'Complacent approach doesn’t work': UCP energy war room set for Calgary
Energy Minister Sonya Savage and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney leave Government House following a meeting with Alberta senators on Thursday, May 23, 2019.
Calgary will play home to the government’s planned oil industry war room, and Energy Minister Sonya Savage promises it’s going to start its work “very soon.”
Establishing a $30-million energy war room to “counter the lies” about the industry was a key plank in the UCP election platform.
Savage said Tuesday morning on her way into cabinet the group will be small, tight and compact, in keeping with her government’s “measured restraint” on spending.
“It’s got to be integrated in with the larger fight-back strategy. That includes things like the litigation fund, the public inquiry,” she said.
“We’re trying to knit all those pieces together to make sure we get it right.”
As for why it will be in Calgary, Savage said, “that’s where the industry is and that’s where the punchy communication experts are.”
Part of a larger strategy
Savage said the war room was the policy that most resonated with her constituents when she knocked on doors during the campaign.
“I think that’s because they saw an approach before that was way too complacent, and that approach had been going on for 10 years,” she said.
“We knew about the tar sands campaign starting back in 2008, and the complacent approach doesn’t work.”
Premier Jason Kenney said during the election the $30-million price tag was a fair one.
“I think it’s the best investment we could possibly make in defending an industry that is the source of about one-third of the jobs in this province, directly and indirectly,” Kenney said at the time.
Kenney’s planned oil strategy includes boycotting banks that won’t co-operate with oilsands financing, demanding the energy industry increase its own advocacy and education efforts, and establishing a $10-million litigation fund “to support pro-development First Nations in defending their right to be consulted on major energy projects.”
He also wants to strip Canadian environmental think-tank the Pembina Institute of provincial funding and launch a public inquiry into what he believes is the large-scale foreign funding of anti-oilsands campaigns.
Postmedia, the parent company of this newspaper, has hired a lobbyist to express interest in a role for its commercial content arm in the provincial energy campaign.
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