This cartoon is too accurate! It’s outrageous that Kenney has not shut down his immensely stupid, big ego room.
UNBELIEVABLE DISRESPECT! WELL, AS THEY SAY, YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID: War room will keep second logo, push on with research and response work, says CEO, The chief commander of Alberta’s oil and gas war room says its second logo is here to stay, despite similarities with the emblem of a California software company by Janet French, January 8, 2020, Calgary Herald
The chief commander of Alberta’s oil and gas war room says its second logo is here to stay, despite similarities with the emblem of a California software company.
“We have no plans to remove that logo, and I’m advised [By CAPP? BY ACQUIFER FRAC’ER GYWN MORGAN/ENCANA?] that we’re not in violation of any sort of law,” said Tom Olsen, chief executive officer of the provincial government-created Canadian Energy Centre (CEC). “We’re going through the process of trademarking it.”
The publicly funded corporation, which exists to present what it says is accurate, up-to-date information about Alberta’s oil and gas industry, has hit a few bumps since its Dec. 11 launch in Calgary, including allegations two of its logos may have been pinched from other companies and sources being interviewed who said it was unclear the CEC was a government-directed information service.
An introductory video released last month by the CEC was pulled offline because it contained the centre’s first — and now discarded — logo, Olsen said. More videos are coming, [oh! arent the masses lucky!] he said in a Tuesday interview.
Olsen called the organization’s early missteps “distractions.” [Roaring laughter. No wonder he didn’t get elected!]
“I knew that there would be a lot of scrutiny.” [SCRUTINY? IT DIDN’T TAKE ANY! FIVE YEAR OLDS COULD PICK THE CORRUPTION, PROPAGANDA AND DIRT OUT OF THE ROOM] he said. “What I would encourage people to do is to look at the work that we do. You look at the website, and the [propaganda] stories that we are producing … I would say the people who are working for me are doing fabulous work [propaganda].”
Give CEC time to scale up, Olsen said
Last month, the Canadian Association of Journalists called on CEC writers to cease using the word “reporter” to describe their role when interviewing people for website articles about Alberta energy.
“When you pretend that a PR (public relations) firm is journalism, that’s positively Orwellian,” association president Karyn Pugliese said last month.
Olsen said Tuesday he has now advised CEC authors to call identify themselves as “writers” or “content producers.” [Gaffaw! Do they get raises with that title?]
The writers “100 per cent” explain what the CEC is when they contact sources for interviews, he said.
“I’m confident that people are aware of who it is they’re talking to,” he said.
Earlier this week, the Opposition NDP called on the government to shut down the war room and redirect its $30-million annual budget to public programs and services.
The premier’s press secretary also told the Calgary Herald this week the CEC’s launch hadn’t gone as smoothly as government had hoped.
The corporation is governed by a board of three cabinet ministers — Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer, Energy Minister Sonya Savage and Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon. Olsen hasn’t yet heard from them about the centre’s opening muddles, he said.
“I think if the board has questions about that, (members) will raise them with me.”
The CEC is mandated to fulfil three roles — research and data gathering, fostering “energy literacy” and responding rapidly when it sees inaccurate information about Canadian oil and gas.
Articles on the centre’s website are intended as both energy literacy and a rapid response tool, Olsen said.
The research and data will be publicly posted as a resource for investors and policy makers, he said. Although he said it would be “peer reviewed,” he did not answer a question about which external sources the CEC might turn to for verifying information it produces.
“We are under so much scrutiny there will be every bit of … outside reviews,” he said. “We’re going to put out research that stands up.”
The CEC was a United Conservative Party government election promise to help combat what it says is a global campaign of misinformation that tarnishes the reputation of Alberta oil and gas.
Subject: Welcome To Toryland!!
Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2020 14:45:46 -0700
From: Stewart Shields email hidden; JavaScript is required
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To most Albertans the “War-Room” created by Jason Kenney is a total failure—however to Kenney it has been a marvellous success!! Kenney has been able to offer something to the oil industry to prove he is the biggest “Petro Pussy” since Ralph Klein who allowed the Idle Well Scandal to grow beyond all expectations—while claiming to have balanced Alberta’s budget?? Then Kenney by starting the CEC has openings for those Conservatives who were defeated at the polls with very well paying jobs!! A comparative of how Alberta Government’s have managed their public’s ownership of Alberta’s petroleum properties should indeed has some members of our governments investigated for their stupid over generosity to our energy developers?? Allowing the energy industry to use the publics royalty production to pay for their Capital Costs—including Foreign as well as domestic energy developers should have brought jail time to those who voted for such an unusual anti Alberta-and anti Canadian act??
We have already saw the use of government grease to finance how the needed justice- was to be handled by a law-firm who have an owner who’s father was in charge of hiring a law-firm!! Nice work if you can get it!!
Hunting “bogey men” by a group of misfits have other Canadian politicians busting a gut laughing at Albertans—who have already have an industry owned union [propaganda machine CAPP] who receive $4.64 dollars per equivalent bbl. of oil produced up to a max. of $3.1 million and a minimum of $5000 ?
The need for a government owned entity to further enrich the richest industry in Canada is totally ridiculous!! We recognize our Premier has made good use of a criminal mind to gain a political seat in Alberta—however naming those who help him secure that seat by use of criminal activities to large jobs within our government with outrageous salaries must be corrected by the RCMP or our federal justice system? Welcome again To Toryland!!
Stewart Shields
Shut down the ‘ridiculous’ Canadian Energy Centre war room, NDP urges, Wielding a list of 10 apparent missteps in its first weeks, NDP energy critic Irfan Sabir called on Alberta’s premier to shut down a government-created war room that purports to correct misinformation about Canadian oil and gas by Janet French, January 6, 2020, Calgary Herald with files from The Canadian Press
Wielding a list of 10 apparent missteps in its first weeks, NDP energy critic Irfan Sabir called on Alberta’s premier to shut down a government-created war room that purports to correct misinformation about Canadian oil and gas.
Standing in front of a slide reading, “Jason Kenney’s War Room is a costly, ridiculous failure,” Sabir on Monday said the Calgary-based Canadian Energy Centre (CEC) has committed a series of blunders that have damaged, not uplifted, the reputation of the oil and gas industry.
… A United Conservative Party election promise, the provincial government created the CEC as a private corporation to tell positive stories [more accurately, fabrications] about Alberta’s oil and gas industry using propaganda articles, opinion pieces, speaking engagements and by conducting research, among other methods. …
The CEC has had some awkward moments since its Dec. 11, 2019, launch.
Energy centre head, an unsuccessful UCP election candidate, Tom Olsen pulled the CEC’s first logo after it appeared nearly identical to the logo of an American software company. Another company has since said it’s investigating after the CEC’s second logo appears to be a rotated version of their logo.
Olsen has been mocked by critics for a slip of the tongue in a TV interview in which he said the purpose of the centre is about “disproving true facts.”
The CEC also claimed a column printed by the Medicine Hat News contained inaccuracies, and requested the paper print a response from the centre, which it did. [but failed to point out any inaccuracies!]
… On Monday, Sabir also pointed to the CEC’s promotional video disappearing from YouTube, a war room parody Twitter account with more followers than the actual CEC and the website’s terms of use agreement stating it cannot “warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information.” [A vital disclaimer when the intent of the CEC is to propagandize for billion dollar profiting oil and gas companies]
“What they have done so far, I think you cannot build credibility on that kind of gross incompetence that you have displayed over the month,” Sabir said. [Gross incompetence seems to run in the blood of Canadian reformer-con-extreme-right-ultra religious politicians, federal and provincial. Steve Harper’s blundering, cruel, law-violating, massive debt accumulating gov’t, where MPs including Jason Kenney caused a tremendous amount of grief for many on the taxpayer’s dime, clearly shows us what we can expect from the Kenney govt and the kopykat’s war room and witch hunt]
… The government also said the former NDP government did “nothing to defend Alberta’s oil and gas industry.” While in office, former NDP premier Rachel Notley travelled to Toronto, Washington, D.C., New York and B.C. among other destinations, to drum up support for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C.
During a 2018 premiers’ meeting in Montreal, the former NDP government also bought building projections and print advertisements imparting the importance to Canada of oil pipeline access.
A few excellent comments to the article below:
Danny Yeoman
$120 million for a website that no one cares about. Great allocation of resources. Oh, and we’re not allowed to know what the money is being used for. Totally corrupt.
Greg Peden
Don this is what happens after you help a government become elected through dishonest reporting of the facts. Please take a moment to savor the fruits of your hard work.
Tyrone Shoelaces
Third logo within a couple of months coming right up. Seems to me they couldn’t run a piss-up in a brewery. Sad.
David joe
Kenney is such a little smug coward that he needs Christine Myatt to make up his stupid excuses.
Ed Henderson
Competency is something not well known to politicians unless it involves hiding the truth or shifting blame to others.
Richard Fantin
Still waiting for any post media to acknowledge that the very foundation this propaganda centre was created on was a false outright lie: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/10/03/analysis/data-based-dismantling-jason-kenneys-foreign-funding-conspiracy-theory
Riddle me this, what type of governments around the world fund state run propaganda centres? Dictatorships? Communist? Supporters of state-run propaganda can not call themselves “small government conservatives”. The UCP is corporate socialist and everything they do – handing tax cuts to profitable corporations, funding state run propaganda to propagandize on their behalf, and handing their own carbon tax back to them as free PR demonstrates this is true. Can anyone name one actual conservative thing they’ve done? And if you say cuts then you need to explain why these “conservative cuts” resulted in a larger deficit.
David joe to Richard Fantin
It’s just a money laundering scam created by the debunked rags to riches blogger, Vivian Krause a Duffy discovery. Wake up Albertans we are paying for a money scam while services are being cut and the deficit is multiplying but this time there are no good results.
UCP acknowledges troubled launch of war room by Don Braid, Jan 6, 2020, Calgary Herald
Disappointed in the Canadian Energy Centre, better known as the war room? [What!? I’m not disappointed in Kenney’s continuing clusterfuck! I’m too busy laughing at him and his clan doing CAPP’s dirty work]
You have plenty of company there — including the Alberta government.
UCP patience is fading, although not yet exhausted, over slips involving logos and clumsy attacks on Alberta critics.
“We obviously would have preferred for things to go more smoothly,” says Christine Myatt, Premier Jason Kenney’s deputy communications director.
“It clearly hasn’t been smooth sailing. But this is a new thing we’re doing. [It’s not new! It’s as old as Alberta politics! Alberta politicos have been stealing taxpayer funds to pimp and lie for polluting law-violating oil and gas companies for decades. Harper did it too, and Harper targeted groups raising concerns about life-threatening pollution from the coal, oil and gas industries.]
“Right now, it’s just about smoothing out the bumps. [Ha, the bumps haven’t manifested yet. Just wait]
“This was a major election promise by the premier and at this point we see no reason to make any changes.” [Of course not, CAPP won’t allow it!]
[ROARING LAUGHTER! One of the worst – or best (if you are a billion dollar profiting oil and gas company), propandists in Canada, after CAPP, Steve Harper and Jason Kenney! What a farce] The CEC itself is hiring Deborah Jaremko, senior editor of the Daily Oil Bulletin, apparently as content editor.
This further loads up the outfit with former journos — five by the latest count. [Ya, the Benny Hill Outfit!]
On Monday, NDP energy critic Irfan Sabir called for the government to disband the centre and put its $30-million annual budget to better use.
Sabir said the NDP agrees with promoting the oil and gas industry, but it’s really a job for the energy department, not a quasi-private company flush with government funds. [It’s not the job of the energy dept either. It’s the job of industry (and its propaganda producing lobby groups like CAPP), and only industry, not sleazy lying thieving politicians or journalists]
“What we have seen so far is just a list of blunders,” he said. “That’s why we call on the premier to scrap this.
“It would be funny if it wasn’t costing Albertans $82,000 per day.” [IT IS SO FUNNY. IT’S INCREDIBLY FUNNY. I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE CEC’S NEXT BLUNDER, PERHAPS CREATED BY JAREMKO!]
Sabir gets that figure by dividing $30 million by 365.
He calls it a “slush fund” for donors and failed candidates, including CEO Tom Olsen.
Sabir offers no evidence, but the suspicion can stick because of CEC’s partial immunity to freedom of information requests.
The UCP points out that two-thirds of the funding comes from the industry carbon tax, and the rest is money the NDP had planned to spend, “re-profiled” to the CEC budget.
The CEC was conceived by Kenney at a huge UCP rally on May 5, 2018, as a tool to rebut unfair critics and provide accurate information. [Kenney is a Kopy Kat, and a lousy one at that. Alberta’s current and extremely stupid war room is not a new creation, it’s old. Just ask Israel and other ruling politicians past and current, including Notley and Steve Harper]
But so far, there have been two attempts to launch a logo without offending somebody already using it. There was the imbroglio over an environmental speaker at a school. CEC employees have called themselves reporters, without revealing their real mission. [They don’t need to reveal it, their actions reveal it: lies, more lies, bullying, more bullying, idiocy, more idiocy and propaganda – lots and lots and lots of low quality propaganda, all to keep polluters and CAPP happy and divide and conquer Albertans]
Less than a month after its launch, the CEC is widely derided and satirized (“George Orwell meets the Three Stooges,” one wit said on Twitter). [SEE! IT’S TREMENDOUSLY FUNNY!]
This kind of focused counterattack was probably inevitable after Kenney touted the war room in bellicose language.
At the launch on Dec. 11, Kenney said: “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.”
He and Olsen also promised the agency will act with “respect, civility and professionalism.” [WHICH THEY, THE DUFUSES, KEEP PROVING – BY THEIR OWN ACTIONS – THEY ARE INCAPABLE OF! ROARING LAUGHTER JUST WON’T STOP!]
There’s no question that the industry is often unfairly portrayed and attacked. Many critics will never have a kind word to say. The government has every right to respond. [The industry is being attacked with the truth, the whole truth and little but the truth, and Braid, the CEC and Kenney know it]
But by creating an agency solely for that purpose, the UCP has handed the opposing forces a single, cash-rich, high-profile target.
The CEC compounds its troubles in odd ways. For instance, it doesn’t even stand behind the many stories on its own website.
[Of course not! The CEC’s purpose is to propagandize for industry. Truth is not on the war room’s agenda. If it was, it would never have been created. And worse, the premise the foolish room was created on has been publicly exposed as an enormous falsehood, yet Kenney continues with the horrifically money wasting scam.]
The website Terms of Use includes this remarkable statement:
“We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information. [which the war room likely copied from the AER.]
“Any reliance you place on such information is strictly at your own risk.
“We disclaim all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on such materials by you or any other visitor to the website, or by anyone who may be informed of any of its contents.”
Most big commercial and organization websites publish general terms of use, but it’s unique for any agency to call BS on itself. [See how funny the CEC is!?]
The UCP can hardly ditch the war room. That would bring a massive loss of face. [Mr. Braid, I beg to differ. The only way the war room will save face, is to apologize, loudly, and widely, and close its doors, permanently and use what ever money might be left over, to hire back some direly needed nurses]
But it surely can’t go on for four years. Not like this.
The Silly, Scary Truth about Alberta’s New Ministry of Truth, Ridiculed for their lies and bumbling, Jason Kenney’s propagandists soldier on by Andrew Nikiforuk, 1 Jan 2020, TheTyee.ca
Jason Kenney is learning that it’s not easy to set up a state-run propaganda agency.
Right off the bat, the Alberta premier’s “war room” swore, as every propaganda outfit does, that it would “reject what is false and promote what is true.”
The agency, officially named the Canadian Energy Centre and launched earlier this month with an annual budget of $30 million, picked one of its first battles with the Medicine Hat News.
That newspaper’s crime was to publish an opinion piece by Jeremy Appel that lambasted the agency’s motives: “Its entire premise is based on the notion that anyone who opposes oilsands expansion is a liar with ulterior motives.”
Appel called the war room “an expensive joke” and “a grave threat to our right to dissent.”The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada
And he criticized Kenney for arguing, just like the extremist Ezra Levant, that the province needed a propaganda agency because Canadian oil is more ethical than Saudi or Russian oil.
“Are Albertans supposed to pat themselves on the back because they don’t jail and execute dissidents, but merely dedicate public resources to their vilification and harassment without a shred of transparency?”
Appel’s column proved something that George Orwell once wrote: that “if liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
And so, the CEC immediately swung into action. Grady Semmens, a CEC agent and former Trans Canada PR guy, sent the paper a note saying it wanted to respond to the “comments and inaccuracies” in Appel’s column. (For the record, Semmens describes himself as “a purpose-driven public affairs professional.”)
The subsequent “guest column” makes no mention of any “inaccuracies” but swears the propaganda outfit will be “informative, positive and educational.”
But how can a group staffed largely by conservative partisans or hydrocarbon fundamentalists be anything but ideological, political and false?
It starts at the top. Tom Olsen, CEC’s managing director, used to serve as the press secretary for Tory premier Ed Stelmach and was a failed United Conservative Party candidate in the last election. (Count Olsen as at least one Albertan put back to work by Kenney.)
Pumping a deflated ‘enemy’
Olsen and his indoctrinators, employing the Orwellian technique of inventing an enemy, pretend to be fighting a war against a foreign-funded, anti-oilsands campaign that largely ended four years ago. As Olsen blared, his agency “is a direct response to the domestic and foreign-funded campaigns against Canada’s oil and gas industry that have divided Canadians and devastated the Alberta economy as energy production in the United States and elsewhere has ramped up.”
Apparently Olsen has no knowledge of the 2014 oil price collapse, or other well-documented factors hurting his province’s petro-prospects.
And he apparently also forgot that years ago, four oilsands executives sat down with five environmental groups involved in the anti-tarsands campaign led by Tzeporah Berman. In backrooms, they all agreed to a half-assed plan to limit emissions as opposed to production, which, rightly or wrongly, largely derailed the campaign.
The NDP government later joined in the climate policy agreement, leading to a splashy announcement in November 2015.
Retiring Suncor executive Steve Williams confirmed the war’s end in an interview in the Calgary Herald last year: “If you look at the vigour of the off-oilsands campaign, it hasn’t been there. You’ve seen projects approved, you’ve seen Fort Hills built and started up.”
Still, no good propagandist discards a deflated enemy when falsely pumping one up better serves his purpose. Fighting a battle that has largely ended is surely good work if you can get it.
Branding boondoggle
But propaganda machines need something else to run smoothly — slick branding. Here again Kenney’s gang keeps goofing up. Almost immediately Alberta’s erstwhile Ministry of Truth found itself under attack for sporting a logo trademarked by the U.S.-based Progress Software.
What self-respecting propaganda agency can go to war without a credible logo?
One of the logos for the Canadian Energy Centre, we think. It might be the second, and might not be the last.
Quickly the CEC brain trust acknowledged the mistake, pulled it, and replaced it with another apparently ripped-off logo. Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid suspects the agency will come out with an appropriate logo “after checking carefully to ensure it’s not the flag of a major nation.” And now there’s a war room logo generator to help.
What about that distinctly federal-sounding name: the Canadian Energy Centre?
According to Energy Minister Sonya Savage, the centre got called the Canadian and not the Albertan Energy Centre because the energy industry is “the beating heart of Canada.”
Unfortunately the agency occupies a clogged artery of like-sounding namesakes.
The Canadian Energy Centre can, but should not be confused with the Canadian Energy Research Institute, the Canada Energy Regulator, Canada Action, or for that matter the Canadian Energy Network. All serve to remind us that Canada’s petro powers were not already without plenty of self-funded, truth-twisting boosters.
The Canadian Energy Network, a proud propaganda arm of industry, says, “Canadian hydrocarbons are an incredible resource that saves lives every day.”
The Canadian Energy Centre, a propaganda arm of the Alberta government that comes with its own “reporters,” says, “Canadian oil and natural gas can make this country and the world better.”
It is gratifying that both industry and government propaganda centres with similar names can share similar messages, such as that liquefied natural gas exports are great for the climate. But taxpayers might wonder why they need a government agency to say the same things that a corporate propaganda outfit is already saying with greater competence.
Indeed, when journalist and climate crisis activist Bill McKibben called out Canada in the Globe and Mail for hastening a global catastrophe and argued “keeping Alberta’s oil underground is going to become as crucial a global priority as keeping the Amazon rain forest standing tall,” Kenney’s Ministry of Truth swung into quick response. And so botched its tweeted rebuttal that University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach and others immediately, and humiliatingly, piled on with tweeted replies detailing its falsehoods.
Did that shame Kenney’s soldiers of subterfuge? Or will they simply shrug and crank up the echo effect? “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly — it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” So said Adolf Hitler, who knew something about propaganda.
Alberta’s long history of bullying journalists
Bullying the press is nothing new in Alberta. For a long time premier Ralph Klein used the Public Affairs Bureau to harass and mute critics.
The Stelmach government tried something called “For the Record,” but it just lowered the province’s credibility.
Tory MLAs even told Albertans not to read my (now decade-old) cautionary book on the perils of rapid tarsands development in 2008.
But Kenney’s government really appears to be drawing its inspiration from the Social Credit party, which ruled Alberta from 1935 to 1971. (Albertans prefer one-party states, just like the Russians and the Chinese.)
In 1935, Bible Bill Aberhart won a landslide election by promoting bizarre economic ideas in an Alberta badly unsettled by the Great Depression. Aberhart, who had his own evangelical radio station, won 56 of the 63 seats in the Alberta legislature by mostly blaming the depression on eastern bankers.
The Bible thumper also accused eastern bankers of conspiring to limit credit for Albertans, the same way Kenney, more than 60 years later, accused environmentalists of conspiring to keep the province’s oil resources in the ground. (Kenney won 63 out of 87 seats in 2019 election on the basis of that claim.)
Just like Kenney, Aberhart didn’t like a critical press because it questioned his lies and challenged his wonky conspiracy theories.
The democratic workings of the press so depressed Aberhart that he declared on his weekly Christian radio show that he was “glad there will be no newspapers in heaven.”
To deal with the media, Aberhart came up with the Accurate News and Information Act in 1938.
The so-called Alberta Press Bill was packaged with extreme economic reforms, including one bill giving the province the power to illegally tax federal banks.
The anti-press bill proposed to give a government board the power to demand publication of “corrections” or “amplifications” in response to disconcerting or critical news stories within 24 hours. Any newspaper that refused to comply would be fined up to $1,000 a day. The bill gave the premier the power to force reporters to reveal their sources and the cabinet the authority to suspend any publication.
The Edmonton Journal led the crusade against this dangerous attack on press freedom, for which it eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. The Supreme Court of Canada quickly deemed the bill unconstitutional.
In the court’s ruling, one federal judge offered great insight into Alberta’s delusional state, and why Aberhart thought he needed to control and muzzle the press:
“It is, therefore, essential to control the sources of information of the people of Alberta, in order to keep them immune from any vacillation in their absolute faith in the plan of the Government.”
The premier and his party in power had proven enemies of democracy, concluded the judge, assuming their “doctrine must become, for the people of Alberta, a sort of religious dogma of which a free and uncontrolled discussion is not permissible.”
In Alberta, history repeats itself first as tragedy, and now as unbridled farce.
Refer also to:
Hey KopyKatKenney War Room! Make the logo round — like a pipe you dummies! Logo Next up – Nike’s.
Happy Hallowe’en to you and yours, from the back door to Steve Allan’s War Room Inquiry in Alberta!
