You can understand the frustration.
The oil industry is big business in Alberta, and it’s under a lot of public pressure. It’s under fire about tailings ponds, emissions, pipeline problems — and the list goes on.
All of that has to have more than a little impact on Alberta’s provincial government.
But should a government be onside with one industry to the point of taking on that industry’s own marketing responsibilities? Should taxpayers’ money be spent pitching one industry’s side of a story?
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party has promised to spend $30 million on a “war room” to counter both formal media and social media stories that cast the oil industry in a bad light.
“The goal of the energy war room will be to tell the truth about how the world needs more Canadian energy,” Kenney said last week. “We will no longer accept the campaign of lies and defamation.”
But it doesn’t end with media.
When things like provincial inquiries become nothing more than handy show trials for the party in power, their entire value as fact-finding missions gets undercut.
Last week, the Kenney government announced a $2.5-million inquiry into the financing of environmental groups involved in what Kenney calls “foreign meddling” in the Alberta energy industry. (Once again, the investigation into foreign influence in the industry will focus only on those opposed to oil and gas industry, not on foreign-funded industry supporters.)
You don’t have to question whether or not government and the oil industry are working hand-in-glove: the province’s energy minister has already said as much.
“You have to realize that the companies in the energy sector are doing their part, too,” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said at an oil industry show in Calgary in June. “This is a collaborative effort. They’ll be having ad campaigns and doing their part.”
But when a government allies itself so thoroughly with a particular industry, how can it, for example, regulate that industry as well?
And does government even need to take that kind of role, except for political show?
The oil and gas industry is far more profitable that the environmental groups that Kenney maintains constitute such a threat: if the global oil and gas giants felt that they were under siege in Alberta, they have deep enough pockets to take their own action, without taxpayer-funded performance art from the provincial government.
When things like provincial inquiries become nothing more than handy show trials for the party in power, their entire value as fact-finding missions gets undercut.
Does anyone anywhere question what the results of that sort of inquiry will be?
Does anyone question the position that the “war room” will unfailingly take?
Of course not.
The “truth” that Kenney is promising is the “truth” that he and his party already believe.
Other than the desire to have a show, what exactly is the point?
