Energy minister says ‘green left’ won’t derail work of war room
Centre defending Alberta industry has hit some ‘bumps,’ but is ‘not stopping’
Alberta’s so-called “energy war room” is under attack by organized environmental activists out to discredit its work, Energy Minister Sonya Savage said Wednesday.
A week after Canadian Energy Centre head Tom Olsen apologized through his own Twitter account for a series of tweets sent via the organization’s main account, Savage
told reporters in Calgary that the publicly funded corporation has been targeted by the same “environmental activists and green left” that she said are to blame for the death of the Northern Gateway pipeline project and the creation of Bill C-69.
“I spent 13 years working in the oil and gas sector, and I saw that kind of organized campaign unfold,” Savage said following her keynote address at a Famous 5 Foundation event.
“It (the CEC) was always going to be targeted. Maybe we didn’t understand how much it was going to be targeted and how much effort was going to be put into it, but that being said, we’re not stopping.”
The CEC — which has a $30-million per year budget — was born of a campaign promise by Premier Jason Kenney, who at the time vowed to create an energy “war room” that would combat lies and misinformation about Alberta’s oil and gas sector.
The centre is mandated to fulfil three roles — research and data gathering, fostering “energy literacy” and rapidly responding when it sees inaccurate information about Canadian oil and gas.
However, since its launch in December, the CEC has been plagued by gaffes and missteps, including allegations that two of its logos belonged to other companies and accusations that its employees did not properly identify themselves as writers for a government-owned publication when calling sources for interviews.
Most recently, the CEC became the object of online mockery for a string of tweets last week that began with an inaccurate claim about the emissions from the proposed Teck Frontier oilsands mine, and ended with a rant about the New York Times that included the misspelling of a journalist’s name and confusing references to anti-semitism.
The tweets have since been deleted and Olsen — a former journalist and unsuccessful UCP candidate — said their tone “did not meet CEC’S standard for public discourse.”
Savage acknowledged the first two months of the war room’s existence have not gone smoothly and there have been some “bumps.” She said she expects there will be less social media activity coming from the CEC in the immediate future, as the organization “reprioritizes” to focus on its energy research and data mandate, as well as an upcoming traditional advertising campaign.
However, she said the government still believes the war room has a vital role to play, and it will not be scared off by online activists who disparage pro-energy voices.
“We need the Canadian Energy Centre now more than ever. The situation the last few weeks (the Coastal Gaslink protests and rail blockades) has demonstrated we need it now more than ever,” Savage said.
Since last week’s string of tweets and Olsen’s resulting apology, a number of op-eds and editorials published by major media outlets have called for the Canadian Energy Centre to be scrapped.
Alberta’s Opposition NDP has also called for the war room to be shut down, calling it a waste of money with not enough transparency.