Of the centre’s budget, $20 million will be funded by industry through the Technology, Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund, while $10 million has been repurposed from advertising spending earmarked by the previous provincial government.
… Kenney acknowledged that previous Alberta governments have made efforts to promote the oilsands abroad and to combat misinformation spread by the industry’s critics. But he said none of these efforts have been as “sustained, well-resourced or ambitious” as this. He said while measuring the success of the centre’s efforts will be difficult, the government will conduct public opinion polling and the centre will be subject to a performance review at the end of the government’s four-year term in office.
Kenney said the Canadian Energy Centre will be expected to use “respect, civility and professionalism” in the course of its work, adding the government has no problem with dissenting opinions, only with factual misinformation. Energy Minister Sonya Savage said factual misinformation is “inexcusable.” [To show the UCP means what it “says,” will it fire lying MLAs and the lying Premier?]
What we know and don’t know about the government’s energy war room
“To those who make such biased, slanted and prejudicial statements about Alberta’s energy sector, you’ve been put on notice,” she said. “This type of activity is going to stop now.” [Ha ha ha! As if citizens concerned for their children’s health and futures are going to heed Mme Bossy Savage or Kenney or Olsen or any UCP for that matter.]
Keith Stewart, senior strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said he fully expects to be targeted by what he called the Alberta government’s “classic bullying moves.” He said while the war room won’t change anything about the way Greenpeace conducts itself, he worries that smaller organizations may be intimidated.
“This (Canadian Energy Centre) is part of a campaign to say Alberta will brook no dissent,” Stewart said. “My concern is more for smaller groups that don’t have in-house lawyers to be able to defend against defamation claims, or organizations who aren’t used to being attacked by government.”
Stewart added that while the idea of a war room fighting for Alberta’s interests may have played well during the provincial election campaign, it won’t help Albertans in the long run.
“We’re facing a climate crisis. If Jason Kenney isn’t going to recognize that, investors are already telling him that he needs to,” he said.
… The centre will be subject to oversight by the auditor general as well as the whistleblower protection act.
A few of the comments:
John Wright
so how many abandoned wells left by this great industry could have been shut in with 30 million………………
Earl Richards
Alberta Big Oil should be paying for the war room and not the taxpayer. We have to get these corporations off the government.
null null
“War room officially opens; Canadian Energy Centre ready to target ‘lies’ and ‘misinformation’…..”
UCP’s own lies and misinformation?
Geoffrey Pounder
Over recent decades the fossil-fuel industry has spent millions of dollars funding the climate change denial machine, spreading disinformation, sowing doubt, attacking science and scientists, obstructing climate action, delaying and weakening regulations, all to protect its profits. Now it pretends to be the victim. Pretty rich, indeed.
War rooms are necessary only when you don’t have the science on your side.
****
Refer also to:
Pick up the tab by Bruce A. McFaul, September 29, 2007, Calgary Herald
One aspect of the royalty review which has been overlooked is how the Tories have treated the oil industry versus us normal Albertans, especially the poor. In 1982, the Tories cut oil industry payments by $5.4 billion unconditionally, while suggesting those on welfare be required to work at menial jobs for 40 hours per week. While premier Ralph Klein enjoyed corporate plane trips to go fishing and royalty payments were kept low, government employees had their pay cut.The minimum wage remained unchanged. Hospitals and schools were closed or left to fall apart. Tuition rates skyrocketed and long-term care residents faced a 40 to 60 per cent rise in their payments. AISH recipients fell further behind and a whole range of social services were cut back.
All of this happened as oil prices climbed to more than $80 per barrel, resulting in record profits and multimillion-dollar incomes for oil executives. Now they have the audacity to whine about fairness. Sorry, guys. Time to belly up to the bar and pay your part of the tab. God knows the rest of us have sacrificed more.
Happy Hallowe’en to you and yours, from the back door to Steve Allen’s War Room Inquiry in Alberta!
Jason Kenney’s approval rating plummets in the wake of steep Alberta budget cuts, Kenney is now the third-least popular premier among the provinces included in the poll, a startling drop from September when he was third from the top by Stuart Thomson, Dec 12, 2019, Calgary Herald
… Kenney is now the third-least popular premier among the provinces included in the poll conducted by DART and Maru/Blue Voice Canada and provided exclusively to Postmedia. That’s a startling drop from September when Kenney was third from the top, behind Quebec Premier François Legault and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe.
The slide in approval comes in the wake of a United Conservative government budget that plans to bring expenditures $1.3 billion below last year’s spending levels. Over the next four years, the government expects to cut $4 billion worth of provincial spending. [While giving the oil patch nearly $5 billion in tax cuts, taken from ordinary and poor Albertans!]
Kenney took a number of measures to buffer himself [Just another con coward, just ex PM Steve Harper, hiding in the closet while publicly boasting of heroics] against political blowback, including forming an independent panel to analyze the province’s fiscal situation and giving a primetime address to Albertans on the night before the budget was unveiled.
Image by Montreal Simon
The province has also suffered job losses in recent months, shedding 18,000 jobs in November and posting an unemployment rate of 20 per cent among young men. [Don’t leave out Encana (aka Ovarytits), Canada’s polluting law-violating aquifer frac’ing, well site bombing in cahoots with the RCMP, giving press the finger pride and joy, running away to the USA]
Kenney and his “team Alberta” of eight minister and 11 deputy ministers returned Wednesday to Alberta after a trip to Ottawa to lobby for a long list of issues concerning the province. Kenney met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday, asking for a boost to provincial transfer payments and a projected date of completion for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, among other things.
The UCP leader may also be suffering from the political fallout of the decision to fire the election commissioner [showing Kenney’s guilt openly to the Court of Public Oinion – the only integral and honest court in Canada], a move that led to Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley making an extraordinary call to the Lieutenant-Governor to block the legislation.
Notley accused Kenney’s government of “breaking the rule of law” by firing the commissioner, who had issued more than $200,000 in fines relating to the UCP leadership race in 2017. In question period last month, Kenney said Notley is simply upset that her party lost the spring election which handed the UCP government a majority.
The poll shows Legault is still the most popular provincial leader in the country with an approval rating of 60 per cent and Moe is in second place with a 56 per cent approval rating.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is in last place with 28 per cent approval, although that’s two percentage points higher than his approval rating in September.
The poll was conducted among a randomly selected panel of 5,035 Canadians who have signed up to receive polling surveys and is accurate to within 1.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Prince Edward Island, Nunavut and both the Yukon and Northwest Territories were excluded from the survey due to extremely small sample sizes.