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Canada launches sales pitch Allocates C$40 million to promote energy sector, compared with government’s entire advertising budget of C$65 million last year Gary Park For Petroleum News
The Canadian government is opening its wallet to spend C$40 million on a campaign to promote the importance of its energy and drown out its domestic and global critics.
Faced with relentless criticism of its role in developing the Alberta oil sands and its environmental stewardship in the oil and natural gas sector, the government has set a budget for Natural Resources Canada of C$24 million for international advertising and C$16.5 billion for the domestic market.
But the campaign clashes with further evidence that government will fall short of its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, with the latest statistics forecasting that Canada will produce 734 million metric tons of GHGs in 2020, 122 million metric tons above its target.
“The government has a responsibility to provide Canadians with the facts to assist them in making informed decisions,” Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told a House of Commons committee, in defending the sales pitch.
“This engagement and outreach campaign will raise awareness in key international markets that Canada is an environmentally responsible and reliable supplier of natural resources.”
Value of Keystone XL cited The C$40 million compares with the government’s entire advertising budget last year of C$65 million and the C$237,000 Natural Resources Canada spent in the 2010-11 fiscal year.
Asked to justify the spending, Oliver said that winning over U.S. support for TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline is vital to create “tens of thousands of jobs.”
Defending the promotion of just one industrial sector, he said: “You justify it by what it’s going to achieve and there are billions, tens of billions of dollars, in play.”
Peter Julian, the natural resources spokesman for the opposition New Democratic Party, said he did not see how the government could justify spending so much taxpayers’ money on a job that should be the responsibility of the private sector.
He said the advertising would not work because the policy choices of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s administration have “killed the possibility” of gaining public support for major resource projects by slashing environmental assessments and restricting “meaningful public consultation” on pipeline proposals.
Julian argued the backlash has been “world wide ... Canada has a black eye. There’s no doubt.”
Panel working technology issues To gain a “social license” to approve new projects, Oliver’s department has asked a 13-mmber panel of the Council of Canadian Academies to chart a way forward for technologies that can help reduce the environmental footprint of oil sands development.
The council was created in 2005 with a 10-year, C$30 million government grant to provide peer-reviewed, science-based assessments to help shape public policy.
The government has frequently held out hope that technology will put Canada on the road to its GHG pledge, but Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq admitted to a House of Commons committee that she is not yet ready to unveil long-delayed rules on curbing GHGs at the oil sands.
“We want to get this right for Canada and when I’m ready to release this information then it will be released publicly,” she said.
Canadian negotiators told the international community last year that they were “working toward draft regulations for 2013,” and a few months later Aglukkaq’s predecessor Peter Kent said the government was “very close” to finalizing the regulations for oil and natural gas companies.
Lack of GHG regs an issue John McKay, environment spokesman for the Liberal party, said Aglukkaq’s promise to work with the provinces and territories on climate change were “a little late in the day” because of the Obama administration’s pending decision on Keystone XL.
He said the Harper government’s failure to deliver the regulations has turned Keystone XL into a proxy fight over climate change policy that could harm the Canadian economy.
“As long as we have no GHG regulations (President Barack) Obama is in a very, very awkward position” when it comes to deciding on Keystone XL, McKay said.
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