Good article by Max Fawcett about the reality of the War Room getting sucked into Smith's government. As I suspected too, Fawcett surmizes the federal greenwashing law does play a role here, and as par for the course Smith and her circus are aggrandizing Bill C-59.
National Observer: Alberta's war room waves the white flag
Quote:
Premier Danielle Smith made that abundantly clear in her comments about the transition of the war room’s assets into her intergovernmental affairs department. “We’re in a time where the federal government is attempting to make the promotion of Alberta’s energy industry illegal with Bill C-59,” she said. Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid dutifully carried this water in his latest column, writing that “Bill C-59 is appallingly undemocratic and an affront to free speech. It imposes huge penalties on companies and entities that praise environmental and climate improvements in the industry.”
Alas, none of this is actually true. Bill C-59, which the government describes as “an act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement,” includes a small section that adds a new form of “reviewable conduct” to the Competition Act’s existing provisions for entities that make false or misleading statements to consumers. As the Department of Justice says in an explantory note on the proposed change, “the amendments would add to the existing section dealing with representations to the public, a new form of reviewable conduct: a statement, warranty or guarantee of a product’s benefits for protecting the environment or mitigating the environmental and ecological effect of climate change that is not based on an adequate and proper test.”
Translation: it would require anyone claiming a clear environmental benefit to backstop it with real evidence. The extent to which Alberta’s government is overreacting here is a massive tell, one that shows just how invested it is in keeping the waters around the oil and gas industry’s climate and other environmental impacts sufficiently muddied.
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