A report from Deloitte Canada reveals how the media is systematically utilized by foreign interest groups as part of a larger movement to strategically kill off Alberta’s oil and gas industry.
The report in question is extremely dense and documents the tactics employed by Environmental Non-Government Organizations (ENGOs), charities, initiatives, and other organizations who receive funding from foreign interests to create propaganda campaigns to misinform or otherwise mobilize useful idiots against their best interests (i.e., supporting a booming economy and energy sector).
As per the report, inklings of a massive campaign to delay and frustrate Alberta’s oil and gas industry can be seen as early as 2008, when the “Tar Sands Campaign” first reared its disingenuous head.
Foundational documents for the campaign outlined tactics, funding, and structures that would be used by several organizations working in concert to propagate misinformation and make oil sands exponentially unattractive to both Canadians and foreigners.
In particular, the structure section of the document shows just how intense and relentless the overall campaign would be given the number of parties implicated.
This is a large, complex campaign with a number of different entities: corporate, governmental, community, educational and non-governmental organizations. It also has a number of strategic tracks that need to be well-integrated. It is critical that the campaign [has] some type of coordinating structure to insure that all groups and strategic tracks are connected. This coordinating structure also needs some authority to direct funds to high-priority campaigns quickly. While NGOs generally prefer a network structure that allows for maximum communication, and minimal centralized control, foundations investing most heavily in the campaign have a vested interest in exercising some control over the process.
We have developed a hybrid campaign structure that allows for both NGO and funder preferences. Within this structure, NGOs involved in the campaign work together to determine their strategic plan and funding priorities.
The Coordination Center shall remain invisible to the outside and to the extent possible, staff will be “purchased” from engaged organizations.
The tactics used are similarly sophisticated.
According to Commissioner Steve Allan, the campaign utilizes grassroots campaigns, the development of documentaries and research papers, divestment campaigns, direct action and citizen engagement, land conservation initiatives, litigation and political activism, and achieving legal precedents based on the rights of First Nations people.
Perhaps the most misleading of these strategies are those listed by the Commissioner as “grassroots,” which are, in reality, astroturfed movements funded by ENGOs to change the language surrounding oil and gas and push for sanctions.
As per the report, such grassroots movements include:
-
Rethink Alberta — a comprehensive multi-media campaign designed to discourage tourists from visiting Alberta until the expansion of the “tar sands” was restricted and Alberta committed to clean up and phase out existing operations.
-
UK Tar Sands Network — this project is active to this day and encourages a number of actions on the part of individuals, financial institutions and EU governments to block “tar sands” development.
-
Dirty Tar Sands Network — a collaboration of a number of ENGOs for the purpose of disseminating information advocating for a halt to the expansion of the “tar sands,” resisting the construction of pipelines and refineries, and encouraging corporate consumers to refuse the purchase of “tar sands” oil.
This new language, such as deliberately calling oil sands “tar sands” or “dirty oil,” then gets amplified by the media to form a new narrative for the masses to repeat.
-
Tar Sands Solutions Network — is made up of numerous organizations (members), including many I have found to be Participants, as well as First Nations groups collaborating to stop the expansion of the ‘tar sands,’ resist the construction of pipelines and refineries, employ land use tactics to block Alberta oil from accessing markets, and advance divestment tactics focused on financial institutions and insurance companies.
For example, here is a non-comprehensive list of articles from mainstream news outlets demonizing Alberta oil which emerged between 2010 to 2015:
-
Tar sands need solid science — published by Nature, 2010
-
How much of an environmental bad guy are the Alberta oilsands? — published by the CBC, 2012
-
Pay Dirt: How to Turn Tar Sands into Oil — published by Scientific American, 2012
-
Don’t call them ‘tar sands’: The industry-approved lingo for Alberta’s hydrocarbon gunk is ‘oil sands’ — published by Maclean’s, 2012
-
Opinion: The Tar Sands Disaster — published by The New York Times, 2013
-
Alberta’s financial health depends on tar sands — published by Toronto Star, 2014
-
The Alberta Tar Sands — published by The Atlantic, 2014
-
Canada’s tar sands landscape from the air in pictures — published by The Guardian, 2015
And the list goes on.
Educational programs — which many millennials will remember being brainwashed in during their time in primary and secondary school — further exasperate the effects of this narrative, ensuring that a new generation of climate activists are ready to go on the offensive against Alberta energy.
Private studies funded by the very ENGOs initiating this new narrative further reinforce it, giving supporters and onlookers a false sense of ‘the science being settled,’ as well as spreading apocalyptic propaganda that the world will end if the oil and gas industry is not dismantled.
As Commissioner Allan writes, “Generally, networks of ENGOs seem to work in concert with each other in a collaborative manner to advance what effectively is a movement.”
“… The movement and the organizations that are part of it appear to function much like an industry unto themselves, attracting various sources of funding and employing large personnel and capital to promote their objectives.”
In other words, the movement functions as an industry with the sole purpose of destroying another industry.
As one commenter notes, “The mistake Vivian Krause and Premier Kenney make is thinking that it’s one campaign. It’s not… It’s dozens of campaigns. If it’s anything, it’s a movement of movements.”
Similarly, ENGOs and charities have become increasingly fond of leveraging the unique rights of First Nations in Canada to disrupt pipeline projects and the oil industry as a whole.
Overall, Commissioner Allan says that he found $102 million directed to First Nations environmental initiatives.
“There are a number of ways to stop infrastructure expansions,” explains Commissioner Allan. “In Canada, First Nations can challenge the construction of pipelines across their traditional territories and prevent pipelines from crossing their reserves. The proposed pipelines must cross dozens of First Nation territories.”
“The strategy is to use… Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal legal challenges to both drive the debate inside and outside Alberta about the impacts of the industry – and thereby delegitimize the status quo – and to force the adoption of more stringent water, toxics and land protections.”
However, much of this initiative is contingent upon the actions of First Nations, which involves manufacturing consensus. And who better to manufacture such consensus than the media.
Again, we see the usual suspects creating the illusion that all First Nations are against pipelines, with The Star publishing an article entitled “Why B.C. First Nations oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline” and the CBC publishing an article entitled “Canadian First Nations, U.S. tribes form alliance to stop oil pipelines” in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
It is hard to say which First Nations groups were influenced by foreign interests and ENGOs to mobilize against Alberta oil and infrastructure, which would provide much-needed jobs to Indigenous Canadians given the broad scope of ENGOs influence. However, Commissioner Allan believes that multi-media campaigns have created a false narrative that all First Nations want the oil industry as far away from them as possible.
“ENGOs and many Indigenous leverage these special rights of First Nations to oppose pipelines and oil and gas development while other First Nations leaders decry the opportunities threatened or lost by the failure of infrastructure projects to proceed,” Commissioner Allan explains.
“This creates serious divisions between various First Nations communities and within communities, and to further compound the problem, the multi-media campaigns often lead to the incorrect impression by many Canadians that First Nations communities are universally opposed to oil and gas development and pipelines.”
