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For at least the past 10 years — it’s actually more like 20 — Alberta’s oil and gas industry has had a target on its back that it has done little to remove.

Lies and smears have been spread around the world about how damaging Alberta’s oilsands are to the existence of our planet. The response over all of those years by the Alberta government and, worse yet, the energy industry? Silence. Crickets. A veritable black hole of a response. Actually, silence would have been preferable.

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Many major oil players in Alberta actually helped fund the smears against them by sending tens of thousands of dollars annually to the likes of the David Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute and even Greenpeace, which has actually argued in court documents that using lies to further its agenda while damaging legitimate businesses should be allowed under its right to freedom of expression.

Those industry players who sent large cheques to those who want to shut them down did so as an attempt to appease their critics — but as we all learn eventually, appeasement only makes your aggressors more aggressive. These donations smacked of the medieval religious habit by a corrupt church to have sinners pay indulgences to be exonerated for their wrongdoings. It was a blasphemous abomination then and it remains so now.