William Marsden, The Montreal Gazette, December 4, 2009 - As world leaders gather in Copenhagen next week for historic negotiations on climate change, a fierce battle continues in Ottawa between environmental groups and a powerful army of energy, manufacturing and power utility lobbyists to influence Canadian legislation governing greenhouse gas emissions and billions of tax dollars in clean energy and emission-reduction subsidies.
These climate change lobbyists form one of the largest special interest groups on Parliament Hill, the Canadian public lobby registry shows. Since 1996, a total of 1,570 climate change lobbyists have pounded the halls of Parliament. Their client list has steadily increased since that year from just 13 to 109.
Oil and gas producers comprised the largest industry lobbying group from January through August 2009 with 24 companies and associations represented in Ottawa, according to the registry. These include all the major oil companies.
Ten other major producers of fossil fuels - mining firms and coal companies - have also lobbied on climate change legislation. Combined, all these major producers have employed about 465 lobbyists since 1996 or about one third of the total climate change lobbyists.
Other companies and organizations that have climate change lobbyists include manufacturers, power utilities, agriculture, transportation and environmental and health groups.
Industry pressure on politicians to weaken climate change legislation has been unrelenting for years, according to Stéphane Dion, who was the environment minister in the former Liberal government from 2004 to 2006. "It's almost daily," he says. "They say, 'What can we do? There is no technology possible (for emission cuts). Can you exempt us? Please.' This kind of pressure (is) always, everywhere."
Despite 20 years of international climate change negotiations, during which Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1998 and ratified it in 2002, our country has yet to take any measurable action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say.
We still have no regulatory framework in place, and Canada has failed to meet its Kyoto commitment to reduce its emissions by six per cent of 1990 levels by 2012. By 2007, our emissions had risen 26 per cent to 747 million metric tonnes. By contrast, Europe, which has shown itself to be much less susceptible to industry lobbying particularly from coal interests, has met its commitments and is ready to take on the most stringent post-2012 reduction commitments of any industrialized region.
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Most of Canada's GHG emission problems are centred in Alberta. While the province is home to just 10 per cent of Canada's 33 million people, it is responsible for about 70 per cent of the country's oil production. With its refineries, gas flaring, coal-fired power plants, and tar sands processing, it spews out one-third of Canada's greenhouse gases. That figure is expected to rise as high as 50 per cent by 2025 as emissions from mining, oil and gas extraction, and refining increase substantially.
Tax breaks and new technologies have opened the tar sands to extensive exploitation. Projects worth more than $100 billion have spread like fire throughout the northern Athabasca region, destroying vast swaths of Alberta's boreal forest - one of the world's great carbon sinks - as they tear away the land to get at the rich, black substance below.
Mark Rudolph, a 20-year veteran lobbyist who represents Suncor Energy Inc. and Shell Canada Ltd. in Ottawa, said that lobbying the province of Alberta is virtually unnecessary since, he said, the government is entirely on the industry's side.
Alberta, in effect, represents the single most powerful lobby in Ottawa, according to Rudolph.
"The (Alberta) government ... takes somewhat the same point of view as the denialist companies," he said. "And they basically say to the feds - despite the fact that they are political brethren and the majority of the cabinet is from Alberta - 'Back off. This is our domain. Don't bother us.' "
In its 2008 Climate Change Report, Suncor predicted that by 2012, its emissions will more than double to 25 million tonnes. That would equal about half the emissions produced by Sweden or Switzerland. Syncrude alone produced 15 million tonnes of GHG in 2007.
"No government in Canada has ever gotten in the way of the oil industry. ... You can reduce emissions in one area of the economy, but they will just be wiped out by the addition of a tar sands project," said one senior federal policy analyst, who did not want to be named.
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Federal lobbyist records show that corporate oil executives have frequent access to the highest officials in Ottawa. From July 2008 to August 2009, for instance, Richard George, president of Suncor Energy, listed 48 meetings between senior government officials and Suncor executives. During that time, Suncor officials met seven times with Environment Minister Jim Prentice. They also had one meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and eight meetings with Gary Lunn and Lisa Raitt, who at the time were ministers of Natural Resources Canada.
Environmental groups, although they also have access to government officials, are rarely taken seriously and often dismissed as "leftists," says Mark Lutes of the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
Dale Marshall, of the David Suzuki Foundation, said that while the foundation's members have had "reasonably good access" to Canada's climate change negotiator during United Nations climate change talks, "the last time an environmental group met with Harper was when he was leader of the opposition." Between July 2008 and August 2009, Suzuki Foundation representatives met 11 times with chief negotiator Michael Martin at UN meetings in Ghana and Poland. They also met three times with Environment Minister Jim Prentice.
Environmental groups usually get access to government officials only by joining a business group, such as a sustainable energy association. "I'm more concerned not about access but about influence," Marshall said. "The government's position hasn't shifted."
Suncor is a good example of how big oil works the corridors of power. Including Suncor's own in-house lobbyists, there have been 56 lobbyists registered to lobby for Suncor since 1997. The tar sands company has 12 active in-house lobbyists that spend more than 20 per cent of their time lobbying Ottawa, according to the federal lobby registry. In addition, Suncor retains six registered consulting lobbyists to represent its interests in climate change issues in Ottawa, according to the Canadian public lobby registry. Among those six, four have previously worked as senior policy advisers to the government.
One of those is Ken Boessenkool, a lobbyist with GCI Group Canada, a Toronto-based consultancy with longstanding ties to Harper's Conservative Party. Boessenkool is considered one of Harper's closest associates. He served as a campaign adviser and a senior policy adviser to Harper when he was leader of the opposition.
Boessenkool lobbied for Suncor from May 15 to Aug. 15, targeting government ministries such as Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada, members of the House of Commons, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Privy Council Office, according to the Canadian lobby registry. His main responsibility on behalf of the company was "climate change policy with respect to developing a carbon market in Canada as this affects the oil and gas operations of Suncor Energy Inc.," according to the registry.
Boessenkool declined to comment on his lobbying for Suncor. "I do not discuss my clients," he said.
Lobbyist Rudolph represents Suncor on legislation regarding greenhouse gas emission regulations. He also represents the Clean Air Renewable Energy Coalition, an organization he founded in 2000. The group is a coalition of big oil companies, like Suncor, ConocoPhillips Canada, Enbridge Inc. and Shell Canada Ltd., along with renewable energy companies and several NGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund Canada and Friends of the Earth. Rudolph said he founded the coalition to try to find common ground among the disparate interests of the climate change debate. He said some oil companies, including Suncor, have come to accept the science of climate change and have broken away from the traditional oil patch stance of "bitch, moan and whine" as represented by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP).
"They want to work with environmentalists to find a solution," Rudolph noted. "They said, 'Look, our corporate and environmental credibility is at stake. You don't want these schmucks to speak for us. We'll speak for ourselves.' So there are those dynamics happening big time. In my opinion that is the new way of doing things."
Suncor, however, maintains a foothold in both camps. It is still part of CAPP, which has lobbied heavily to undermine climate change legislation, critics say.
"CAPP is the classic bottom feeder satisfying the lowest common denominator-type messaging that comes out when it comes to oil sands, climate change, and what they are doing," Rudolph said. His thoughts are echoed by the senior government source, who is involved in climate change policy: "At the end of the day, you get more or less with CAPP the lowest common denominator. Lower, let's be fair. But there is the unspoken link, where the oil executive can call (the prime minister) directly and say, 'You don't do this or else you will suffer. We'll beat you in your riding' type of thing."
While CAPP employs Ottawa-based Global Public Affairs and its eight lobbyists, it also has registered 42 of its own employees as federal lobbyists. Of the total 51 active lobbyists registered by CAPP, 17 previously worked for the government. These include one who was a senior aide to Harper when he was leader of the opposition.
The record shows that CAPP has enjoyed access to the highest officials in the Canadian federal bureaucracy. CAPP president David Collyer, a former director of the National Energy Board, for example, met 95 times between August 2008 and October 2009 with some of Canada's top civil servants and politicians involved in the energy and climate change files. These included two meetings with Canada's chief climate change negotiator Michael Martin, as well as meetings with Environment Department and Natural Resources Canada ministers, their deputies, and the nation's top bureaucrat, Wayne Wouters, clerk of the Privy Council.
In an email, Martin said that his meetings with CAPP are among "several meetings" he and Environment Minister Prentice have held with various stakeholders on climate change. "The main objective for all stakeholder meetings has been to provide an update on the UN climate change negotiations and to gain a greater understanding of the views of stakeholders in advance of the Copenhagen conference," he said.
Suncor also acts through the International Institute for Sustainable Development, whose head office is in Winnipeg and whose climate change division is run by John Drexhage. The institute, which is not a lobbying organization, arranges meetings with Canada's chief climate negotiator, government officials and big oil to discuss climate change negotiations.
Drexhage, who was part of Canada's Kyoto negotiating team under the Liberal government, said he thinks companies like Shell and Suncor are more progressive than most other oil companies in their acceptance of climate change regulations. "Many of the others ... have had a much more difficult time of it," he said.
"You had Gwyn Morgan, who was the CEO of (oil, gas, and tar sands company) Encana, characterize the discussions around cap and trade as 'an encroaching cancer on the Canadian economy' in a public letter he sent to the prime minister. There was, and there continues to be, frankly, a lot of opposition."
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Lining up for government grants to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions has become the latest job for lobbyists not only in Ottawa, but also in the provinces.
In 2007, Canada's major oil companies, along with some other energy related businesses, created the Integrated CO2 Network (ICO2N). It lobbies to secure financing for "a proposed carbon capture and storage system for Canada." With offices at Suncor headquarters in Calgary, it has six lobbyists, including three who had been senior policy advisers to Harper.
That lobbying recently paid off. In October, Harper joined Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach in announcing grants totalling $1.6 billion to finance two projects to capture and store carbon from two coal-fired power plants owned by two members of the ICO2N: Shell Energy and Transalta Corporation.
ICO2N's website says carbon capture and storage could reduce Canada's CO2 emissions by 20 million tonnes or 2.6 per cent. But the expected cost - about $16 billion - of such a nationwide push, which would fail to capture the carbon equivalent of projected emissions from even one tar sands company like Suncor, suggests how far Canada still has to go, environmentalists say.
This story is a Gazette collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Centre for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. The story is part of the centre's project: The Global Climate Change Lobby. Data analysis is by M.B. Pell, with the assistance of Aaron Mehta. You can view the entire series at http://tinyurl.com/ghglobby [1]
THE ROAD TO COPENHAGEN
Read more articles by The Gazette's William Marsden, who has been following the United Nations climate change negotiations since the first round in Bali in December 2007. The final round of UNFCC talks begins Monday in Copenhagen.
Links:
[1] http://tinyurl.com/ghglobby