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The federal and Alberta governments struck up a secret, high-level committee in early 2010 to coordinate the promotion of the oilsands with Canada’s most powerful industry lobby group, a document obtained through an access to information request reveals.
The committee brought together the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) with deputy ministers from Natural Resources, Environment Canada, Alberta Energy and Alberta Environment to synchronize their lobbying offensive in the face of mounting protest and looming international regulations targeting the Alberta crude.
Environmental organizations criticized the existence of a committee they said they were hearing about for the first time.
“I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that there should be a separation between oil and state, but with these types of secret committees it’s hard to see any daylight between them,” said Keith Stewart, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace.
He said the federal government is working increasingly closer with oil companies as they attempt to polish the image of the “dirtiest oil on earth” and undermine climate-change policies in the United States and Europe that stand to curb the industry’s expansion.
“We’re seeing that the government is becoming the advocacy arm of the oil industry, whether that’s to kill environment regulations abroad or to rhetorically attack environmental groups and First Nations,” Stewart said.
“I think that most Canadians would agree that while oil may still run our cars for now, it shouldn’t ever run our government.”
CAPP spokesperson Travis Davies said the industry lobby group, which represents 150 oil and gas companies, was invited to join the committee by the federal government.
“We exchange information on oilsands outreach activities,” Davies said. “For instance, when governors or groups wanted to come visit the oilsands, we needed to be at the table. It was about basic coordination.”
Davies said the committee has communicated about the work the industry lobby group did at its office in Washington and coordinated the “asks” they made during foreign outreach.
“It wasn’t about messaging. We could say, ‘have you talked to them? What work have you been doing?’ We want to make sure we don’t double up or duplicate our work.”
Though CAPP says oilsands development is expected to contribute $84 billion annually to the Canadian economy over the next 25 years, climate scientists say the oilsands must be drastically cut to prevent further global warming and dangerous changes in the planet’s ecosystems.
The Conservative government’s withdrawal in December from the Kyoto Protocol, the only globally binding agreement for emissions reductions, was widely criticized as a move to defend the industry and its plans for three-fold expansion.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Toronto Star website: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1144579–alberta-ottawa-oil-lobby-formed-secret-committee