Energy minister defends staffer employed by anti-pipeline group

Alberta’s energy minister is defending her new chief of staff despite his recent work for an anti-pipeline lobby group.

Marg McCuaig-Boyd said Graham Mitchell worked briefly earlier this year for Vancouver-based LeadNow but strictly in an administrative capacity.

She said Mitchell, while listed as executive director and registered lobbyist for LeadNow, did not do any lobbying and is in lockstep with the Alberta NDP’s policy to grow and improve market access for oil.

“He was just doing administrative processes for (LeadNow’s) office for a short period of time,” McCuaig-Boyd said Thursday.

“Because he was interim executive director he had to be on the lobby list. He totally supports the position we have here in Alberta in our energy program.”

Mitchell was vetted and hired as chief of staff by the premier’s office before Mc Cuaig-Boyd was appointed minister on May 24.

Leela Aheer, energy critic for the Opposition Wildrose party, said hiring Mitchell sends a troubling message to an already jittery oil and gas industry.

“It seems very contradictory in what’s needed now for stability in the energy sector,” said Aheer.

According to federal government records, LeadNow has lobbied to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s cabinet scupper Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline.

It has also lobbied to get the National Energy Board to open hearings on TransCanada’s proposed Energy East line to the public and to also take into account the effect of the line on climate change.

It’s another step in what has become a wary relationship between Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP and Alberta’s bedrock industry since Notley’s team won a majority government in the May 5 election.

The NDP has promised to review royalties, hike corporate taxes, bring in new climate change rules, introduce an energy efficiency policy, accelerate the phase out of coal-fired electricity generation, and ban gas drilling in urban areas.

Notley made headlines in the closing days of the campaign when she said her government would write off the Northern Gateway project as a non-starter hopelessly entangled in environmental and jurisdictional red tape.

Northern Gateway would take Alberta bit u men through B.C. to coastal tankers for eventual shipment to Asia.

Notley has also said she’ll take a wait-and-see approach to the forthcoming U.S. decision on whether to approve TransCanada Corp’s Keystone XL line to take Alberta crude to Texas.

“It seems very contradictory.” LEELA AHEER, WILDROSE ENERGY CRITIC