Kenney promises he’ll create a pro-oil war room

Surely Jason Kenney, Alberta’s Conservative leader, isn’t serious; surely he’s just joshing when he talks about his latest ploy to promote Alberta oil. Or maybe Kenney has spent too much time watching Donald Trump on Fox News and figures if crazy ideas — like building a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border — worked for him, why not try a few crazy ideas here?

But Kenney, a former key federal cabinet minister, looked his usual grim self when he spoke last week in Calgary about setting up a taxpayer-funded war room as part of his “fightback” strategy should he become premier.

Yes, a war room. He’s mentioned it several times over the past few months so apparently it’s not just a passing whim. He even envisions satellite war rooms that could reach around the world. And what would be the purpose of such bunkers no doubt stacked with maps, computers, weaponized social media and trigger happy troops? To attack environmental campaigners every time they utter something about Alberta oil, pipelines, carbon emissions or oil pollution.

Because, as Kenney sees it, environmentalists have brought Alberta to its knees and he’s just not going to take it anymore.

According to Kenney, “with a highly successful, deliberate, well-organized and hugely well-funded campaign of defamation” environmentalists have managed to “land lock Canadian energy” and thereby cost Alberta and the rest of Canada billions of dollars.

This is, of course, a reference to the stalled Trans Mountain pipeline and nixed pipeline projects Northern Gateway and Energy East. All three would have shipped diluted bitumen from Alberta to coastal ports.

Kenney didn’t mention that the Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain projects were hobbled by judgments handed down by the courts.

His war room, which would be paid for with taxpayers’ money “would respond in real time through paid and social media to all the lies told about Canada’s energy industry,” Kenney told a conference, organized by Monte Solberg, one of his fellow cabinet members in the Harper government, and partly sponsored by a grassroots group that is closely associated with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Kenney’s intended targets include the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute, Greenpeace, the U.S-based Tides Foundation and even the Rockefeller Foundation.

And that’s not all. If he becomes premier, Kenney plans to encourage a prominent oil company to sue Greenpeace as Resolute Forest Products has in the U.S. to the tune of $300 million.

This is the kind of litigation, Kenney said, that Alberta-based energy companies need to undertake if they expect to receive the necessary social license to develop resources that belong to all Albertans. That would certainly turn the idea of social license upside down.

What’s strange about all this, if not downright ludicrous, is the idea that Canada’s energy industry is somehow a pathetic victim that doesn’t have the ability or resources to defend and promote itself.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, an industry association that includes all the major oil producers operating in Canada, has a multimillion annual budget. It is one of the most well-funded and active lobby groups in the country. Add to that the millions that each oil, natural gas or pipeline company spends on communications, public relations, media relations, community relations and social media and its clear the industry should have no problem fending for itself when it comes to getting what it considers the “right” message to Canadians about the benefits of the energy industry.

If Kenney and certain petroleum companies believe that message isn’t getting across, maybe the problem is with them and not with the environmental organizations they are so quick to condemn. Maybe they need to rethink how they engage with Canadians.

Instead, Kenney vows that if he should become premier he will take up their cause even more strongly than previous Alberta governments have. Because, as everyone knows, the oil industry is simply too weak to do it themselves. He must be joking.