Canadian Energy Centre
[12][13] The CEC attracted widespread media attention when it launched a campaign against the Netflix animated children's movie Bigfoot Family because it cast Alberta's oil and gas industry in a negative light.
In the founding speech of the UCP on 9 May 2018, Kenney announced that he would engage in "national and international advocacy" including a "fully staffed rapid response war room in government to quickly and effectively rebut every lie told by the green left about our world-class energy industry.
"[15] Premier Kenney, whose United Conservative Party (UCP), won a majority of seats in the Alberta Legislature announced the creation of Calgary-based $30 million "Energy War Room" on 7 June 2019 to "fight misinformation related to oil and gas".
[7] On 6 May 2019 Nick Koolsbergen, who was the UCP's Alberta campaign manager for the winning election, announced the establishment of the Wellington Advocacy government relations firm with Harper & Associates' Rachel Curran.
"[20] The public inquiry, which was officially established in July 2019 with a "mandate to investigate foreign-funded efforts", is led by the former board chair of the Calgary Economic Development—a forensic accountant—Steve Allan.
[2] Premier Kenney's press secretary Christine Myatt said that keeping CECL's internal operations secret is a "tactical and/or strategic advantage to the very foreign-funded special interests the CEC is looking to counter.
Russell challenged the decision and the case was sent to Alberta's information and privacy commissioner, who appointed an external adjudicator, Catherine Tully, to decide on the issue.
[24] Olsen, who had run unsuccessfully as a United Conservative Party candidate in the 2019 election, is a former veteran political journalist who previously worked as a spokesman for Ed Stelmach.
[8][25] In a 18 December rebuttal to the 14 December Medicine Hat News critical opinion piece that said that the CEC was not "subject to freedom-of-information searches" and that the Centre "could be used to stifle legitimate dissent and commentary on the oil and gas industry", Olson, who is a former Calgary Herald journalist, said that "oversight" of the CEC is "rigorous" and that the centre is subject to the Fiscal Planning and Transparency Act, the Whistle Blowers Act and audits by Alberta's auditor general.
[26] Olsen added that "campaigns to shut down new pipeline projects and damage the reputation of our oil and gas industry have received tens of millions of dollars from U.S. environmental foundations."
"[26] In his CEC post, Grady Semmens responded to the 27 December 2019 opinion piece published in The Globe and Mail by Bill McKibben, an American author and environmentalist, who called on Canada to go beyond cutting emissions to "stop digging up oil and gas and selling it around the world.
The form letter, which could not be edited by users, asked Netflix to use its "powerful platform to tell the true story of Canada’s peerless oil and gas industry, and not contribute to misinformation targeting your youngest, most vulnerable and impressionable viewers.
"[36] Of particular concern was the animated film's representation of "oil being extracted by blowing up a valley using glowing red bombs" which, the CEC claimed, looked "like something out of an action movie".
On 12 March 2021 when Canadian Energy Centre CEO Tom Olsen was asked why the Bigfoot Family campaign was launched, the CEC released a statement saying it responded after "a parent flagged" the film.
[40][41] Meanwhile, Jason Kenney has publicly defended the CEC's campaign against Bigfoot Family saying that the film was deliberately designed to "defame in the most vicious way possible, in the impressionable minds of kids, the largest industry in the province".
"[44][45][46] The Times said that in June 2017, when Sweden's largest pension fund—AP7—divested of six companies that they said "breached" the 2016 Paris Agreement,[47] it began a shift in the "campaign against the oil sands...to the world of finance".
