https://www.thestar.com/calgary/2019/08/24/this-bc-researchers-oilsands-theories-are-being-championed-by-jason-kenney-just-one-problem-experts-say-theyre-not-true.html
[More from the tilted playing field theme.
I recommend reading the SourceWatch entry on Vivian Krause before taking
her story line too seriously, not to mention the fact checking set out
below.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Vivian_Krause
"She has been paid for speaking events by right-wing think tanks,
business groups, the mining industry, and the oil and gas industry,
mostly in Canada. In the year 2012, more than 90% of Krause’s income
came from speaking honorariums from the mining and oil and gas industries."
The fact that Jason Kenney (current Alberta Premier) and the
Calgary-based oil patch give financial support and platforms lending
credibility to her story is another example of the disinformation the
oil industry and its captive governments are using to further their own
agenda.]
This B.C. researcher’s oilsands theories are being championed by Jason
Kenney. Just one problem — experts say they’re not true
By Brennan Doherty Star Calgary
Sat., Aug. 24, 2019
CALGARY—Within minutes of stepping up to a podium in the Fairmont
Palliser hotel’s opulent Alberta Room, Vivian Krause, an ascendant
preacher of Alberta’s oil and gas development woes, begins her sermon.
Her remarks to a luncheon gathering of roughly 150 Calgary Chamber of
Commerce members last month were intended as a setup for a
question-and-answer session with the chamber’s CEO. Instead, Krause
orates uninterrupted for about an hour to a spellbound audience on a
controversial theory that has gained popularity among the oil and gas
industry, ordinary Canadians and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.
Dozens of slides featuring Canada Revenue Agency tax receipts, strategy
documents and photographs of environmentalists at planning retreats
flash across a screen. She tells the audience her research has shown
that a variety of U.S. organizations gave Canadian environmental groups
money as part of a movement known as the Tar Sands Campaign to block
construction of the province’s pipelines.
“If we ask the protesters, it’s all about no tankers and no pipelines,”
she tells her audience. “But all of these tankers and all of these
pipelines criss-crossing North America — and the only ones against which
there is a multimillion-dollar, decade-long campaign are the ones taking
your oil to overseas markets.”
Krause uses Canada Revenue Agency filings, U.S. tax information and
publicly available strategy documents to paint a picture of a major
Canadian environmental movement bankrolled by U.S. charitable foundations.
“If I just tell you this, it just sounds like a conspiracy theory,
right?” she tells the audience at one point. “That’s why I’m showing you
the actual documents.”
Experts and environmental organizations reached by Star Calgary say
Krause’s conclusions not only ignore the international nature of
environmental philanthropy, but leave out the fact that Canadian
environmental organizations receive most of their money from Canadians.
When asked why her work appeared to blame environmentalists for pipeline
delays when judges and regulators are the main cause, she responded that
regulators and judges simply don’t understand the extent of the Tar
Sands Campaign, but that they will — thanks to her work.
This American money, according to Krause, sponsored Indigenous
opposition to projects or development on Canadian land, mobilized
students and paid for regular briefings. Some of the organizations
Krause mentioned told Star Calgary they gave money to address fossil
fuel use and climate change in Canada, but denied most of her other claims.
Spokespeople for the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund and the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation said they did contribute to Canadian organizations, but
aren’t working to suppress Canada’s oil and gas industry. Lee Bodner,
president of the New Venture Fund, said in a statement that they focus
on a variety of energy issues in Canada, but insisted their grants
support work “led and directed by Canadians.” Tides Canada said only one
per cent of its funding has gone toward pipeline and oilsands
initiatives. In a statement, the group said the remainder of its funding
went to Canadian community-led initiatives that “further our vision of a
healthy environment, just society and economic prosperity for all
Canadians.”
Residing in B.C., Krause, a former nutritionist and development manager
for farmed salmon producer Nutreco, has a master’s degree in science.
According to her website, she worked on maternal and infant nutrition
programs for the United Nations Children’s Fund and did food aid
planning for the United Nations. Krause has never worked in the oil and
gas industry.
Her speeches about this campaign over the past seven years have earned
her roughly $200,000, Krause told Star Calgary in an interview following
her July speaking engagement. She has written guest columns for the
Financial Post and appeared on CBC. Her appearance before the Chamber of
Commerce in July was sponsored by Enbridge.
Krause told Star Calgary her opinions didn’t really begin to catch on
until Canadian oil prices began dropping last fall because of a widening
differential with the U.S., prompting Alberta’s then-NDP government to
implement production restrictions, along with a Federal Court of Appeal
decision that paused development on the Trans Mountain pipeline
expansion project. After that, Krause said, Albertans began paying
attention.
So did Jason Kenney.
Throughout his election campaign in April and subsequent promises to
fight back against anti-oil interests, Kenney echoed Krause’s findings.
He referenced foreign-funded attacks on Alberta’s oil and gas industry,
vowing to take legal action if elected. The week before the provincial
election, Kenney cited an estimate that Alberta was losing as much as
$16 billion a year in value thanks to price discounts from Canadian
producers “being captive” to the U.S. market.
“This is a direct result of the campaign to landlock Canadian energy
supported by the Tar Sands Campaign, which in the last year has
succeeded in delaying the Trans Mountain expansion, Keystone XL, and the
Line 3 replacement project,” Kenney told reporters at the time.
“I think the fact you have a candidate for provincial politics talking
about it has obviously raised the attention of the media,” Krause told
Star Calgary. “As a result of that, I’ve done a lot of speaking events.”
She estimated logging more than 40 speaking engagements so far in 2019,
most of them pro bono. Shortly before the luncheon at the Calgary
Chamber of Commerce she’d given a speech to the Economic Club of Canada
in Toronto. Krause said major banks such as CIBC and Scotiabank invited
her to speak at conferences last year. CIBC confirmed she’d spoken at
one of their conferences. Star Calgary reached out to Scotiabank, but
did not receive answers by press time.
Gerald Kutney, author of Carbon Politics: The Failure of the Kyoto
Protocol and a frequent commentator on the politics of climate change,
says he considers Krause’s efforts a smokescreen to distract from very
real concerns about the environmental impact of the Alberta oilsands.
However, he said her narrative is well-articulated.
“She speaks very well, I’ll give her that,” Kutney said. “She speaks
clearly, and she knows what her message is.”
Keith Brownsey, a political science professor at Mount Royal University,
said that in his opinion, Krause’s profile rose immeasurably thanks to
Kenney’s endorsement of her conclusions.
“It’s given her legitimacy she would otherwise lack,” he said.
Brownsey also said Krause could become an influential voice for the oil
and gas industry across Canada — similarly to how she’s perceived in
Alberta and Saskatchewan — if a federal Conservative government takes
power in October.
Former premier Rachel Notley also cited the existence of a
foreign-funded campaign to landlock Alberta’s oil. She did not speak of
taking legal action, but Krause tried to convince the previous NDP
government to do so.
During her interview with Star Calgary, Krause said a Calgary-based law
firm acting on her behalf sent a legal opinion to the NDP government
last July that contained not only her findings, but a recommendation to
take legal action against the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund.
“No one wanted to actually deal with the Rockefellers,” Krause told Star
Calgary. “This is what it’s all about — the Rockefellers.”
In an interview, NDP Economic Development critic Deron Bilous confirmed
the NDP received Krause’s legal opinion and had it reviewed by Alberta
government lawyers. He said they found that legal action was “very, very
unlikely to be successful.” The NDP commissioned a second review by an
outside law firm, but the April provincial election campaign began
before it was complete.
A spokesperson for Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer declined to say
whether legal advice from Alberta government lawyers had changed since
the NDP ordered its assessment, citing solicitor-client privilege. The
spokesperson praised Krause’s research as “intrepid journalism.”
During his first few months in office, Kenney announced a public inquiry
into the source of foreign funds engaged in what he described as a
“campaign of defamation” against Alberta’s oil and gas industry. He
name-dropped Krause’s work several times.
He also said the inquiry’s findings could be used to take legal action
against the industry’s critics, although he admitted the Alberta
government was still working on a viable strategy.
Even if legal action isn’t successful, Krause said, her research has
placed the Tar Sands Campaign on the map. She believes future responses
by oil and gas companies to court challenges will explicitly name the
Tar Sands Campaign she has spent years observing — and judges will listen.
“There won’t be a single piece of legal action going forward now where
this campaign isn’t mentioned,” Krause said.
CHECKING KRAUSE’S FACTS
Point 1 — Lots of money
Krause estimated in her luncheon talk to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce
that $600 million flowed into Canada from large-scale U.S. interests for
a variety of environmental initiatives. Yet Kutney said the majority of
Canadian environmental groups are — financially speaking — hardly
rolling in money. Many are small-scale organizations.
Meanwhile, the Corporate Mapping Project — an initiative by the
University of Victoria, Parkland Institute and the Canadian Centre for
Policy Alternatives to map out major players in the Canadian oil
industry — notes U.S. money also flows to oil industry supporters. Its
entry on the Fraser Institute think tank, notes it receives a
significant amount of funding from charitable foundations — including
more than $1.4 million from the Charles Koch Foundation, named after the
U.S. oil and gas billionaire, between 1997 and 2017.
“What I find almost comical is that Big Oil is suddenly petrified of
this horrible conspiracy that’s out there from these NGOs who usually
fight to survive — that they’re somehow a threat to the power of Big
Oil,” Kutney said. “That makes no sense to me whatsoever.”
Krause said it isn’t possible to compare the money activist groups
receive with the funds of billion-dollar oil companies in her interview
with Star Calgary. But she suggested activists have the upper hand
because news outlets are more receptive to environmental concerns
compared to the concerns of the oil and gas industry.
“They’re not playing quite on the same playing field. But that’s OK,”
Krause said, adding she doesn’t have a problem with activism so long as
it tells the truth.
Point 2 — Landlocked Alberta
One of Krause’s other talking points is that Texas has ramped up oil
production in recent years without major environmental opposition as
Alberta pipeline projects are delayed. The state’s Permian Basin is in
the midst of an oil boom, which has seen the U.S. transition into a net
exporter for the first time in nearly 80 years.
“Texas? No campaign against Texas,” Krause said to the Calgary Chamber
luncheon’s audience in July. “Maybe we need to ask ourselves: What would
Texas do if a group of Canadian charities was funding a decade-long
campaign to landlock Texas?”
However, Krause acknowledged during her talk, Texas does have a
coastline — unlike Alberta — and a major port capable of handling oil
tankers. The state doesn’t face the same interjurisdictional issues
Alberta does when it comes to building major oil and gas infrastructure
such as pipelines.
There are also co-ordinated legal campaigns against the Texas oil
industry by environmental groups. In May, Reuters reported three Texas
environmental groups — including the Sierra Club — intended to sue
refiner Valero for violating U.S. pollution laws. U.S. pipeline projects
in other states, such as Keystone XL, also faced fierce public
opposition, most notably at Standing Rock.
Krause repeatedly insisted in her July talk and in her Star Calgary
interview that Alberta is the only oil-producing jurisdiction in North
America that’s been targeted by such an extensive campaign of
environmental activism.
“There’s been no campaign with hundreds of payments. No systematic
10-year-long campaign with a strategy paper and hundreds of payments,”
Krause said in response. “There’s been nothing like that against any of
the American states that produce oil.”
Point 3 — Court Rulings
Krause’s theories suggest funds donated to Canadian environmental groups
helped landlock Alberta oil and gas development. However, the biggest
upsets for the industry, such as delays on the Trans Mountain pipeline
expansion project, were issued by the courts — and were not always due
to environmental concerns.
In their ruling last August, the Federal Court of Appeal found
consultations with Indigenous peoples hadn’t been strong enough. It also
said the National Energy Board — a body charged with overseeing Canadian
oil and gas development — failed to consider the impact of oil tanker
traffic along the B.C. coast.
Krause, however, said in her Star Calgary interview that these rulings
were due to an unwillingness within the Canadian oil and gas industry to
comprehend the severity of the campaign she has documented.
“When the lawyers for the pipeline companies have gone to court, they
have failed to draw to the attention of the judges and the courts that
this campaign is going on because those lawyers didn’t take it
seriously,” she said. “I guarantee you they do now.”
--
Darryl McMahon
Freelance Project Manager (sustainable systems)
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