Alberta’s controversial Canadian Energy Centre, also known as the “energy war room,” has shut down.
In an emailed statement on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the province’s energy ministry’s office said the CEC will be integrated into the province’s intergovernmental relations department.
“After careful consideration, we will be integrating the mandate of the CEC into Intergovernmental Relations (IGR). Resources such as CEC assets, intellectual property and researchers will now be supporting IGR in order to seamlessly continue this important work,” the email read.
A publicly-funded agency founded by Alberta’s United Conservative government, the CEC was launched to fight what it calls misinformation about the province’s oil and gas industry.
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In September 2023, it was reported that the CEC spent around $22 million on oil and gas ads in the April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022 fiscal year, according to the centre’s 2023 annual report. The ad campaign was to take place in the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and Canada.
The report did not provide much information on how the money was spent or what results it generated.
However, documents from the U.S. Foreign Agent Registry revealed that Alberta spent $159,593.51 on ads in the Wall Street Journal.
They also include contracts signed between the Alberta government and DDB, a marketing and communication company with offices in Edmonton and Washington.
The contract indicates Alberta spent $1.7 million out of a budget of $3.8 million to spread the message to Americans that the province’s industry is a well-regulated and safe supplier.
The Opposition NDP said the “war room” was a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
“Danielle Smith could have been focused on building more schools, hiring more doctors, and making life more affordable for Albertans. Instead, the government is wasting their time with an energy war room that’s most famous battle was with a children’s cartoon, and has not improved Alberta’s energy sector in any measurable way,” said Nagwan Al-Gundeid, the NDP critic for energy and climate, in a news release.
“Since 2019, the UCP have wasted over $66 million of taxpayer money on this failed war room … which could have been invested in more technology to reduce emissions, but instead the UCP funnelled these dollars directly into a partisan office and unmeasurable marketing stunts.”
The NDP said it will ask the Auditor General to investigate this latest evolution of the “war room.”
–With files from Emily Mertz, Global News, and Bob Weber, The Canadian Press.
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