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.

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“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.”

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