alberta – Page 2 – Olduvai.ca

As Cargill prepares to reopen, voices from the frontlines of Canada’s largest COVID-19 outbreak.

Cargill Plant — Processing beef at the Cargill plant in High River, Alberta. Photo source: Cargill.

They fear the virus. They are concerned about the futures. They worry for their communities.

And they say neither the government nor two foreign-owned companies, which account for 70 per cent of the nation’s beef slaughtering capacity, are doing enough to ensure their safety.

They say the companies didn’t provide adequate protective gear for the people who butcher Canada’s beef until it was too late.

The Tyee interviewed five Alberta employees of two meat plants, parts of different international conglomerates. The people interviewed are members of a largely immigrant work force that speaks dozens of languages and now finds itself at the centre of the largest COVID-19 outbreak in Canada.

Those who work at the JBS meat-processing plant in Brooks wondered why it has never shut down in order to do a thorough disinfection and increase its safety measures.

Those who work at the Cargill meat-packing plant in High River said the company has lied about the protections provided, as well as compensation paid.

As one shared, “Why did this virus spread? It came from the fabrication floor where there is no airflow, and we are working elbow to elbow and there is no distancing. Where are the safety precautions? They said they did the safety precautions. No they didn’t.”

Now that worker and others fear returning to work when the Cargill plant reopens Monday. Among that plant’s employees, 921 out of 2,000 are now infected. At least seven workers are in hospital and five are in intensive care. One Cargill worker and a close contact have died.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Jason Kenney’s Other Pipeline War Is with Michigan

February 3, 2020

Jason Kenney’s Other Pipeline War Is with Michigan

Locals say Enbridge’s aging Line 5 is a disaster waiting to happen and Alberta’s premier should butt out.

Enbridge’s US underwater Line 5, built in 1953, carries mostly Alberta crude. Premier Jason Kenney has attacked Michigan’s governor for moving to decommission the pipeline for safety concerns. Photo via the National Wildlife Federation.

Locals urging the aging pipeline be closed down fear it could imperil drinking water for tens of millions of people. Some wonder why Kenney, who has claimed Alberta is bullied by foreign-backed environmental advocates, has no problem intervening in the decision-making of a jurisdiction beyond Canada’s borders.

“The premier ought to take care of things that are directly impacting the citizens of Canada and let the people of Michigan take care of things that directly impact the citizens of Michigan,” said David Holtz, a spokesperson for the environmental group Oil & Water Don’t Mix, based in northern Michigan’s Traverse City.

Last June, Kenney notified his 173,000 Facebook followers that Michigan’s leaders are trying to decommission Enbridge’s Line 5, a nearly 70-year-old pipeline traversing the state. Line 5 serves as a shortcut for moving Alberta crude oil to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario, accounting for about 70 per cent of the oil it carries.

The pipeline, which was built in 1953 and runs under the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, is losing its protective coating and was damaged by an anchor several years ago. In August, Enbridge revealed a 25-metre segment was unsupported due to erosion caused by strong currents, and said it was acting to re-anchor the section.

A worst-case-scenario spill would pollute 643 kilometres of Michigan coastline, a state-ordered risk analysis concluded.

Yet Kenney has said that Line 5 poses “no pressing or legitimate environmental concern.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File

December 16, 2019

Crazy Days in Alberta: The Poison Wells File

The province let oil and gas firms create a $100-billion disaster. They expect you to foot the bill.

Gary Mar, when an Alberta politician, helped shield the oil and gas industry from having to deal with old, leaking wells. Now as an industry lobbyist, he says all Canadians should pay for the mess.

Every day something crazy happens in Alberta to illustrate how thoroughly oil politics have eroded the province’s grip on reality.

Judy Aldous, who hosts a province-wide CBC Radio noon show, recently devoted an hour to one particularly crazy item — orphaned and unreclaimed wells in Alberta.

Guest Gary Mar, CEO of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, argued that federal taxpayers fund tax credits for the oilpatch worth $700 million over three years to help pay for the cleanup.

“All Canadians benefited from this industry and all Canadians should be part of the solution,” he said.

An average listener unaware of the history of the province’s derelict well, pipeline and gas plant liability problem might have concluded Mar was being reasonable.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

But Mar, a former provincial Conservative cabinet minister, was really asking for taxpayer’s money to make up for 43 years of misrule by Tory governments. They created the current crisis by failing to require oil and gas companies to provide security deposits to cover their cleanup responsibilities, and by allowing them to put off remediation of inactive wells indefinitely.

That’s how crazy the situation has become in Alberta. Taxpayers are being asked to pay for the failures of government and oil and gas companies by a former politician whose party was responsible for the problem.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trudeau will fuel the fires of our climate crisis if he approves Canada’s mega mine

December 12, 2019

Trudeau will fuel the fires of our climate crisis if he approves Canada’s mega mine

Alberta’s oil sands produce one of the dirtiest oils on the planet. If the Teck mega mine is approved, the damage to our planet will be colossal

The Syncrude Oil Sands site near to Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta. Bitumen Oil Sands Tar Sands Oil refinery Canada Photograph by David Levene 22/4/15 *** FIRST USE INTENDED FOR POTENTIAL EYEWITNESS IN CONJUNCTION WITH SUZY GOLDENBERG ‘CARBON BOMB’ INTERACTIVE PLANNED FOR MID-MAY 2015*** — ‘Less than two months ago, two-thirds of Canadians voted for parties vowing to do more to fight climate change.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

This week, the Canadian government is in Madrid telling the world that climate action is its No 1 priority. When they get home, Justin Trudeau’s newly re-elected government will decide whether to throw more fuel on the fires of climate change by giving the go-ahead to construction of the largest open-pit oil sands mine in Canadian history.

Approving Teck Resources’ Frontier mine would effectively signal Canada’s abandonment of its international climate goals. The mega mine would operate until 2067, adding a whopping 6 megatonnes of climate pollution every year. That’s on top of the increasing amount of carbon that Canada’s petroleum producers are already pumping out every year.

The Teck mega mine would be on Dene and Cree territory, close to Indigenous communities. The area is home to one of the last free-roaming herds of wood bison, it’s along the migration route for the only wild population of endangered whooping cranes, and is just 30km from the boundary of Wood Buffalo national park – a Unesco world heritage site because of its cultural importance and biodiversity.Advertisement

Alberta’s oil sands produce one of the dirtiest oils on the planet, and they are the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions in Canada. The industry is expanding rapidly and is already responsible for more carbon pollution than all of Quebec. Oil and gas is now the largest climate polluter in the country, exceeding all greenhouse gases from transportation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney’s Inquiry

November 22, 2019

Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney’s Inquiry

SPECIAL REPORT: Alberta’s ‘anti-energy’ probe makes a debunked US report its must-read.

Texas Republican Lamar Smith, a noted climate denier and big recipient of oil and gas political donations, led a House committee that produced a report suggesting environmentalists are manipulated by the Russian government.

Russian Attempts to Influence U.S. Domestic Energy Markets by Exploiting Social Media was produced by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which at the time was led by a climate change-denying Republican from Texas named Lamar Smith. Upon its release in 2018, Democratic Congressman Raúl Grijalva described the report as “another round of unsupported conspiracy theories,” and it received little traction.

Now the report is officially required reading for Alberta’s inquiry, explicitly included in its terms of reference.

Why would that be? Answers were not forthcoming from Inquiry Commissioner Steve Allan, who didn’t respond to The Tyee’s interview request.

“There is very little the commissioner can share with the media at this time that is not contained on this website,” reads the Alberta Inquiry website. The commission’s terms of reference also explain that “As part of the inquiry, the commissioner shall examine the work completed by other investigations in other jurisdictions into similar activities or alleged activities.”

A New York-based journalist who wrote an article about the Republican-produced report was surprised Alberta is paying attention to its claims of Russian intrigue.

“That is unexpected,” said John Timmer, senior science editor for the media outlet Ars Technica. The report “didn’t pick up very wide coverage perhaps because it was rather strange to begin with… It just didn’t really hold up to a critical analysis very well.”

“It’s just a bizarre compilation of allegations that feeds a conspiracy theory,” said Devon Page, the executive director of Ecojustice, about the report’s inclusion in the Alberta inquiry’s terms of reference.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wexit: Will Alberta Ditch Canada?

October 26, 2019

Wexit: Will Alberta Ditch Canada?

The re-election of Justin Trudeau has revved up Wexit talk in Canada.

Brexit, Italexit, Frexit, Nexit, CalExit, Texit, and now Wexit? What likely started as a social media campaign to air a considerable portion of the electorate’s grievances against the federal government, a serious political movement in Canada may be born. Would this have serious ramifications for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his newly re-elected Liberals? Or, is it an annoying mosquito bite from Muskoka that needs scratching? While Ottawa may no longer need to lose sleep over a separatist initiative in Quebec, the nation’s capital might need to keep a close eye on the west as separatism is brewing like a Double-Double at the nearby Tim Hortons. The experts say that a split is unlikely to happen, but they said the same thing about the British and Brussels. It could be time to wake up and smell the poutine – or crude oil.

Western Alienation: A Primer

The term “western alienation” has entered the national lexicon, becoming just as Canadian as “grab your toque” or “a kerfuffle at the hockey rink.”

Despite being rich in resources and contributing a great deal to the gross domestic product, this part of the country feels disrespected, shunned, unequal, and underrepresented. From the perspective of westerners, the frustration is warranted; Ottawa seemingly concentrates primarily on the economic juggernaut of Ontario and the sensitive vote-rich province of Quebec. From the vantage point of other provinces and territories, the sentiment is: What about me? There is a reason people joke that Toronto thinks it is the only city in Canada, as well as the center of the universe.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Imposes New Fracking Restrictions Near Dam after Quakes

June 3, 2019

Alberta Imposes New Fracking Restrictions Near Dam after Quakes

Restrictions come as industry-related tremors have rattled nerves and raised concerns.

Fracking well head — Alberta’s Energy Regulator has issued an order restricting fracking activity near a dam located southwest of the densely drilled Drayton Valley following a magnitude 4.3 earthquake in the region last March. Fracking photo by Joshua Doubek, Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 3.0.

The regulator’s new regulations follow a wave of tremors set off by Canada’s oil and gas industry, as well as the release of major scientific papers documenting how fracking and other forms of fluid injection have caused devastating earthquakes.

Such industry-triggered events, some as great as magnitude 5.7, have destroyed homes, caused landslides, and left taxpayers with millions of dollars of damage in Oklahoma, Korea and in China, where citizens have been killed.

Last week, the industry-funded regulator issued an order restricting fracking activity near TransAlta’s Brazeau Dam located 55 kilometres southwest of the densely drilled Drayton Valley following a magnitude 4.3 earthquake in the region last March.

The exact cause of that earthquake is not known, but the oil and gas industry has previously rocked the region with tremors caused by wastewater injection or by gas extraction, which causes rock to fracture and collapse.The Tyee is supported by readers like you Join us and grow independent media in Canada

The regulator officially banned fracking within five kilometres of the dam site in the deep Duvernay formation, and within three kilometres of the dam site in the shallower formations above the Duvernay.

It also imposed requirements that any fracking operator in the three-to-five-kilometre zone that causes a magnitude 1.0 earthquake must now report the event to the regulator and cease operations totally if it triggers quakes greater than magnitude 2.5.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Accelerate New Oil Wells, Abandon the Old Ones, All the While Burning

May 30, 2019

Accelerate New Oil Wells, Abandon the Old Ones, All the While Burning

Alberta in a nutshell, under new leader Jason Kenney’s trajectory.

Premier Jason Kenney does not seem to realize he’s overseeing an unfolding environmental and economic catastrophe in Alberta. Photo: Government of Alberta Flickr.

The urgency to expedite new petroleum projects stands in stark contrast to the utter disinterest in cleaning up the old ones. Alberta is perhaps unique in the world in having no mandatory timelines for reclaiming oil and gas wells. There are about 300,000 conventional oil and gas wells in the province, all of which eventually require cleanup. Over half, or 167,000, are listed as inactive or abandoned. The oldest dates back to 1918. What’s the rush?

The Alberta government says this collective liability is a mere $18.5 billion. Internal figures from the regulator analyzed by the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project instead peg the cleanup bill at up to $70 billion. This snapshot does not of course include the almost 3,000 additional drilling permits to be dispensed this year by the regulator’s expedited algorithm.

At the current leisurely reclamation rate it could take 126 years to deal with the methane-leaking mess already created. Yet somehow there is an assumption that the oil and gas industry is going to be around more than a century from now to settle up, even though almost 80 per cent of Alberta’s conventional crude reserves have already been extracted. Not to worry — Alberta regulators have ensured that industry posted funds to cover 0.3 per cent of cleanup costs.

The massive taxpayer exposure from abandoned wells pales in comparison to even larger liabilities accumulated from decades of lightly regulated bitumen mining. According to other internal figures from the Alberta Energy Regulator, reclaiming tailings ponds now covering 88 square kilometres and counting could cost a further $130 billion, assuming such a thing was even technically possible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pipeline Bottlenecks Cost Canadian Producers $20 Billion

May 5, 2019

Pipeline Bottlenecks Cost Canadian Producers $20 Billion

Canada has plenty of oil, and demand is high, but the Canadian oil industry has nevertheless taken a major hit this year thanks to its persisting pipeline bottleneck. The Albertan oil industry has long been plagued by insufficient pipeline volumes but has not been able to fix the issue with any semblance of efficiency thanks to major bureaucratic and litigation-based delays on building new infrastructure like the long-delayed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

With pipeline capacity maxed out, Canadian oil producers have run out of storage space, leading to a major glut in oil reserves with nowhere to go. This has forced Canada to sell their oil at a major discount. In fact, a new study released this week by conservative think tank the Fraser Institute calculates that Canadian oil producers missed out on a whopping $20.62 billion more than they earned this year thanks to their severely depressed prices. Compared to the West Texas Intermediate benchmark, in the last year Canadian heavy crude traded, on average, at a discount of $26.50 U.S. a barrel. This is a huge dive from the five-year preceding, when Canadian heavy crude traded at an average of just $11.90 U.S. a barrel less than West Texas Intermediate.

The pipeline capacity deficit has negatively impacted the Canadian economy in a number of ways. “Canada’s lack of adequate pipeline capacity has imposed a number of costly constraints on the country’s energy sector including overdependence on the US market and reliance on more costly modes of energy transportation,” states the Fraser Research Bulletin. “In 2018, these factors, coupled with the maintenance downtime at refineries in the US Midwest, resulted in significant depressed prices for Canadian heavy crude (Western Canada Select) relative to US crude (West Texas Intermediate) and other international benchmarks.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Both Notley and Kenney Hiding from a $260-Billion Cleanup Problem

April 10, 2019

Both Notley and Kenney Hiding from a $260-Billion Cleanup Problem

The Alberta government may well leave taxpayers to clean up the oil and gas industry’s mess.

Oil well — ‘I think this issue is too big and too scary for both government and industry to face.’

The main thing Jason Kenney and Rachel Notley have in common, other than their affinity for pipelines, is their joint fear of the possible $260-billion cleanup bill for the province’s aging oil and gas fields.

Neither Kenney, the United Conservative Party leader, nor NDP Premier Notley have said much on the hustings about this astounding liability, which includes tens of thousands of inactive wells, abandoned gas plants, oil sands tailing ponds and 400,000 kilometres of pipelines.

The mountainous size of the cleanup costs dwarfs the puny pile of security deposits the province has collected from industry to pay for the cleanup — $1.5 billion.

Regan Boychuk, a 41-year-old Calgary roofer, independent researcher and a driving member of the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, understands why Kenney and Notley don’t want to talk about such embarrassing math.

“I think this issue is too big and too scary for both government and industry to face. It is a can of worms,” said Boychuk in a Tyee interview.

But if not corrected, the scale of the problem could affect the province’s credit rating, bankrupt hundreds of smaller oil and gas firms and leave Canadian taxpayers with the mother of all cleanup bills.

This has happened before.

Decades ago, Canada’s mining industry grossly underestimated what it needed for cleaning up acidic tailings and set aside paltry deposits for the job, just like the oil patch is doing today.

As soon as the mines stopped producing money, corporate Canada walked away from an estimated 10,000 abandoned or orphaned mines throughout the country, arguing they had run out of cash.

Taxpayers still need to spend billions on rehabilitating these mining sites.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

More Frack Quakes Rattle Alberta, Cause Deaths in China

March 22, 2019

More Frack Quakes Rattle Alberta, Cause Deaths in China

Regulator shuts down operations near Red Deer. Thousands protest in Sichuan.

Seismic hazard expert Gail Atkinson on dangerous earthquakes triggered by fracking: ‘It is not just happening in Western Canada. It can happen anywhere.’

On Monday Albertans living around the oil-service city of Red Deer, got an early morning wake-up call – a 4.6 earthquake.

Vesta Energy, a privately owned oil and gas company, halted its fracking operations west of the city after the company most likely triggered the quake that temporarily shut down power to nearly 5,000 residents.

It was one of the largest recorded tremors ever to shake central Alberta.

A day later, Mar. 5, the provincial energy regulator ordered the company to suspend fracking operations and report all seismic data for the last three months.

The order announced the regulator was suspending operations at the well site “in order to protect the public and the environment.” Among the harms fracking induced earthquakes can cause are “adverse effects to the environment, public safety and property damage and/or loss,” said the order.

The widely felt earthquake rattled dishes, cracked walls and swayed buildings.

“Crazy loud and very strange — feeling your house shake,” reported one citizen on social media. “What the heck just happened? Our whole house shook!!”

“Sounds like I just experienced my first earthquake in Red Deer… thought I was in a horror movie when my room started shaking in the black of night,” tweeted another resident.

Red Deer optician Melissa Hall tweeted: “HOLY EFF… did we just have an #earthquake?? My bed just shook like it took quarters at a bad motel!”

Meanwhile residents of Sichuan province in southwest China marched and grieved after a swarm of industry-triggered earthquakes rocked that shale gas basin on February 25.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Another Oil Train Crashes as Alberta Government Gets Into Oil-by-Rail Business

February 26, 2019

Another Oil Train Crashes as Alberta Government Gets Into Oil-by-Rail Business

Oil train derailment and spill in Manitoba

The government of Alberta, Canada, the heart of tar sands country, recently announced plans to get into the oil-by-rail business. Attempting to work around a lack of pipelines, the provincial government intends to spend $3.7 billion to lease 4,400 oil tank cars and locomotives to export more Canadian tar sands oil to the U.S. The announcement came just days after the latest oil train derailment and spill in Manitoba, Canada.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley addressed concerns about safety regarding the oil trains.

“We are treating the safety of these rail cars as though they are traveling through our own backyards,” Notley said. “The cars we will be using will be the safest cars on the tracks. They include the safest technology and meet the highest standards including all recent changes to safety standards.”

New regulations enacted after the 2013 oil train disaster killed 47 in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, require oil and rail companies to use newer rail cars to move oil. And while these new tank cars — known as DOT-117 and 117Rs — are more robust than the older tank cars involved in the deadly incident, they aren’t immune to the forces of a train derailment.

In the past year, two Canadian oil trains consisting of these “safest” tank cars have derailed and resulted in large oil spills. In June 2018, a train from Canada derailed and spilled 230,000 gallons of oil into floodwaters in Iowa.

The most recent oil train crash, which occurred on a ranch in Manitoba on February 16, involved 37 derailed tank cars. No details have been released on the amount of oil spilled, but aerial photos show streams of dark black oil leaking from the damaged tank cars.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta’s Mega Oil and Gas Liability Crisis, Explained

February 4, 2019

Alberta’s Mega Oil and Gas Liability Crisis, Explained

A Supreme Court ruling now forces firms to clean up abandoned wells before paying creditors. That doesn’t solve much.

How will Alberta find the billions of dollars needed to clean up its inactive pipelines, wells, plants and oilsands mines as the oil and gas industry enters its sunset years? Photo: Premier of Alberta Flickr.

Just how will an increasingly indebted industry, hobbled by low energy prices and rising costs, find the up to $260 billion needed to clean up its inactive pipelines, wells, plants and oilsands mines as it enters its sunset years?

To date permissive provincial regulations have created the problem by only requiring industry to set aside $1.6 billion for the job.

That potentially leaves more than $200 billion in unfunded liabilities for taxpayers.

Technically the 5-2 court decision will make it easier for provinces to prevent insolvent companies from selling assets to pay creditors while dumping the cleanup bill onto taxpayers.

That’s been a big problem in Western Canada, where lower provincial court decisions have allowed bankrupt firms to pay off banks first and ignore their cleanup obligations under provincial laws.

As a result, a number of firms in Alberta walked away from more than 1,800 inactive wells and dumped more than $110 million worth of liabilities onto the lap of the provincial regulator over the last three years.

The province’s Orphan Well Association, a non-profit supported by annual $30-million industry levies to prevent taxpayers from footing the cleanup bill, is now so overwhelmed that it was rescued with a $300-million loan from the province and federal government.

The Orphan Well Association handled 74 orphan wells (properties with no legal or financial owner) in 2012. Now it has a backlog of 3,000 wells, with each well averaging $300,000 for plugging and reclamation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

January 27, 2019

Alberta Is Playing a Dangerous Game with Pipeline Ad Campaign

The anti-BC PR blitz fuels the anger of right-wing groups like the ‘yellow vests.’

Alberta’s ad campaign, with its complaint of being ‘held hostage,’ risks unleashing destructive forces.

A Tyee investigation revealed the expensive details of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley’s national public relations effort to scapegoat British Columbia, including dubious claims of pipeline benefits translated into Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino and Punjabi.

Not merely cynical and inaccurate, the campaign to portray Albertans as victims also risks emboldening a growing number of extremist elements hijacking “yellow vest” protests.

Alberta government spin doctors apparently decided on a simplistic strategy of framing any opposition to Trans Mountain as “B.C. against Canada.”

The behind-the-scenes brain trust also arrived at two other Orwellian platitudes: “It’s senseless to pit the environment against the economy,” and, “This is a good thing” — a slogan that might be dreamed up if Martha Stewart worked for Burson-Marsteller.

It’s not often that the roof is lifted off the sausage-making factory to reveal the political abattoir in operation. Such as they are, the arguments advanced in the national misinformation onslaught include such untruths as mythicalAsian markets, how expanding exports of unprocessed bitumen are somehow good for meeting our climate goals, and the biggest nose-stretcher of all: how much the absence of a pipeline is costing Canadians. Alberta first claimed it was losing $4 million a day in revenue. That became $40 million a day for all Canadians. Wait! Now it’s $80 million. Isn’t all mathematics really just a matter of opinion?

Government-funded ad campaigns are conveniently unencumbered by the same standards of advertising accuracy required by the private sector — a loophole used to great effect by the authors behind this effort.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

January 17, 2019

Alberta Has Spent $23 Million Calling BC an Enemy of Canada

Tyee FOI reveals pro-pipeline PR strategy, spiraling costs.

Billboard on a Kelowna roadway, paid for by Albertans as part of a national campaign with the underlying theme: ‘This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.’ Source: KeepCanadaWorking website.

The Alberta government has spent more than $23 million — twice as much as previously revealed — in a campaign designed to turn the rest of Canada against B.C., The Tyee has learned.

The “KeepCanadaWorking” ad and PR campaign’s top “principle” states, “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada,” according to documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request.

The documents show how an “ethnic campaign” targeted residents of the Lower Mainland, Toronto suburbs and Ottawa who speak “Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Filipino, Punjabi.”

Work first began in January, 2018 to create the campaign that promotes expanding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which would triple the volume of Alberta bitumen sent through the port of Vancouver.

As recently as Nov. 14, 2018, Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP government stated it had spent $10 million on the campaign.

On Jan. 7, 2019, the Alberta government told The Tyee the amount had reached $23,040,463.90.

The province’s self-described “full-service” public relations arm, the Communications and Public Engagement (CPE) department, named that figure in an email responding to Freedom of Information requests filed by The Tyee.

In the past two months, Alberta has dumped more than $13 million into its pro-pipeline public relations push, a provincial government spokesperson confirmed to The Tyee.

What did $23 million in taxpayer money buy?

Internal Alberta government documents obtained by The Tyee reveal the top “principle” of the so-called “KeepCanadaWorking” campaign: “This is not B.C. vs. Alberta, this is B.C. vs. Canada.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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