"The government says this is so the province’s enemies cannot use the information to further undermine Alberta’s energy. It also makes it much more difficult for Albertans to hold the war room and public inquiry to account."

Premier Jason Kenney speaks to media during the Alberta Fight Back strategy presser, in Calgary on July 4, 2019. Christina Ryan/Star Calgary

It was absolutely the nicest declaration of war.

When Alberta Premier Jason Kenney unveiled his government’s new war room Wednesday morning in Calgary, he talked of a war that would be “positive and uplifting.”

Heck, even the title “war room” had been banished from Kenney’s vocabulary, replaced by the much less confrontational sounding “Canadian Energy Centre” (CEC).

READ MORE: Can Kenney win over new U.S. investors with old sales pitch?

The centre, funded by $30 million in government money each year, is designed to spin a positive message about Alberta’s energy industry.

It has three components, all sounding a bit martial: a rapid response unit, an energy literacy unit and a data and research unit.

Tom Olsen, the centre’s executive director, says in a blog post on the centre’s website that the CEC’s mandate is to “create a new, pragmatic, fact-based narrative about Canadian energy.”

But there is an ominous side to the centre.

“We will be informative, positive and educational — but not shy away from difficult topics,” added Olsen who ran unsuccessfully for Kenney’s United Conservative Party in the spring provincial election.

He said the centre will “push back where falsehoods are spread” using social media, paid media and advertising. It’s all part of the government’s aggressive “fight back” strategy that includes a $2.5 million public inquiry into what Kenney has called “foreign-funded” organizations conspiring to landlock Alberta oil.

But there are concerns the strategy will cast such a wide net it will ensnare people’s right to freedom of speech. Kenney has publicly said the war room will target politicians, media and other “opinion leaders.”

Before the Alberta election last spring, Kenney promised to set up a government-sponsored “fully staffed, rapid response war room” that would “effectively rebut every lie told by the green left.”

This was a war room envisaged as a partisan weapon against Kenney’s political enemies.

This kind of rhetoric so alarmed Amnesty International that it wrote a letter to Kenney in September warning him that his war room and the public inquiry “pose threats to the freedoms of speech and association, undermine the urgent work of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, set back efforts to address the climate crisis and expose human rights defenders to intimidation and threats.”

When asked by reporters Wednesday about the war room trying to shut down freedom of speech, Kenney said, “nobody is proposing to trample on anybody’s free speech.”

But he said the centre will be aggressive: “If there are folks, if there are organizations that use their free speech to put misinformation into the public square we will respond. That’s not attacking freedom of speech, it’s responding to the content of the speech. That’s called public discourse. And the CEC will do it with respect, civility and professionalism.”

Will the centre draw a line between falsehoods and informed opinion?

Take the Moody’s Investors Services report last week that downgraded Alberta’s credit rating. A clearly irritated Kenney went on the attack to say bond rating agencies, including Moody’s, “are buying into the political agenda emanating from Europe, which is trying to stigmatize development of hydrocarbon energy. And I just think they are completely factually wrong.”

Is that the kind of fight the war room, um, Canadian Energy Centre, wants to get involved in?

Right now, the centre is promising civility and respect.

Its website is designed like a news outlet’s page and includes articles with titles such as “Fighting climate change with Canadian energy” and “From jet fuel to rubber ducks: What just one barrel of oil can produce.”

The page looks about as threatening as an oil-produced rubber duck but we have yet to see the centre’s “rapid response unit” in action to “effectively rebut every lie told by the green left.”

Even after we see all its work first-hand, the war room will remain a bit of a mystery. It is not open and accountable.

READ MORE: Kenney not a climate change denier but a climate change dodger

In his introductory blog, Olsen mistakenly said the centre was an “independent Crown corporation.” It’s not.

Even though the centre will receive $30 million a year in public money, the government has deliberately set it up as a private corporation, not a Crown corporation. (Olsen later corrected his blog). That means it does not fall under the province’s Freedom of Information laws. Members of the media and public cannot request the centre’s emails or correspondence or anything else the centre doesn’t want the media or public to see.

Likewise, the public inquiry into “foreign-funded” organizations is not open to access-for-information requests.

The government says this is so the province’s enemies cannot use the information to further undermine Alberta’s energy.

It also makes it much more difficult for Albertans to hold the war room and public inquiry to account.

Kenney is promising us a war that is “positive and uplifting.”

But wars are often neither of those things.

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