CALGARY—Alberta Premier Jason Kenney reiterated Wednesday that Alberta’s oilsands will be no longer a “punching bag” for pro-environment groups, as his government officially launched its Canadian Energy Centre — a war room intended to fight perceived misinformation and negativity about the sector.

New details of the Centre’s communication plan reveal a mix of social media and traditional advertising, as well as a website that mimics that of news organizations, which Alberta will use to spread a “hopeful, unifying and uplifting” message about the province’s energy sector, according to the centre’s CEO, Tom Olsen.

“Our starting point is that Canadian oil and gas makes the world a better place,” Olsen told reporters at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s main campus. The war room, Olsen said, will also act as a pro-oil and gas research think tank.

The war room, Olsen added, will tell the story of Canadian energy from a national perspective.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Kenney maintained that the war room’s mandate is to respond to “misleading and dishonest propaganda” done by special interest groups’ foreign-funded campaigns, through which tens of millions of dollars have been used to damage the reputation of Canadian energy and oilsands.

Launched on Tuesday evening, the war room’s website already contains a mix of articles and videos touting the benefits of Canadian oil and gas expansion, Indigenous involvement in the sector, and even an interview with a University of Alberta professor about the role of divisive language in conversations about the industry. Most of these articles are unbylined, but are structured similarly to news stories. The war room’s site also mimics a news website with sections for top stories, features and video.

Aside from the website, Kenney said people will likely see advertising paid and created by the war room on transit, in magazines and on television around Canada and the world. “You might be in the London tube station in the future and you will see an ad about responsibly produced Canadian energy,” Kenney said.

When asked about how the success of the war room will be measured, Kenney said there will be public-opinion research polls conducted following the centre’s advocacy campaigns to identify whether they’ve been effective.

Kenney added, however, that it’s hard to measure what impact the war room will have on investors’ desire to support Alberta’s oilsands. But what’s important, he said, is to get the facts out there.

In an introductory post to the war room’s website, Olsen promotes the concept of “ethical oil”: a theory that Canada’s oil and gas industry should expand to meet growing international demand because of the country’s commitment to human rights, labour standards and the environment. Olsen also writes that domestic- and foreign-funded campaigns against the industry “have divided our country and devastated the Alberta economy.”

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Both points have also been endorsed by the United Conservative government. Part of Kenney’s “fight back” strategy against criticism of the industry also includes a $2.5-million public inquiry into the source of alleged foreign-funded campaigns against Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

Harrie Vredenburg, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and an expert on energy and environmental issues, welcomed the idea of an operation that explains and unpacks the workings of the industry. The energy sector and its environmental impacts are incredibly complex, he said, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding among the general public.

“If you’re not in close to it, it’s not that easy to understand, and there may be some places or some groups who wilfully try to send out misinformation,” Vredenburg said.

But he was relieved to see the war room’s name had been changed to the Canadian Energy Centre, saying the operation should use scientifically based evidence to make its points. He also said providing real data and keeping the industry transparent would provide incentives for oil and gas companies to reduce their emissions even further.

“Let’s be transparent about this — and let’s be real about this,” Vredenburg said.

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Energy Minister Sonya Savage previously told reporters the war room will have three distinct units: a rapid response team, an “energy literacy” team to create content about Alberta’s oil industry, and a data and research team intended to promote the industry globally. On top of advertising, Savage said the war room will also use speaking engagements and visits to investors in key global markets, including New York and London, to get its message across.

The war room will be staffed by public sector workers and have a budget of around $30 million a year, funded through a mix of government advertising and revenue from the province’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) regime. Currently, its website lists eight employees, including Olsen. He said some are on contract while others are permanent, and the centre plans to hire more people as its mandate continues.

Olsen, a former Calgary Herald journalist turned press secretary under the Ed Stelmach government, is being paid $195,000 a year to run the war room. During Stelmach’s time as premier, Olsen was responsible for a now-defunct website called For the Record that issued government rebukes to reporting on Alberta’s oil and gas industry.

Kenney said the war room’s mandate differs from previous campaigns to promote Alberta’s oil and gas industry, like For the Record, because those older efforts were not sustained. “None of them were, frankly, as well resourced or as ambitious as this,” Kenney said.

The backgrounds of the war room’s other seven listed staffers include public policy analysis, oil and gas industry communications and journalism.

The announcement of the centre wasn’t without criticism. Just outside the media conference on Wednesday, a dozen protesters from the pro-environment group Extinction Rebellion sang a Christmas carol against the war room and Kenney’s pro-oil and gas policies as a whole.

“Climate change is real, it’s the only war we are facing,” Sarah Flynn, one of the protesters, said. “We don't need an energy war room, we need a climate change action war room where all Albertans come together and there's no division or hatred.”

The NDP have also slammed the war room as a futile exercise, describing it as a glorified government Twitter troll farm. On Wednesday, Opposition leader and former premier Rachel Notley doubled-down on her earlier remarks, and criticized the spending of public money on the centre — a private corporation that is not subject to freedom of information laws.

“It's a great, big, secret sandbox in which Jason Kenney gets to play with $30 million a year of Albertans’ money with no performance measures, no transparency,” Notley said, and added this is being done at the same time as many Albertans are losing their jobs due to budget cuts.

Other critics point to not only the environmental risks of Alberta’s oil and gas industry, but also the financial consequences of paying for cleanup — the consequences of which would be borne by shareholders. In recent months, Sweden’s Riksbank and the Swiss-based Zurich Insurance Group announced their intention to sell or divert investment from Alberta’s oilsands due to their high carbon footprint.

While the war room aims to educate the public about Canadian oil and gas, Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, expected it to accomplish the opposite. He insisted many of their assertions, including Alberta’s low emissions compared to other oil-producing jurisdictions, simply aren’t true — and readers will begin to notice.

“Just trying to yell loudly with lots of money will fool some people — but most people will not be fooled,” Gray said.

Correction - Dec. 11. 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that erroneously suggested that articles on the Canadian Energy Centre’s website appeared to be sponsored content. The operation does not run sponsored content.

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