Alberta’s Anti-science, Pro-business Premier

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is still livid at the “eco-extremists” in the federal government for the “absurd authoritarian censorship” coming from Bill C-59. The bill casts a wide net, including changes to the Income Tax Act and the packaging of vaping products.

One part in particular has the premier piping mad: amendments to the Competition Act, around “representations of a product’s benefits for the environment.”

“The proposed amendment would seek to protect consumers, competitors, and the proper functioning of the market, against the harms of untested representations about a product’s benefits for protecting the environment or mitigating the effects of climate change,” an explanatory note from the Government of Canada reads.

Companies will be required to “adequately test” their claims about a product or project’s environmental benefits, but not be required to prove them. Bad actors would be deterred from making false or unverified claims about a product to gain a leg up in the market, the note argues.

Why is Smith so mad? For one explanation, look to her own history of unsupported claims about everything from the health benefits of smoking to so-called COVID cures. The former newspaper columnist, radio talk show host and lobbyist has built a career on unproven claims.

For another, look at her long history — as a journalist and lobbyist — of pushing for private enterprise to get what it wants from government.

The federal bill isn’t overly restrictive. Oil and gas companies won’t have to prove their claims “with absolute certainty,” but those making unproven statements about their environmental actions could face fines.

Making sure oil and gas companies and other big polluters can’t lie or greenwash without consequences is a no-brainer for most people.

To Smith and a few of her ministers, it’s an attack on the sovereignty of Alberta and companies’ ability to share the real truth, as opposed to that “extreme and untruthful oil and gas narrative” the feds are spinning.

Alberta Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean and Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz joined Smith in her indignation. The three railed against the bill in a joint statement.

“Bill C-59, when it receives royal assent, will prevent private entities from sharing truthful and evidence-based information that happens to oppose the extreme and untruthful oil and gas narrative of the federal NDP and Liberals,” they wrote. “This is being done to intentionally intimidate boards and shareholders, silence debate, and amplify the voices of those who oppose Canada’s world leading energy industry.”

Yes, apparently there’s no entity whose voice is more oppressed and silenced than the energy industry. The Tyee reached out to the premier’s office for this story but they did not respond by publication time.

Smith’s strong words suggest the oil companies and provincial government are the arbiters of truth, while the federal government is deceiving the public about that overblown “climate change” hullabaloo.

That’s a little ironic, given recent oil and gas snafus like vastly underreported methane emissions and Alberta’s own energy regulator waiting nine months to report Imperial Oil’s tailings leaks in northern Alberta.

Smith and her ministers also claim that “this kind of absurd authoritarian censorship will only work to stifle many billions in investments in emissions-reducing technologies.”

But that wasn’t a concern with the 118 projects (representing $33 billion in investments) punched in the gut by the province’s surprise renewables moratorium last year.

The Pathways Alliance, a consortium of oil companies with the previously stated aim of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the oilsands by 2050, quickly shared its displeasure with the bill. After C-59 became law last month, the alliance scrubbed its website and social media of environmental and emissions claims.

The alliance said it needed more certainty from the Competition Bureau about the law’s interpretation and enforcement. “For now, we have removed content from our website, social media and other public communications. This is a direct consequence of the new legislation and is not related to our belief in the truth and accuracy of our environmental communications.”

Individual members of the alliance are following. Imperial Oil’s newsroom page now has a disclosure window stating any information found doesn’t constitute any active representation of the company. They also make sure to disclaim liability for that “historical information.”

If that sounds to you like the actions of companies backpedalling and acknowledging previous claims couldn’t be substantiated, you’d be coming to the same conclusions as environmental advocacy groups like Environmental Defence.

Another casualty of C-59 is the infamous Canadian Energy Centre, a Jason Kenney-era creation often referred to as the “energy war room,” a beating drum for Alberta’s energy industry.

It appeared as though the centre was stepping up its game in 2023. Its revenue, coming from the government, was $31.2 million, up from $7.7 million in 2022.

Set up as a corporation outside government, the war room would have been required to prove its claims under the new federal act. It’s now been folded into the government communications apparatus.

Smith is not, nor has ever been, a fan of government regulation. Or of being required to prove her own claims. That can be observed in the halcyon days of her time arguing against anti-tobacco legislation.

“It’s obvious the goal of a smoke-free society is unachievable,” she wrote for the Calgary Herald in 2003. “What’s really needed is a renewed effort to create safer cigarettes. Why not?”

Smith went on to argue that the debate had been hijacked by a political agenda aimed at abolishing smoking. The result of that political meddling, she argued, pushed resources away from developing safer tobacco products.

Smith reasoned that without these hypothetical safe cigarettes, smokers who weren’t going to quit in the face of anti-smoking legislation now wouldn’t have an option to smoke something that wouldn’t kill them as fast.

She brandished her torch of freedom again and waved it at public health restrictions against unvaccinated people, referring to those individuals as “the most discriminated against group that [Smith] had ever seen in [her] lifetime.”

It appears Smith’s objections apply more to regulation than to things like government cosying up with special interest groups. Given her experience working as a lobbyist, it makes sense she’d treat them as natural comrades.

Smith’s lobbying to the province has run the gamut from arguing against listing single-use plastics as toxic, to reducing COVID restrictions, to privatizing health care. All of these ideas are things she’s made moves on as premier.

On COVID, Smith “banned mandatory masking in schools and has rejected mandatory health rules to combat any future COVID pandemics,” CTV News Edmonton reported last year.

Smith’s government supported plastics companies by becoming an intervener in their case against the federal labelling rules. When a federal judge ruled in favour of those companies, Smith and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz celebrated the decision and hinted at further legal action from her government if plastic manufactured items were not removed from the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Smith’s reforms to the health-care system took the form of the Health Statutes Amendment Act. That act will divide the single Alberta Health Services system into four separate provincial health services. Critics say this move was done to break down Alberta’s public health system, making it ripe for Smith’s long-sought medical privatization.

The badge of “free enterprise champion” that Smith proudly dons should have a reverse side that says “lobbyist’s best friend.”

She rails against “draconian” government overreach in the form of regulation aimed at public safety and knowledge. Yet she’s comfortable with her government spending alarming amounts of tax dollars on pro-oil, potentially deceitful propaganda machines like the energy war room.

Then there’s Smith’s “RStar” passion project from her lobbying days (revived in a mandate letter to Energy Minister Brian Jean), aimed at giving $20 billion in tax credits to oil and gas companies in a bizarre bid to have them clean up their own messes (which they’re legally obligated to do already).

Going all the way back to that 2003 “safer cigarettes” piece, Smith had similar ideas when it came to government’s financial obligations to tobacco companies.

“Governments, whose tobacco taxes make them the primary beneficiary of tobacco sales, share a moral obligation with tobacco companies to develop safer cigarettes,” she wrote. “Unless they take up the challenge, millions more lives will be lost.”

Using taxes to help enormously rich industries remediate the damage they’ve caused those same taxpayers?

Sounds like a classic case of government overreach.