CBC
Tue, June 11, 2024
Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, centre, addresses attendees at a press conference to announce the launch of the Canadian Energy Centre at SAIT in Calgary on Dec. 11, 2019, flanked by former energy minister Sonya Savage, left, and Tom Olsen, managing director of the Canadian Energy Centre. Kenney opened the province's energy war room to fight what he called a campaign of lies about the province's energy industry.
(Greg Fulmes/The Canadian Press - image credit)More
The Alberta government is shutting down the Canadian Energy Centre — the controversial energy "war room" — and shuffling its duties into a government department.
The office of Brian Jean, minister of energy and minerals, confirmed to CBC that the centre will be integrated into the intergovernmental relations department.
The statement to CBC says that the centre "is an important advocate for Canada and Alberta's long-term position as a safe, clean and responsible energy supplier and will continue to increase the public's understanding of the role oil and gas plays globally in a secure energy future."
"After careful consideration, we will be integrating the mandate of the CEC into Intergovernmental Relations (IGR). Resources such as CEC assets, intellectual property, and researchers will now be supporting IGR in order to seamlessly continue this important work."
The CEC, also known as the "war room," was founded by the Jason Kenney government in 2019 to fight what it called misinformation about the province's energy industry.
Tom Olsen was the CEC's CEO from its founding. He has not yet responded to a request for comment from CBC News.
A history of controversy
The centre was established to promote the energy industry and counter what it deemed to be misinformation. Among its actions that grabbed headlines were accusing the New York Times of bias and attacking the makers of a children's film featuring Bigfoot for what it felt was an anti-oil message.
The centre has published a series of articles on its website. Sources contacted for those stories have told media organizations, including The Canadian Press, that staff identified themselves on the phone as reporters.
The Canadian Association of Journalists' then-president Karyn Pugliese said in 2019 that members of the centre should stop calling themselves reporters and described the CEC as a government-hired PR firm.
The centre also had to change its initial logo in 2019 after it was revealed the logo already represents an American tech company.
While the centre was taxpayer-funded, it was designated as a private corporation and exempt from freedom of information legislation, including information regarding expenditures and awards contracts.
'Waste of taxpayer money'
The centre operated on an initial $30-million-per-year budget, which was slashed by 90 per cent in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A portion of the centre's funding came from industry fees paid to the government's Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program. The remaining funding came from money set aside for government advertising campaigns.
The centre's most recent annual report showed it signed a $22-million contract for a media campaign last fiscal year. That was about three times its entire government grant from the previous year.
Andrew Leach, a professor of economics and law at the University of Alberta, said the money spent on the centre could've been used elsewhere.
"This is all done under governments that came in promising fiscal oversight and value for money, etc. And then … we don't have a lot of transparency, and that was by design," Leach said in an interview on Tuesday.
"I think the dollars could have been spent, for example, figuring out how to clean up Alberta's regulatory system so that we are tracking and prepared for holding companies to account for the reclamation liabilities that were dealing with the oil sands … the environmental risks of tailings bonds, put the money there, not into a series of ads and rolling billboards."
NDP MLA Nagwan Al-Guneid said in an interview that shutting down the war room was long overdue.
"We have asked the government, the UCP government, for years, to shut down this agency," said Al-Guneid who is the opposition critic for energy and climate.
"This decision right now just proves that this has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money. So we haven't seen how this agency or this war room, how did it really help the Alberta energy sector in any measurable way?"
Al-Guneid said the Alberta NDP would ask the auditor general of Alberta to investigate the use of funds by the centre.
Leach said now that the centre is being integrated into a provincial ministry, the Smith government can be forthcoming by providing an accounting of the centre's activities.
"We're going to publish the reports of the activities of this, what is now an arm of the government, and explain to Albertans where that money's gone, or we're going to ask the auditor general to do it, to do what they would have been able to do had this been set up in this way in the first place."
Alberta’s energy 'war room,' known for Bigfoot movie feud, getting brought in-house
The Alberta government is shutting down the Canadian Energy Centre — the controversial energy "war room" — and shuffling its duties into a government department.
The office of Brian Jean, minister of energy and minerals, confirmed to CBC that the centre will be integrated into the intergovernmental relations department.
The statement to CBC says that the centre "is an important advocate for Canada and Alberta's long-term position as a safe, clean and responsible energy supplier and will continue to increase the public's understanding of the role oil and gas plays globally in a secure energy future."
"After careful consideration, we will be integrating the mandate of the CEC into Intergovernmental Relations (IGR). Resources such as CEC assets, intellectual property, and researchers will now be supporting IGR in order to seamlessly continue this important work."
The CEC, also known as the "war room," was founded by the Jason Kenney government in 2019 to fight what it called misinformation about the province's energy industry.
Tom Olsen was the CEC's CEO from its founding. He has not yet responded to a request for comment from CBC News.
A history of controversy
The centre was established to promote the energy industry and counter what it deemed to be misinformation. Among its actions that grabbed headlines were accusing the New York Times of bias and attacking the makers of a children's film featuring Bigfoot for what it felt was an anti-oil message.
The centre has published a series of articles on its website. Sources contacted for those stories have told media organizations, including The Canadian Press, that staff identified themselves on the phone as reporters.
The Canadian Association of Journalists' then-president Karyn Pugliese said in 2019 that members of the centre should stop calling themselves reporters and described the CEC as a government-hired PR firm.
The centre also had to change its initial logo in 2019 after it was revealed the logo already represents an American tech company.
While the centre was taxpayer-funded, it was designated as a private corporation and exempt from freedom of information legislation, including information regarding expenditures and awards contracts.
'Waste of taxpayer money'
The centre operated on an initial $30-million-per-year budget, which was slashed by 90 per cent in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A portion of the centre's funding came from industry fees paid to the government's Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program. The remaining funding came from money set aside for government advertising campaigns.
The centre's most recent annual report showed it signed a $22-million contract for a media campaign last fiscal year. That was about three times its entire government grant from the previous year.
Andrew Leach, a professor of economics and law at the University of Alberta, said the money spent on the centre could've been used elsewhere.
"This is all done under governments that came in promising fiscal oversight and value for money, etc. And then … we don't have a lot of transparency, and that was by design," Leach said in an interview on Tuesday.
"I think the dollars could have been spent, for example, figuring out how to clean up Alberta's regulatory system so that we are tracking and prepared for holding companies to account for the reclamation liabilities that were dealing with the oil sands … the environmental risks of tailings bonds, put the money there, not into a series of ads and rolling billboards."
NDP MLA Nagwan Al-Guneid said in an interview that shutting down the war room was long overdue.
"We have asked the government, the UCP government, for years, to shut down this agency," said Al-Guneid who is the opposition critic for energy and climate.
"This decision right now just proves that this has been a colossal waste of taxpayer money. So we haven't seen how this agency or this war room, how did it really help the Alberta energy sector in any measurable way?"
Al-Guneid said the Alberta NDP would ask the auditor general of Alberta to investigate the use of funds by the centre.
Leach said now that the centre is being integrated into a provincial ministry, the Smith government can be forthcoming by providing an accounting of the centre's activities.
"We're going to publish the reports of the activities of this, what is now an arm of the government, and explain to Albertans where that money's gone, or we're going to ask the auditor general to do it, to do what they would have been able to do had this been set up in this way in the first place."
Alberta’s energy 'war room,' known for Bigfoot movie feud, getting brought in-house
Lisa Johnson
Tue, June 11, 2024
EDMONTON — Alberta's energy “war room” – the oft-ridiculed agency famous for its feud with a children’s Bigfoot cartoon – is being retooled and brought in-house directly under Premier Danielle Smith's office.
“The Canadian Energy Centre is an important advocate for Canada and Alberta’s long-term position as a safe, clean and responsible energy supplier,” the province’s Energy Ministry said Tuesday in a statement.
“(But) after careful consideration, we will be integrating the mandate of the (centre) into Intergovernmental Relations."
In Alberta’s cabinet, the intergovernmental relations portfolio is handled by the premier.
The statement said the centre's assets, intellectual property and researchers will be moved over to the intergovernmental relations office.
A senior government source said three of the six current employees of the Canadian Energy Centre will remain in their roles.
The source said the centre's branding and website will remain the same. Most of the agency’s budget is devoted to advertising.
The Canadian Energy Centre was the formal name given to a corporation created by former United Conservative premier Jason Kenney in 2019.
Kenney characterized it as a “war room” that would fight back, in real-time, against what it deemed to be unfounded criticism of Alberta’s oil and gas industry.
There was controversy from the start as the centre was structured in such a way as to shield it from public freedom of information searches.
The centre came out of the gate with a $30-million budget but drew fire almost immediately for using someone else’s trademarked logo and for having staff members refer to themselves as reporters instead of public employees.
It also posted, and later apologized for, a series of social media messages about the New York Times, saying the newspaper had been “called out for antisemitism countless times” and had a “very dodgy” track record.
In March 2021, the centre – and by extension Kenney’s government -- was widely ridiculed after it launched a campaign against “Bigfoot Family,” a Netflix cartoon featuring talking animals and a domesticated sasquatch battling an oil magnate determined to blow up an Alaskan wildlife preserve to gain easy access to petroleum.
The "war room" urged followers to tell Netflix the movie is “brainwashing our kids with anti-oil and gas propaganda.”
The sasquatch debate spilled onto the floor of the legislature, with the Opposition accusing Kenney’s government of turning Alberta into a laughingstock.
“Which investors in Zurich do you think were swayed by your brave stand against a child’s cartoon character?” NDP Leader Rachel Notley chortled in Kenney’s direction.
Kenney shot back, “I’m sure (the NDP) are cheering on the propaganda in that Netflix story, but we’re correcting the record as we should.”
The Bigfoot film director thanked the province, saying the movie had been sinking on the Netflix viewing list but soared back into the top 10 due to the controversy.
Change had been in the works for months.
Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean's most recent mandate letter from Smith, published last July, called on him to review the Canadian Energy Centre.
Nagwan Al-Guneid, the NDP’s Opposition energy critic, characterized the change as a massive waste of public funds.
“Since 2019, the UCP have wasted over $66 million of taxpayer money on this failed war room," said Al-Guneid in a statement.
She said that money could have gone to fund the province's carbon tax on large emitters, which in turn could have been funnelled into more technology to reduce emissions.
Al-Guneid said the NDP will ask the province's auditor general to investigate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2024.
Lisa Johnson, The Canadian Press
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