KENNEY'S WAR ROOM IS JUST ANOTHER TRANSFER OF PUBLIC MONEY TO OIL GIANTS

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Oil companies robbed Albertans during the period when oil prices were high. They paid the lowest royalties in the world to Albertans, as a commission set up by Premier Stelmach determined. When Stelmach tried to raise the royalties by $1 billion, the oil companies bought the Wildrose party, imposed corporate shill Danielle Smith as leader, and forced Stelmach to cry uncle in order to get the oil companies to start financing his Progressive Conservative party once again.

Meanwhile Norwegians, largely extracting oil via a state-owned company, charged royalties many times larger than Alberta's and saved $1.5 trillion Canadian for their citizens for the post-oil era. Alberta, its governments owned lock,stock, and barrel by Big Oil, abandoned Peter Lougheed's modest efforts to save oil revenues for a post-oil era. We have a derisive $20 billion in our Heritage Fund, started in 1975, which means that our average annual savings of less than $500 million a year are about 1.5 percent as large as Norway's annual savings since 1990.

Now Big Oil has its biggest puppet ever in government. Though these companies have continued to make profits during a period of low international prices and their executives get multi-million dollar salaries and perks annually, the Kenney government plans to cut their corporate taxes by a full third to make them the lowest of states and provinces in North America.

And now the taxpayers of Alberta are going to be paying the advertising costs of this rich, taxpayer-subsidized industry that refuses to pay cleanup costs for its messes. The "war room" is just spin for propaganda on behalf of the fossil fuels industry. And at a time when the Alberta goverment and that industry have joined to destroy Alberta's Climate Leadership Plan, they have nothing that is useful to say to Canadians or to people abroad. Under the NDP, the oil industry was being forced to reduce its emissions while the coal industry was being largely shut down. The UCP rejected this "social license" approach and wants the rest of the world to believe that oilsands oil is clean and lovely and pipelines are no threat to oceans or Indigenous people.

The $30 million that is planned to help fat cats in a sunset industry offer their wares would better be spent creating jobs producing renewables. No one is going to be convinced by the con job of the Alberta Cons.

Jason Kenney touts $30M 'war room' but provides few details | CBC News
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney spoke in Calgary with energy industry stakeholders but hasn't announced who will lead a so-called war room to counter what he calls lies spread by opponents of oil and gas development.