A far-right Canadian website whose contributors have disputed the extent to which fossil fuels are warming our atmosphere, attacked the science demonstrating that climate change leads to more destructive wildfires and suggested climate advocates are “the real conspiracy theorists,” is quietly getting large donations from a former oil and gas executive. 

Canada Revenue Agency tax records reviewed by DeSmog reveal that the True North Centre for Public Policy, a charitable organization that is the parent group of conservative website True North, has received $530,000 since 2019 from the foundation of fracking pioneer Gwyn Morgan. 

Morgan, who claims credit for overseeing some of the first fracking wells drilled in North America and was later CEO of the international oil and gas company Encana, is an outspoken opponent of climate action, arguing in a 2022 op-ed for the Financial Post that “the road to hell is paved with green intentions.” 

Yet Morgan’s role as a significant behind-the-scenes funder of True North, which hosted a Calgary event on Saturday called True North Nation featuring Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as keynote speaker, hasn’t been made public until now. 

“I’m really not too surprised,” said Shane Gunster, a communications professor at Simon Fraser University who studies climate obstruction on social media, after learning about Morgan’s six-figure financial contributions. 

Gunster’s research has shown that True North is one of the loudest and most effective anti-climate media sources in Canada in terms of social media engagement. “From [Morgan’s] perspective it could be seen as money well spent,” he told DeSmog. 

DeSmog reached out to True North and Morgan about the contributions but didn’t receive a response.

Ties to Premier Danielle Smith

True North describes itself as “a Canadian digital media platform that seeks to provide Canadians with fair, accurate, truthful and fact-based news reports, analysis, investigative reports, podcasts, interviews and documentaries.”   

Its founder and editor-in-chief is Candice Malcolm, a former columnist with Sun Media who has longtime connections to Alberta’s conservative leadership. She became press secretary in 2011 for then-Conservative immigration minister Jason Kenney, who went on to become premier of Alberta. Earlier in her career she was a special assistant for the Wildrose Party, the political organization formerly led by Smith, now the current Alberta premier. 

When True North contributor Rachel Parker got married in 2023, Premier Smith attended the wedding. Her husband is David Parker, the far-right strategist behind the group Take Back Alberta, which helped advise the B.C. Conservatives in the recent provincial election. 

“There has been a very, very close relationship between True North and the Smith administration,” Nate Pike, executive producer and host of an Alberta politics podcast called The Breakdown which has covered the outlet, told DeSmog. 

Smith’s office didn’t respond to questions about the premier’s ties to True North. 

True North runs articles and YouTube videos about a range of culture war and political topics from a rightwing perspective, but its coverage of climate change and energy seems to perform particularly well online, engagement data shows. 

When Gunster looked at 10,000 Facebook posts referencing these topics between August 2022 and August 2023, he found that True North generated over 300,000 interactions, which is more than CTV New and CBC News combined. At least until Facebook banned news sites from its platform in 2023, resulting in large social media traffic drops for most Canadian media outlets, True North “was getting a ton of engagement,” he said.

Spreading Climate Disinformation

Those energy and climate posts frequently feature fringe claims about climate science. Multiple videos with True North host Harrison Faulkner have attempted to blame arsonists for the 2023 wildfires that were some of the most destructive blazes in Canadian history, with one video from earlier this year stating, “Arsonists set Canada on fire. NOT Climate Change.”

That echoes Premier Smith, who as the fires blazed out of control last year said “we are bringing in arson investigators from outside the province.”   

While it’s true that some of the Canadian fires were started intentionally, the vast majority — 93 percent according to a report from the Canadian Climate Institute — were due to natural causes like lightning. And the reason experts say the fires burned so aggressively was because of extremely warm and dry conditions caused by climate change. 

Global temperature rise “doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada,” according to a team of scientists from Canada and Europe. 

True North for years has run content disputing that the climate emergency is serious — or even real. In 2020 it hosted climate denier Patrick Moore for an interview “to discuss why CO2 is a positive, not a negative, for the environment, and how to push back against hysteria from climate alarmists.”

And in 2019, Gwyn Morgan wrote in an op-ed for the site that “the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have us believe that fossil fuel emissions are the sole reason for climate change. But what about urbanization and deforestation?” Though those factors are contributors to global temperature rise, he neglected to mention in his piece that nearly 90 percent of all carbon emissions come from oil, gas and coal.   

Donor and Writer

Morgan’s contributions to True North come via the charity he runs with his wife, the Gwyn Morgan and Patricia Trottier Foundation. Tax records show that in 2023, the foundation donated $250,000 to True North, along with several other anti-climate organizations, including $50,000 to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and $200,000 to Second Street.  

Over the years True North has provided a platform for Morgan’s views on climate, energy and politics without disclosing that he’s contributing financially. When the Calgary-based oil and gas company that Morgan founded, Encana, announced that it was moving its headquarters to the U.S. and rebranding as Ovintiv, True North covered the news in a post entitled “7 oil and gas companies that Trudeau has driven out of Canada.”

It quoted Morgan, the CEO of Encana until 2005, as saying, “The destructive policies of the Trudeau Liberals have left the company with no choice but to shift its asset base and capital program south of the border.” A separate opinion piece on True North authored by Morgan blamed in part “carbon taxes that will hit the industry particularly hard.” (That year Morgan’s foundation contributed $80,000 to True North, tax records show.) 

Yet the company’s CEO Doug Suttles didn’t appear to share Morgan’s view about the relocation. “It has no political overtone, it has nothing to do with roles and jobs, it’s quite simply trying to make sure, over time, we’re doing everything we can to get the value of the company reflected in the share price,” he told Radio Canada at the time.

True North earlier this year featured Morgan on the site’s Andrew Lawton Show. Lawton described Morgan in the episode as “a legend in the Canadian oil and gas sector,” saying that “he’s always been a tremendous supporter of True North.”