We need to stop Big Oil’s election spending

After most Canadians vote for parties who promise climate action, they may wonder why Canada is by far the worst G7 carbon-polluting country. While the U.S. and Japan are roughly at their 1990 emission levels, Canada’s are up 21 per cent. The EU is 25 per cent lower and Britain’s is down a remarkable 40 per cent.

To learn why Canada breaks its climate promises, I investigated the influence of “Big Foreign Oil” because the production of oil and gas is Canada’s greatest and fastest-growing source of carbon pollution. The report “Posing as Canadian. How Big Foreign Oil captures Canadian energy and climate policy” was released Wednesday and explains why.

Governments levy carbon taxes to cut oil and gas consumption but let Big Oil grow its production and emissions almost scot free.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) is Big Foreign Oil’s apex lobby group and based in Calgary. In 2019, CAPP charged that foreign-funded, anti-pipeline activists made “a concerted effort to shut down our industry.” Two months later, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney set up a public inquiry to investigate “the vast sums” of U.S. foundation money that allegedly flowed into Canadian environmental groups. The public inquiry followed the money trail and found a pittance. Nevertheless, Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage called it a “real concern” when any group is “influencing political and regulatory change using foreign funding.”

Agreed. Why then did her government not direct the inquiry to examine the far greater sums of foreign oil money that intervene in energy and climate debates? All big oil and gas corporations operating in Canada are fully or a majority foreign-owned. After allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Ottawa prohibited such interference in Canadian federal elections, yet left a loophole that CAPP drove a gas-guzzling Hummer through.

Where does CAPP get funds to employ 36 full-time lobbyists, subsidize front groups like Canada’s Energy Citizens, that deceptively pose as citizen-based, and spend big on advertising? CAPP’s revenue is unavailable, but about 97 per cent of it must come from its foreign-owned corporate members because its membership fees are based on their oil production; 97 per cent of the oil produced by CAPP’s corporate board members comes from foreign-owned ones.

My investigation found of the 48 corporations on

CAPP’s 2020 board, 37 or 77 per cent were confirmed, or likely, fully or majority foreign-owned.

When Big Foreign Oil speaks, Ottawa listens. Boy does it listen. Federal government officials had 11,452 contacts with them between 2011 and 2018 and three meetings a week in the pandemic lockdown’s first year.

CAPP is the main obstacle to Canada cutting carbon pollution from the production of oil and gas. It tells governments to let them grow production but continue their huge subsidies because they are the bedrock of Canada’s economy. This is false. The industry directly employs fewer than one per cent of Canadian workers.

Momentum is growing in the U.S. to ban foreigninfluenced corporations from election spending. The report recommends federal and provincial governments join U.S. moves to ban foreign-influenced corporations from election meddling.

Rather than worry about a trickle of foreign funding of environmentalists that never made up more than a tiny percentage of their revenue, Canada should ban election funding by CAPP and other powerful foreigninfluenced corporate interests.