TransCanada astroturfers

TransCanada has dumped its US pr firm Edelman 10 days after the Greenpeace leak of documents outlining their joint dodgy strategy to use third party front groups to aggressively attack opponents of the Energy East pipeline, and to do and say what “TransCanada can’t" :

"TransCanada immediately denied it had implemented those tactics, which were widely criticized."

The leaked docs - some adorned with the TransCanada logo - date back to May and include various tactics for targeting opponents like Council of Canadians using forty Edelman employees and nine TransCanada staffers.

TransCanada referred to the "controversy" as "a distraction" and said they would like a do over now please : "We are therefore starting a fresh conversation."

"In the current environment, we can't have the respectful conversation that we want to have with Canadians and Quebecers about Energy East," TransCanada spokesman Tim Duboyce said Wednesday in a release. h/t CBC

Quite. 

About Edelman's astroturfing, which they describe as "third party support" and "an echo chamber of aligned voices"...

Edelman's pointman for TransCanada "Grassroots Advocacy Vision" astroturf is Mike Krempasky from their DC office. As documented by Greenpeace, Mr.Krempasky - Tea Party promoter and co-founder of RedState.com - previously had a pretty good run using fake grassroots paid bloggers in their folksy Wal-Marting Across America campaign before one was outed as working for the US Treasury and another a staffer at Washington Post.

Greenpeace astroturf backgrounder :

"Krempasky’s Energy East “Pressure” team includes Brian McNeill ... director of opposition research for Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. McNeill made national news when it was revealed that he was one of three Edelman employees who were authoring all of the blogs ..." 

on yet another Wal-Mart fluffer campaign. Meanwhile ...

"Edelman was paid $51.9 million to run the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) public relations campaign, which has involved Edelman managing multiple websites and online advertising efforts asking officials to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, support tax deductions for the oil industry and expand access for drilling on public lands.
Central to this strategy is the pro-oil group “Energy Citizens”, which was unveiled as an API-sponsored astroturf group by Greenpeace USA. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers recently launched its own version of Energy Citizens in Canada."

So despite CEO Richard Edelman statement in August in response to separate allegations regarding their work with climate change deniers that :

"We do not work with astroturf groups"

let's have a quick look at Energy Citizens Canada, launched by CAPP, and presumed sister site to the US Energy Citizens, launched by the American Petroleum Institute in 2009.

So far the Canadian version seems to be mostly about harvesting emails of future possible tarsands flufferbots.
As encouragement, the Spotlight on Energy Citizens page profiles Energy Citizens Brittany Allison and Hardave Birk.

Brittany Allison was "a Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa" and a "Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria", prior to her work as Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks LP, "working to gain federal approval for a coal expansion project".


Currently Ms Allison is Manager of the astroturf tarsands site, British Columbians for Prosperity. 

btw Is CBC Power and Politics regular Alise Mills still the "Media Relations Director" for BC4P?
Will she still write columns for 24 Hours, just bought out by PostMedia, with the bi-line :
"Alise Mills is a political commentator who speaks for British Columbians for Prosperity. Visit moneytrail.ca."

The only other Citizen Spotlight candidate so far is former president of University of Calgary Students Union, Hardave Birk, whose's bio notes he is legislative assistant to Senator Doug Black.

While in no way a reflection upon Mr. Birk, this seems as good a time as any to remind ourselves that prior to becoming Senator Black, Doug Black was president of industry lobby group Energy Policy Institute of Canada, or EPIC, where he worked with vice-chairs Bruce Carson, Gerry Protti and Daniel Gagnier on a national energy program representing their 38 energy member organizations, including TransCanada and CAPP.

Two years ago EPIC put out a presser taking credit for how they have shaped current Con policy on property rights, pipelines, public participation, and First Nations :

"Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver announced legislative changes that would put EPIC's recommendations into federal law. Regulatory changes within omnibus Bill C-38 reflect recommendations of EPIC surrounding regulatory streamlining." 

"You are the secret sauce," Doug Black once wrote to Bruce Carson, whose trial on illegal lobbying and influence peddling will not begin till September next year.

More Insider Tarsands Astroturf.  We are awash in the stuff.

Update : Energy Citizens Canada has just added another "Featured Citizen" to their Spotlight : Alishia Klein, Communications Coordinator at Canadian Natural Resources Limited.

Upperdate : Astroturf  Illustrated!

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Girls night with Kathryn Marshall and BC4P

This past February, Kathryn Marshall, former spokesy for Ethical Oil, and Brittany Allison, Interim Executive Director of British Columbians For Prosperity, had a "girls night" at a West Vancouver restaurant. 




You'll recall Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall, formerly of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute :

"Successfully recruited major prospects for donations and sponsorships and built and maintained relationships between the Fraser Institute and donors. May 2008 – July 2009 "

... and her hapless tv stints raving against "foreign special interests and their deep pockets" that secretly funded opposition to the tarsands' efforts to get its ethical bitumen to Chinese markets. 

"I'm just a student with a website," insisted Kathryn - wife of Hamish Marshall, former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

She took over the job from former American Enterprise Institute intern Alykhan Velshi, who left Jason Kenney's employ in 2011 to head up the website based on Ezra Levant's book of the same name and returned to Harper's office afterwards as planning director. 
After her came Jamie Ellerton, executive assistant - first to Jason Kenney til September 2010 and then to teabaggin' Tim Hudak .

Ethical Oil's specialty was attack ads. 
Recently, climate change skeptic Ezra Levant, who interned with Koch 20 years ago, has pondered in the pages of the Edmonton Sun whether environmentalist groups in Canada are funded by Putin.

For all their concern about foreign funding, neither Velshi nor Marshall ever answered repeated media questions about whether Enbridge or any other Canadian corporate interest was backing Ethical Oil.  Ironically, at the timeEnbridge's chair and 5 out of 12 directors were American.


Kathryn's 'girls night' buddy, Brittany Allison, also maintains a focus on shadowy foreign funding from her perch at BC4P moneytrail.ca : 

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL AND EXPLORE THE U.S. FOUNDATION FUNDING HYPOCRISY THAT'S IMPACTING CANADA'S SOVEREIGNTY

"Wealthy American Foundations pump millions of dollars into campaigns to halt Canadian oil sands production and pipelines."

According to BC4P, that would be the Foundations Rockefeller, Pew, and Tides, among 70 odd others.

BC4P Interim Policy Director Brittany Allison was previously :

"Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa and Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria"

prior to being Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks coal expansion project.

Like Ethical Oil, BC4P director and frequent CBC commentator Alise Mills also declines to reveal their sources of funding.

Foreign funding researcher Vivian Krause, who you would expect to be a natural political soul sister to these two, stated in a Kootenay Co-op radio interview in April that in addition to her objection to BC4P's flawed arguments - [transcript in comment #8 ] :

"I'm not involved with that group at all. They asked me to be involved but they wouldn't disclose their own funding sources so I wasn't willing to work with them."

Like Ethical Oil before them, BC4P has likely come to the end of its robocalling astroturfing usefulness, only to be replaced by yet another *grassroots org* of undisclosed funding - - like this one :

Canada Action Plan

"Full Value for Canadian Resources - Support Northern Gateway"

Just two guys with a grassroots website ...

... and an op ed in the CAPP/Postmedia partnership world of the Vancouver Sun a month ago :
Pipeline fear factor is inappropriate

... and a *surprise* visit from Ezra Levant at the "No Enbridge!" Sunset Beach protest in Vancouver where their Canada Action counter-protest banners were big enough to block the view of the ocean.

... and an endorsement on their Support the Northern Gateway Pipeline pledge from Bruce Lounds of BC4P.

Two days ago, Olivia Ward had a piece in The Star : Billionaire Koch brothers are big oil players in Alberta as the largest foreign landholder. 

"During an ill-fated run for vice-president in 1980, David Koch campaigned on a platform that promoted destruction of the social welfare system, repeal of taxation and an end to public education, children’s services, government medical care, minimum wage laws and environmental regulation.
But through the Kochs’ persistence and lavish funding, their libertarian ideas are now part of the Republican Party’s agenda, and they have helped to change the face of America.

Founding or funding groups like the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute and the State Policy Network — which acts as a seed bank for dozens of others — the Kochs gradually inched across the political landscape.

In Canada, Koch’s presence in the oil sands has set environmentalists’ teeth on edge as the brothers back U.S. climate skeptics, tout fossil fuels and oppose the Obama administration’s environmental agenda."

The Kochtopus with its unfettered free market oil-friendly political tentacles winding 

"into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads "

In the same article, Ward interviews Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's Energy and Natural Resources director. Although she doesn't mention it, Green spent 3 years with the Fraser Institute and then seven with the Koch and Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute before cycling back to the Fraser Institute again last year. In 2007 while with AEI, Green offered $10,000 each to any scientists willing to refute the IPCC's climate change report. 

Ward :

"Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis says that although Koch contributed $115,000 to the Fraser Institute in the past year, “it is for our Economic Freedom of the World project”

You know, the next time you two girls get together to talk 'foreign special interests and their deep pockets', you might want to have a look into that. 

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