An “engagement process update” published Wednesday night by the so-called Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns reveals inquiry head Steve Allan commissioned reports by climate-change skeptics and a fossil fuel industry advocacy group in the United States.

A critical submission to the $3.5-million inquiry by University of Calgary law professor Martin Olszynski called the three commissioned reports “textbook examples of climate change denialism.”

“All of them minimize or outright dismiss the reality and seriousness of climate change, even though none of their authors appear to be trained in climate science,” Prof. Olszynski wrote in his submission, which was published yesterday on the U of C Law Faculty’s blog.

“These reports are replete with generalizations, speculation, conjecture, and even conspiracy,” he said. “The matter of climate change denial is particularly important because it underpins the rest of the narrative in these reports, i.e., that other interests have opposed the oil and gas industry – including Alberta’s – not out of genuine concern for the climate or other environmental impacts but rather for some nefarious – perhaps even Marxist … purpose.”

A bluntly worded CBC story yesterday summarized the paid work as “junk climate-denial science, bizarre conspiracy theories and oil-industry propaganda.”

Source: Climate-change denial, bias, and a Marxist under every bed of leaves characterize papers commissioned by energy campaigns inquiry – Alberta Politics

Kenney Goes To Hell

The United Conservative Party government in Alberta has made it much harder for ordinary people. Taxes have gone up; wages have gone down. Healthcare is deteriorating; doctors are fleeing the province. The cost of education is being increased and there is less money for infrastructure. I would like to see UCP government replaced. If not, I hope to do my part to make sure they don’t get re-elected.

There is a forum thread on this site titled Kenney Goes To Hell that has numerous atrocities he and his government have committed since coming into office. You can also post your own, if you have something to add to the list.

CAJ condemns Alberta’s efforts to discredit climate journalists

TORONTO, Jan. 26, 2021 /CNW/ – The Canadian Association of Journalists condemns all attempts by governments and third-party agencies to discredit the work journalists undertake to cover climate change in Canada.

Numerous journalistic bodies — including the Society of Environmental Journalists — are smeared in a new Government of Alberta-bankrolled report titled A New Global Paradigm: Understanding the Transnational Progressive Movement, the Energy Transition and the Great Transformation Strangling Alberta’s Petroleum Industry. This report was produced as part of the provincial government’s $3.5 million inquiry into international opposition to Alberta’s oilsands.

The report argues that journalists are part of a “disturbing” movement to “coordinate and effectively distribute propagandized climate change issues in their reporting.” According to Vice News, the report’s author was paid $28,000 by the Alberta government.

The CAJ rejects this conspiratorial mischaracterization of the work undertaken by Canadian climate journalists.