There’s no longer any need to feel helpless if your kids think Greta Thunberg is cool, your neighbour tells you she’s not going to use Roundup on her dandelions anymore, or you think you’ve spotted a foreign-funded environmentalist cruising around your neighbourhood in a green Tesla.

The House Un-Albertan Activities Committee is on the job and its environmental snitch line is now accepting emails. Anything you say may be taken down and used against somebody who runs afoul of Premier Jason Kenney’s $2.5-million inquiry to ferret out foreign-funded eco-subversives.

Inquiry Commissioner Steve Allan (Photo: AlbertaInquiry.ca).

And it’s never too early to say something if you’ve seen something! Or even if you only think you’ve seen something. The time is now to stop the Green Peril emanating from Rockefeller Center in New York City! Who ya gonna call?

So don’t wait to drop the dime! Boot up that iPad and start typing … [email protected].

I bet if the Internet worked better in Cuba, they’d have something like this too. And here in Alberta, anyone can join the Committee for the Defence of the Oilsands.

“At this stage of the process, I’m focused on information-gathering and fact finding, and that’s why it is critical that I hear from anyone who has valuable information to share,” said Steve Allan, the accountant from Calgary who’s commissioner of the inquiry that’s causing more chuckles on the West Coast than the original Steve Allen Show.

Rockefeller Center, New York City, where it all begins … (Photo: David J. Climenhaga).

In addition to the enviro-snitch line, the inquiry has a cool website that tells about what the commissioner will do, which apparently includes “planning the next steps of the inquiry,” an activity that may or may not include taking actual testimony from actual people.

But first, Commissioner Allan’s got side trips planned to Washington, Toronto, Vancouver and Haida Gwaii, all nice places where the inquiry has no authority whatsoever. He might want to bring along a hat and a pair of sunglasses for his visits to the latter two stopovers.

The inquiry has a FAQ page with answers to some of the pressing questions you may have, including the important news that “various parties are assisting the Commissioner,” nothing the inquiry does is subject to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and “the Commissioner may also pursue the attendance or testimony of persons located outside the province of Alberta.”

It’ll be interesting to see how that last bit works out, seeing as the inquiry has no jurisdiction outside the province of Alberta. Well, there’s no reason you can’t ask nicely!

The web page also suggests the commissioner won’t be available for media interviews — but don’t worry, folks, the website will be updated from time to time.

Oh, and about that Vivian Krause person … the Vancouver blogger accused by her critics of being a conspiracy theorist is important enough to rate her own FAQ on the inquiry website, but about all it says is that Mr. Allan will be conducting “a thorough, independent and impartial assessment of the relevance and value of Ms. Krause’s work.” What the heck kind of a vote of confidence is that?

Full disclosure: I HAVE been to Rockefeller Center, but I was just a tourist. Really. I have never been invited to the 56th Floor. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Green Party of Canada. DJC

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12 Comments

  1. “so don’t wait to drop the dime! Boot up that iPad and start typing …”

    Ok, this is just wrong. If you are booting up your iPad then you are using more power than sleep mode. Which in turn puts more strain on the energy grid.

    You have been reported to the Green Party.

  2. You’d best mind your manners Mr. Blogger. Commissioner Allan could see to it you are shunned at the supermarket and banished to the end of the line at Mary Brown’s Chicken & Taters. And like the showman Steve Allen, he might perform a piano solo in Hogtown questioning your denial that you were ever a member of the Green Party. No way I’d miss that.

  3. Environmentalists everywhere oppose fossil fuel expansion, new pipelines, and climate disaster. Surprise!

    Funding from U.S. foundations represented a small fraction of Canadian ENGOs’ budgets. The bulk of their funding comes from ordinary Canadians.
    Deprived of U.S. foundation funding, would Canadian ENGOs have acted any differently? Would Canadian ENGOs support oilsands and pipelines? Pure fantasy.
    Climate change is a global issue. Why would ENGOs refuse U.S. funding for work they were already doing?

    Foreign funding flows to both sides of the oilsands battle. Compared to the bottomless resources of govt, huge multi-national corporations, and the media, the resources of Canadian ENGOs are a drop in the bucket. Why should green groups fight the global climate battle against Big Oil with one hand tied behind their back?
    Krause fails to show that U.S. funding for Canadian ENGOs was the sole or main cause of delays and cancellations.

    U.S. foundations provide far more funding to U.S. ENGOs to oppose U.S. pipelines and projects.
    Krause claims there is no activist resistance to pipelines in the U.S. In fact, U.S. ENGOs and indigenous groups advocate climate action and vigorously oppose interstate pipelines throughout the U.S. U.S. interstate pipeline projects receive huge pushback.

    There! I just saved Jason Kenney and AB taxpayers $2.5 million.

  4. I especially like the dark black and white theme on that site. Similar to the Lord of the Rings. I guess Alberta is about to enter the Heart of Darkness.

    And of course of public accountability seemingly does not apply.

    Difficult to make this stuff up and pretend it is fundamentally compliant with values that one thought were once important in the Western World.

  5. The first fragments of a dystopian Alberta creeping in and creeping us out!

    What new hot mess have you uncovered now Mr. Climenhaga? If this Orwellian clusterf*ck weren’t so hilarious, it would be cause for “recall legislation” (whatever happened to that legislative Kenney Election Platform promise anyway?)

    If it is a snitch line that the moribund new UCP party craves — why not a snitch line establishing sightings of duly elected and handsomely paid UCP members, cavorting out-of-province, with CPC candidates running in the next federal election. My guess is that would be more beneficial than a McCarthyesque report by an anti-enviro hanging judge trying to extract any and all fiction from deluded conservative conspiracy theorists.

  6. Well, I have a full disclosure too. My wife is a bird watcher and wildflower aficionado. I believe she has conspired with foreign sounding thingies to land-lock Alberta oil. I don’t know their first names, but their last names are Purcell, Monashee, Selkirk, Cascade, and a couple called Rocky and Coastal (dirty hippies I bet). There are also three sisters involved who call themselves “La Prairies” and their brother who goes by the name of “Canadian Shield.”
    This group’s doctrine is called “transportation economics” and they use it to justify land-locking the tar we all love so much. I renounce them and all their works.

  7. Do you think it will be alright if I keep riding my bicycle? I promise I will be more Alberta about it and install a pair of truck nuts.

  8. This is a heart-breaking, pathetic situation we’re in. We are in an emergency situation and we believe that the same people who put us in this situation will be the ones to figure out how to turn it around. That’s a losing bet. “One commonly hears,” Noam Chomksy wrote thirteen years ago, “that carping critics [on the Left] complain about what is wrong, but do not present solutions. There is an accurate translation for that charge: ‘they present solutions and I don’t like them.’”

  9. You mean to tell me, that this province where Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie come from, can’t come up with a dooozy of a conspiracy?(In response)

  10. Somebody buy this Allan guy a subscription to the Calgary Sun or maybe the Herald, it might just save us a lot of time and money. Or maybe not, there is plenty of “information” floating out there, but the credibility of it, even in some supposedly credible Alberta news media is dubious.

    I have a feeling the more this goes on, the more Mr. Allan will potentially be chasing rabbits down ever more questionable rabbit holes. I think it will be quite an undertaking for him to put a facade of reputability on this exercise. The danger is that others outside Alberta start to notice and I think when we start to become the laughingstock or punch line elsewhere, there could start to be a blow back in Alberta.

    Yes, Alberta has its interests in perpetuating the existing energy industry, but even we know there are limits. For instance, a couple of elections ago, we equivocated on electing a woman as premier, who at the time was equivocating on climate change denial. I think we realized that could be counter productive, if we wanted to be taken seriously at all.

    Yes, it might seem like the world is conspiring against us at times, but it is events and circumstances, not the Rockefellers or some other US foundations that are the cause of all our grief. Perhaps I should not underestimate Mr. Allan and maybe he will actually put together a report that ultimately explains that to Albertans, but I don’t think that is the direction his political bosses have laid out, or really want him to go in.

  11. “Somebody’s just arrived… I think it’s one of them. I have to hang up, but I’ll let you know whatever I find out”

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