EDMONTON—A new database of the most powerful players in the energy industry paints a picture of a tight-knit network of oil companies, institutions and businesses with “pervasive” influence over Canada’s corporate, political and civil sectors.

The Corporate Mapping Project — a six-year joint initiative between the University of Victoria, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Alberta-based Parkland Institute — lists a “who’s who” of the energy industry in what is called the Fossil-Power Top 50 and explores their reach into wider society.

The organizations are split into three categories: “Emitters,” who are directly involved in energy extraction; “enablers,” organizations such as banks and regulators that support energy extraction; and “legitimators,” which are organizations accused of persuading the public or political elites that an “urgent shift away from dependence on fossil fuels is unfeasible or unnecessary.”

Bill Carroll, the co-director of the project and a sociology professor at the University of Victoria, said the assortment of industry-friendly organizations join forces to push a narrative that the approach to tackling climate change and energy diversification should be “business as usual.”

“I think it has a massive influence,” Carroll said. “At a cultural level, the industry has put together a narrative that many people have bought into, and not just into Alberta, that this industry is at the centre of life and we could not live without it.

“Meanwhile the climate crisis is getting worse and worse. … It’s frankly irresponsible for people to be engaging in effect a kind of denialism at this point,” he added.

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That characterization of the level of influence the energy industry wields over government policy contradicts Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s contention that the province is under siege by environmental groups who want to landlock Alberta’s oil, Carroll said.

“I think it’s largely the opposite,” he said, arguing that the energy industry is “the biggest obstacle to real action on climate change today.”

The Fossil-Power Top 50 includes 21 oil-and-gas companies as emitters, with all but two of those headquartered in Calgary.

The list of Enablers includes big banks such as Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada, as well as regulators such as BC Oil and Gas Commission and the Alberta Energy Regulator. The most diverse list is the Legitimators, which includes industry advocacy groups, think tanks, lobby groups, universities, media organizations and more.

“It reaches into other cultural and political areas of life, through think tanks and industry groups and lobbying and so on … Canadians should be very concerned about how power is concentrated, and how to some extent, it constrains and compromises our democracy,” Carroll said.

Some of the so-called Legitimators are energy advocacy groups, such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Gas Association and the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.

Others, such as The Fraser Institute and Rebel Media, are linked to conservative views. Then there are two schools: Edwards School of Business, affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of Calgary.

The University of Calgary, in particular, has attracted controversy in the past due to questions about the energy industry’s influence.

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In 2016, the Canadian Association of University Teachers launched a probe investigating the university’s relationship with pipeline company Enbridge. They found evidence of a conflict of interest over a corporate-funded research centre. The university’s board of governors said the associations’s investigation “lacked legitimacy.”

Carroll said the university has excellent researchers and has put out good work on climate change and energy diversification, but said it’s more of an institutional issue at the school. He pointed to the university’s governance board, which includes at least one oil industry executive.

He did note the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy has “churned out a lot of material that says we need to stick to business as usual and continue to grow this sector,” adding that the school’s former director, Jack Mintz, sits on the board of Imperial Oil.

Trevor Tombe, an associate professor of economics and a research fellow at the School of Public Policy who has written extensively about Alberta’s carbon tax in news publications and social media, said the energy industry “unequivocally” has no undue influence at the school.

“I think the University of Calgary like every university worth its salt … allows its researchers the space to pursue their own agendas as they see fit,” Tombe said.

Tombe frequently comments on the economic implications of a carbon tax and has countered myths about the tax on social media. He said he’s received “zero pushback” from anyone at the university.

“In terms of climate change and carbon-tax policy in particular, there are a number of faculty members here at the University of Calgary who have really been at the forefront of that conversation. … If anything the university encourages that,” Tombe said.

Carroll said the bigger question is how much corporate representation universities should have on their boards of governors, their highest governing bodies. The boards guide the university’s strategic vision and make sure resources and finances are being used to meet the university’s objectives and mission statement.

One of the trends Carroll has noticed since the oil downturn is that, as smaller and medium-sized oil and gas companies have shuttered or been absorbed by larger corporations, power and corporate influence is being consolidated at the top.

“It’s very tightly organized at the top, not in conspiratorial way in the sense that people are meeting together and planning and scheming, but the connections are very dense,” Carroll said, noting that in some cases oil executives sit on each other’s boards.

The top 50 list is part of a larger list of 200 Canadian-based energy companies and the Corporate Mapping Project, which examines their links to the corporate sector in Canada.

In 2017, the Corporate Mapping Project collaborated with the Toronto Star, National Observer, Global News, the Michener Awards Foundation and four journalism schools investigating the impacts of the oil and gas industry on Canadian communities. This resulted in an investigative series called The Price of Oil, which is ongoing.

Update - July 3: This story has been updated to include the fact that this newspaper has done collaborative work with the Corporate Mapping Project.

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