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Premier Rachel Notley will speak at an Alberta Teachers’ Association conference next month to counter what she calls “misinformation” about the Trans Mountain pipeline and the province’s oil and gas sector.

Notley’s move is in response to the ATA booking controversial environmental activist Tzeporah Berman as a keynote speaker.

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Notley told the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association meeting in Red Deer Thursday she doesn’t have a problem with Berman speaking at the conference — after all, “it’s a free country,” she said. But she won’t let Berman’s arguments go unanswered.

“In coffee shops, in union halls, in church basements, I will always stand up for Alberta. In the case of the ATA convention … I will go myself to make the case for Alberta and our industry, to counter misinformation, and assure that the whole story is told,” she said to applause.

Berman is an environmental studies adjunct professor at York University and a former Greenpeace director. Known for once comparing the oilsands to the fictional wasteland of Mordor, she was let go from Alberta’s oilsands advisory committee in 2017.