The government of Alberta and Canadian newspaper chain Postmedia are being accused of publishing disinformation on the front pages of major Canadian newspapers.
But critics are also pointing out the ad campaign distracts from the bigger issue of whether proposed emissions bans are sufficient given the severity of the climate crisis.
Full front page advertorials ran on the covers of Canadian newspapers in several major cities, including that of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, recently acquired by the Postmedia chain. Paid for by the government of Alberta as part of their “scrap the cap” campaign, the headline reads “Ottawa’s Energy Production Cap Will Make Groceries More Expensive.”
As reported by the CBC, the Alberta government’s media blitz targets the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. It also mirrors an $8 million ad campaign against federal government clean electricity rules.
Though the Alberta government insinuates that it is opposing the federal government’s emissions cap on the grounds that it will exacerbate the affordability crisis, DeSmog debunked this argument in a recent article, noting that the same government has saddled every Alberta household with an estimated $70,000 in oil industry liabilities.
This is just one of several falsehoods the government of Alberta is currently promoting through its campaign, critics say.
“The proposed emissions cap aims to cut oil and gas pollution, not production, by 35-38 percent by 2030,” said Stephen Legault, Senior Manager, Alberta Energy Transition, and Aly Hyder Ali, Oil and Gas Program Manager, both of Environmental Defence. Legault and Ali jointly answered DeSmog’s questions by email.
Legault and Ali said that the current proposal includes compliance flexibilities that would help oil and gas companies comply with the cap, such as cutting fugitive methane emissions and electrifying operations, all of which would cut emissions without affecting production. They note that some critics of the proposal think it’s too business friendly, but also that its emissions reduction target is achievable based on what the oil and gas industry has claimed it could accomplish in the past.
Industry Talking Points
Legault and Ali characterized the “scrap the cap” campaign as misinformation and fear mongering.
“Premier Danielle Smith is using fossil fuel industry talking points while ignoring the fact that climate change is a serious risk to her own province, to Canadians and our economy,” they said.
“If an oil company ran that ad, we’d be filing a formal Competition Bureau challenge in a heartbeat over the blatant falsehoods,” said Keith Stewart, Senior Energy Strategist with Greenpeace Canada in an interview with DeSmog.
Stewart noted that even though governments aren’t covered by current truth-in-advertising legislation, voters should nonetheless care whether their tax dollars are paying for misinformation.
“The weird thing is that the Alberta government and oil sands companies all claim they will get to net zero emissions by 2050,” said Stewart, “but once the federal government wants to put it into binding regulations, the Alberta government spends $7 million to buy misleading ads claiming that it is impossible to do.”
Whether the federal proposal is even good policy is a discussion that isn’t happening, a problem itself exacerbated by the rhetoric and sensationalism of the “scrap the cap” ad campaign. According to Environmental Defence’s Legault and Ali, the federal government needs to do much more to protect Canadians from the impacts of climate change, and the government’s proposed emissions cap falls far short of what’s needed.
“It reflects the bare minimum based on industry claims,” said Legault and Ali. “For it to be effective, the target must align with Canada’s 40-45 percent reduction goal from 2005 levels by 2030. Loopholes, like offsets and decarbonization funds, need to be removed to ensure the cap leads to real, direct emissions cuts from the oil and gas sector.”
Legault and Ali also note that the proposed cap has faced numerous delays, and that many of those are coming from the government of Alberta. Legault and Ali want the federal government to release the draft regulations as soon as possible so that the final regulation can be in place by early next year.
Andrew Leach, an energy and environmental economist and a professor at the University of Alberta, argues the “scrap the cap” campaign is confusing, in that it inadvertently undermines Alberta’s apparent faith in the oil and gas sector.
“The biggest risk of the ad campaign is that you are turning around and telling Canadians that the oil and gas industry can’t do what it spent three or four years telling Canadians they can do, which is to reduce the production emissions from oil and gas assets.”
“I think what most Canadians are going to hear is that, all those ads they saw on Hockey Night in Canada last year — saying the oil sands were investing in billions to reduce emissions — apparently that wasn’t what we thought it was, and that’s bad for the government as much as the industry,” said Leach in an interview with DeSmog.
Environmental Defence also noted that the oil and gas industry has made, and continues to make, promises about capping their own emissions, but aren’t following through.
“The truth is that oil and gas emissions continue to increase while other parts of the economy are reducing their pollution,” said Legault and Ali. “If the oil and gas sector reduced its emissions voluntarily, as they insist they can, then we would not need an emissions cap to ensure oil and gas companies start cleaning up their mess.”
‘Endless Propaganda War’
Leach argues that the government of Alberta has made considerable environmental claims and set difficult goals for itself — such as carbon neutrality by 2050 — but is also opposed to just about every proposal that might get it there.
“Alberta says ‘we’re committed to this,’ but they don’t like clean electricity standards, or oil and gas emissions standards, and they don’t like consumer carbon pricing, and they’re lukewarm on industrial carbon pricing, and they don’t like electric vehicle mandates, or solar power or wind energy… so, okay, tell me more?” said Leach.
Because natural resource exploitation is considered a provincial area of responsibility in Canada, and because Canadian conservatism is largely predicated on fighting for ‘provincial rights’ against what they consider federal government overreach, the government of Danielle Smith has consistently invoked provincial jurisdiction any time the federal government has proposed any effort to combat global warming.
According to Leach, Smith is advancing a false constitutional argument.
“Federal policy can validly affect resource development, that’s not really in dispute. Smith is saying that if it affects production, or if a production response is the only thing that industry can do, then it’s a bridge too far for the federal government,” said Leach. “And that’s not supported by any real interpretation of our constitution.”
While he believes Canada hasn’t fully considered the economic implications of fully phasing out the oil and gas industry, Leach argues this is very different from Smith’s assertions an emissions cap will result in higher grocery bills.
Naheed Nenshi, leader of the opposition Alberta New Democratic Party, also took issue with the “scrap the cap” campaign, arguing it was typical of the Smith administration. “They’re spending a whole bunch of taxpayer money in places like Halifax to try and influence the upcoming federal election instead of actually solving the problem,” Nenshi said on social media.
Greenpeace’s Stewart disagrees with this statement, however: “This ad campaign isn’t really about targeting public opinion in other provinces, it is about using $7 million of public money to shore up Danielle Smith’s ‘stand up to Ottawa’ credentials ahead of the United Conservative Party leadership review.”
Nenshi also argued that Alberta already has an emissions cap program, one instituted by former NDP premier Rachel Notley and kept by both the Smith government and her conservative predecessor, Jason Kenney. Nenshi further stated that the province had “achieved record production with the emissions cap in place,” and that, because the Smith government has taken an adversarial approach to the federal government’s proposal, Alberta will “have an emissions cap that may well restrict our ability to increase production going forward.”
This doesn’t hold up, according to Stewart.
“Alberta’s so-called cap is pure fiction,” he said in an interview.
“The regulations that would make it real have never been developed, so there is no way that it could ever be enforced. It’s a useful fiction, however, in the endless propaganda war being fought by the Alberta government on behalf of oil CEOs and that’s probably all it was ever intended to be.”
By opposing any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, Alberta’s United Conservative Party is doing the dirty work of their federal counterparts, according to Environmental Defence’s Legault and Ali.
“The irony is that this will, in the long run, come back to harm Alberta, and Albertans. While other jurisdictions around the world are making massive investments in renewable energy, transmission and battery storage, Alberta has crippled what will almost certainly be the energy industry of the future,” said Legault and Ali.
“It’s Albertans, and Canadians who will suffer as a result.”
In 2023 and 2024, the Smith government instituted a province-wide moratorium on new solar and wind projects, which was then followed by new regulations that in effect continue the prohibition on most new solar and wind projects. Though necessary, an emissions cap is only a tentative first step towards tackling bigger challenges.
“Oil and gas extraction and refining represents almost a third of all greenhouse gas emissions in Canada and its share is growing,” said Greenpeace’s Stewart.
“We need a hard cap to finally force these companies to invest in clean-up rather than handing all of their massive profits back to wealthy shareholders and executives.”
