• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
BREAKING: No Public Finance for East Coast LNG Projects, Wilkinson Says July 4, 2022
‘Climate Math Gets Harder’ as Radicalized Supreme Court Upends U.S. Carbon Regulation July 4, 2022
Dire Living Conditions, Climate-Driven Heat Wave Produce Deadliest Human Smuggling Event in U.S. History July 4, 2022
Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta June 29, 2022
London Becomes Biggest City to Sign Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty June 29, 2022
Next
Prev
Home Jurisdictions Canada

Kenney’s ‘Foreign Influence’ Probe Draws Criticism from All Sides

September 12, 2019
Reading time: 5 minutes
Primary Author: Mitchell Beer @mitchellbeer

Jason Kenney/Facebook

Jason Kenney/Facebook

19
SHARES
 

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is under fire from all sides, after unveiling details of a taxpayer-funded investigation of supposed foreign-funded pipeline opposition that includes an email “snitch line” for Albertans to report allegedly “un-Albertan” activities by their neighbours.

In an open letter earlier this week, Amnesty International Secretary General Alex Neve urged Kenney to drop plans for the inquiry, and for the C$30-million “war room” his government has begun setting up to counter the hostile treatment he believes the Alberta fossil industry is receiving.

“Amnesty International is deeply concerned that these initiatives undermine and violate a range of Alberta’s human rights obligations, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international law, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, the rights of Indigenous peoples, and gender equality,” Neve wrote.

“Amnesty International is also gravely concerned that these initiatives, and the rhetoric surrounding them, feeds into a worsening climate of hostility toward human rights defenders—particularly Indigenous, women, and environmental human rights defenders—exposing them to intimidation and threats, including threats of violence.”

Kenney, who said he started an Amnesty International club when he was in high school, told CBC he considered Neve’s concerns “beyond ridiculous”, adding that he would “absolutely not” abandon plans for the inquiry and the war room.

Kenney “said Amnesty International should be more concerned about the world’s use of oil from countries with poor human rights records like Saudi Arabia and Russia instead of Canada,” CBC says.

But “Neve argued Kenney’s own government needs to refrain from making accusations that could lead to threats and violence against people who criticize the oil and gas industry.” He asked the Alberta premier to ensure that no public funding leads to “harassment, surveillance, or criminalization of human rights defenders who opposed or criticize [the government’s] energy agenda and its implications for the rights of Indigenous peoples and the global climate crisis.” 

While the back-and-forth produced an immediate wave of online reaction—including the decidedly snarky #ReportAnAlbertan Twitter hashtag—Amnesty International wasn’t the only group to take issue with Kenney’s ham-fisted tactics.

“The taxpayer-funded probe into foreign funding of environmental groups delivers everything the staunchest oilpatch backers would want, with the starting point that opposition, be it partly funded by foreigners or not, could make one anti-Albertan,” writes Globe and Mail reporter Jeffrey Jones. “Most worrisome, judging from details published by the government this week, is the apparent open-endedness of the process, its lack of transparency, and the threat that reputations could get impugned by the government, with little apparent recourse for those targeted.”

To Jones, “this looks to be politics masquerading as public policy and, with its anti-democratic tone, threatens to repel as many Albertans as it delights.”

And one of Kenney’s staunchest Calgary allies warned the tactic could backfire. “The device of a full-blown public inquiry, the highest judicial level of impartial public investigation, has never been used before in such an overtly political way,” cautions avowedly pro-fossil Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid. “The campaign against the oilsands and pipelines has been unfair and hugely damaging. It demands a powerful response. But the tools should be political, economic, and legislative—not a special court of investigation.”

Braid seems mostly concerned about the optics of the process. But the features he describes are scary.

“Forcing individual critics to testify can look like an oppressive use of state power. If commissioner Steve Allan decides to hold public hearings, anti-oil groups would have a spectacular showcase for their causes, while claiming to be persecuted,” he writes.

“The inquiry declares itself immune to freedom of information requests, because it is not a ‘public body’,” he adds. “But it can call witnesses and compel testimony, in Alberta and perhaps beyond.”

While he says he’s known Allan long enough to have no doubts about his integrity, “the inquiry itself looks like overreach born of Premier Jason Kenney’s desire to represent and contain the anger that could spill over to some new protest party,” Braid writes. And while he buys into the notion that Alberta has been mistreated [by the rest of Canada, not by a rapidly-crashing global market for a substandard, expensive fossil product—Ed.], “nothing could hurt the cause more than the impression of an Alberta kangaroo court hauling up climate change activists.”

Kenney himself fed that concern while he was in Fort McMurray, telling an audience of fossil executives that “environmental groups might think twice about exercising their right to protest if Alberta took a firmer approach, citing Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin as one example,” Press Progress writes. “The Premier shared one anecdote, claiming Putin sends environmentalists to prison camps in Siberia and [they] are never seen again—Kenney suggested he wouldn’t advocate doing that in Canada, but underlined his belief that Putin’s approach to dealing with environmentalists is very ‘instructive’.”

“They know they couldn’t get away with this in Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” Kenney said. “In fact, Greenpeace did do a protest on an offshore rig in Russia and their crew was arrested and thrown in a Siberian jail for six months, and funnily enough they’ve never been back.”

“I’m not recommending that for Canada, but it’s instructive,” he continued. “They have seen Canada’s wonderfully generous, hospitable, sometimes apologetic Canadian temperament as an invitation for aggression. But folks, that is why it is so important we send a message that Alberta and Canada is now standing up and fighting back.”

That attitude was apparently too much for The Beaverton, which published a faux account of Alberta’s epic takedown of 12 vegans found in an Edmonton restaurant.

“The seven women and five men are accused of 68 counts of possessing climate change material with the intent to spread and 12 counts of disagreeing with the majority of Albertans,” the online satire magazine writes. “One of the members of the cell was found constructing a protest sign with a sassy anti-oil sands slogan that cannot be released due to a court-ordered publication ban on science.”

“These people subscribe to radical prophets like David Suzuki who just hate Alberta,” the story imagines Kenney declaring. “Our oil executives will sleep better tonight knowing these people are behind bars.”

“Meanwhile,” The Beaverton adds, “the Premier called on his province’s American/Chinese/Dutch-owned oil and gas industries to report any foreign interference from environmental groups.”



in Canada, Culture, Energy Politics, Environmental Justice, First Peoples, Legal & Regulatory, Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion, Oil & Gas, Sub-National Governments

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Wikimedia Commons
Oil & Gas

BREAKING: No Public Finance for East Coast LNG Projects, Wilkinson Says

July 4, 2022
43
angela n./flickr
United States

‘Climate Math Gets Harder’ as Radicalized Supreme Court Upends U.S. Carbon Regulation

July 4, 2022
40
EdmondMeinfelder/flickr
Environmental Justice

Dire Living Conditions, Climate-Driven Heat Wave Produce Deadliest Human Smuggling Event in U.S. History

July 4, 2022
17

Comments 1

  1. Charlene Simon says:
    3 years ago

    Oh no, we can’t have foreigners subsidizing Canadian environmental
    protests.
    No, they’re under the tight restrictions of owning the resources, collecting millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars in subsidies and tax breaks, and making off with about 97% of the profits from Canadian resources.
    But hey, we can’t have foreigners using their loot to help protect our environment.
    That just wouldn’t be fair, would it, Mr. Kenny?

    Someone has a whole jar of screws loose.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

opinion polling gender green recovery climate action

Conservative Women Far More Likely Than Men to Support Green Transition, EcoAnalytics Research Finds

July 4, 2022
46
U.S. Navy/picryl

Montreal to Host New NATO Climate Centre as Military Analyst Confronts Global ‘Hyperthreat’

July 4, 2022
45
Wikimedia Commons

BREAKING: No Public Finance for East Coast LNG Projects, Wilkinson Says

July 4, 2022
43
angela n./flickr

‘Climate Math Gets Harder’ as Radicalized Supreme Court Upends U.S. Carbon Regulation

July 4, 2022
40
Maurits90/Wikimedia Commons

San Francisco Commuter Train Derailed by Scorching Track Temperatures, Extreme Heat

July 4, 2022
30
Keith Hirsche

Ex-Fossil Workers Convert Old Oilfields to Solar Farms After ‘Rapid Upskilling’ in Alberta

July 3, 2022
457

Recent Posts

EdmondMeinfelder/flickr

Dire Living Conditions, Climate-Driven Heat Wave Produce Deadliest Human Smuggling Event in U.S. History

July 4, 2022
17
Adrian Grycuk/Wikimedia Commons

Youth Climate Case Moves to Top Tribunal in European Court

July 4, 2022
20
Seci/wikimedia commons

Saudi Aramco Talks Net-Zero, Plans to Boost Production Through 2035

July 4, 2022
11
Keith Weller/Wikimedia Commons

U.S. Methane Plan Gives Big Ag a Free Pass

July 4, 2022
13
Fadi Hage/wikimedia commons

Indoor Farming Revolution Comes with Significant Carbon Cost

July 4, 2022
16
Mont SUTTON snow terrain

Southern Quebec Towns Scramble for Solutions as Water Sources Dwindle

July 4, 2022
21
Next Post
Greenpeace USA/Twitter

Greenpeace Blocks Houston Ship Channel, Urges Climate Action by 2020 Democrats

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}