Could a federal climate change truth-in-advertising law pose a risk to the Alberta Energy War Room and its directors?

When Canadian Energy Centre Ltd., better known as “the Alberta Energy War Room,” was set up by premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party Government soon after its election in 2019, it was structured as a private provincial corporation to make it immune to searches using the province’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Could this turn out to have been a mistake that actually poses a risk to the directors of CEC Ltd. in the event the federal government passes Bill C-59, the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, and the Trudeau Government somehow manages to remain in power? 

This might explain the overwrought, even panicky, tone of Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz’s May 29 statement on the Alberta Government’s official website, in which she inaccurately labelled the federal legislation an “undemocratic gag order” and raised the prospect of corporate leaders facing fines and jail time for making unproved claims about their practices mitigating climate change. 

“Environmental activists will be able to bring claims against oil and gas companies under so called ‘anti-greenwashing provisions,’” the statement fussed, citing the risk of “fines and jail time for Canada’s oil and gas industry if they tried to defend their record on the environment.”

The risk of fines for Canadian oil and gas companies posed by the federal bill’s proposed amendment to the Competition Act is remote, of course, and the possibility of some O&G executive actually serving jail time is microscopic. 

If passed, Bill C-59 would amend the section of the Competition Act dealing with deceptive marketing practices to read: “A person engages in reviewable conduct who, for the purpose of promoting, directly or indirectly, the supply or use of a product or for the purpose of promoting, directly or indirectly, any business interest, by any means whatever … makes a representation to the public in the form of a statement, warranty or guarantee of a product’s benefits for protecting the environment or mitigating the environmental and ecological effects of climate change that is not based on an adequate and proper test, the proof of which lies on the person making the representation …”

This seems mostly performative. Making such a case stick would be a steep climb for any prosecutor.

In the unlikely event of a successful prosecution, the most likely remedy to be imposed by a court would be an order to remove the offending statement. To face a fine, or God forbid, a jail term, surely a corporation or executive would have to defy an order of a court. 

Nor is it clear if any of this would apply to greenwashing in advertising purchased outside Canada.

So, it is said here, Alberta’s oil and gas moguls can sleep peacefully, unafraid of being gagged, let alone imprisoned, as a result of Bill C-59. 

But unlike a normal corporation, CEC Ltd. was set up essentially as a government propaganda agency with a mandate, despite protestations to the contrary, not bound tightly to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

So if any company were actually at risk from such an unlikely prosecution, CEC Ltd. might do nicely. 

So, let’s consider who its directors are. 

They are Brian Jean, who as minister of energy acts as chair of the three-member board, Justice Minister Mickey Amery, and … Ms. Schulz, in her capacity as environment minister.

That was the way Mr. Kenney and his advisors, always too clever by half, set it up.

Could they now actually fear they might face personal liability if some environmental activists went after CEC Ltd. for greenwashing? 

This isn’t likely, even for politicians not exactly wedded to the truth. Moreover, most of CEC Ltd.’s advertising appears to be in the United States and Europe.

Still, things could get complicated for an organization once described by its CEO as being “about disproving true facts.” (In fairness, Tom Olsen didn’t say exactly what he meant, but nevertheless, with the War Room, the potential for credible accusations of greenwashing is high.) 

At the founding meeting of the United Conservative Party on May 9, 2018, Mr. Kenney outlined his “fight-back strategy” against critics of the fossil fuel sector. “We will set up a fully staffed rapid response war room in government to quickly and effectively rebut every lie told by the green left about our world-class energy industry,” he vowed. 

And if the “green left” wasn’t lying, he didn’t say but everybody in the room understood, the war room just might have to tell some porkies of its own. All in a good cause, and what, in Mr. Kenney’s obsessive mind, could be a better cause than selling Alberta’s “ethical oil”?

When the CEC was officially launched to great fanfare on Dec. 18, 2019, Mr. Kenney’s press secretary, Christine Myatt, repeated the government’s talking point that CEC Ltd. needed to be set up as a private, albeit government-owned, corporation so it was protected from FOIP-happy journalists and environmentalists. 

“The CEC’s internal operations are not subject to FOIP, as this would provide a tactical and/or strategical advantage to the very foreign-funded special interests the CEC is looking to counter,” she explained.

Of course, it also prevented Albertans from trying to answer more traditional questions, such as whether taxpayers were getting their money’s worth for the millions of dollars flowing to CEC Ltd.

In May 2021, a CBC reporter filed a FOIP request to the company, trying to winkle out more information about the contracts it was awarding. CEC Ltd. told her to talk to the environment ministry.

Investigative reporter Jennie Russell appealed the ruling to the information and privacy commissioner, who handed the question over to an independent adjudicator. In March 2022, the adjudicator rules that, nope, CEC Ltd. didn’t have to release any information because it was a private company.

As time has passed, Alberta’s journalists have mostly forgotten about the War Room. Too much trouble, one supposes, and so much of its advertising outside Alberta and outside Canada. 

According to the company’s last annual report, CEC Ltd. received $31.8 million in transfers from the Alberta government in 2023, it sole source of revenue. Past statements by the company and government officials have indicated some of those funds, in turn, originate elsewhere, including the government’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) program for large industrial carbon emitters. CEC Ltd. had total expenses that year of $26.1 million, much of that for advertising campaigns in the United States and Europe. 

Of that, in 2023 the company spent $1.5 million on salaries and benefits for its small staff, $1.3 million on research, just under $700,000 on “social advertising,” and only $34,667 on its colourful web page touting the wonders and benefits of fossil fuel use.

NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify the ultimate source of CEC Ltd.’s revenues. DJC