2013-05-24T07:57:07-04:00 Emma Gilchrist http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=emma-gilchrist Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Emma Gilchrist Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1660603 2012-07-10T16:46:15-04:00 2012-09-09T05:12:04-04:00

Emma Gilchrist http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-gilchrist/ advertisements; the warm and fuzzy cartoon animation with the soothing soundtrack and the family strolling down what looks like the yellow brick road, overlaid by a saccharine narration assuring the audience that the company's oil pipeline and supertanker project is "more than a pipeline, it's a path to our future."

Actually it's all part of a pacification campaign Enbridge has launched in an attempt to qualm the legitimate and substantive concerns British Columbians have around the prospect of some 225 oil tankers, carrying oilsands crude from Alberta, annually navigating the narrow, rocky channels and inlets of the Great Bear Rainforest and pipelines crossing over 1,000 streams and rivers.

While launching the $5 million ad campaign, Enbridge spokesperson Paul Stanway said, "It's fair to say the opposition has firmed up in the last year" and "It's become quite apparent that the debate has become a province-wide issue." That's code for "we're losing ground and we know it." To put things in perspective, the Dogwood Initiative (a B.C. based NGO which employs one of the authors of this article) has spent less money in their entire 13 years of existence than Enbridge is spending on their latest ad blitz.

Enbridge has a credibility problem. They're an oil pipeline company. They're out for themselves and people know that. According to a Polaris Institute report, they spill oil 60 times a year on average, including a three million litre oil spill into the Kalamazoo River, in Michigan, two summers ago. As such, Enbridge has enlisted the multinational public relations firm Hill and Knowlton to help sell British Columbians on the Northern Gateway pipeline and supertanker project.

With 50 offices in 20 countries and affiliations with more than 70 associate companies, Hill and Knowlton is one of the world's largest public relations firms. Hiring Hill and Knowlton speaks volumes about the lengths to which Enbridge will apparently go to persuade the B.C. public that supertankers and oilsands pipelines are a good thing for our province.

British journalist George Monbiot, of The Guardian, describes Hill and Knowlton as "the public relations company famous for the unsavoury nature of its clients." Monbiot points out that Hill and Knowlton "advised the Chinese government in the wake of the Tianenmen massacre, set up lobby groups for the tobacco companies and coached the girl who told the false story about Kuwaiti babies being thrown out of incubators, which helped to launch the first Gulf war."

According to Spin Watch, "The firm helped in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident" and "has worked for governments with appalling human rights records, including Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Morocco."

Source Watch states that "Phony Earth First! flyers and press releases calling for violence during Redwood Summer were traced to PR giant Hill and Knowlton by San Francisco Examiner columnist Rob Morse," at the height of the campaign to prevent California's old growth redwood forests from being clearcut by Pacific Lumber Company.

Hill and Knowlton was also hired by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association several years ago to help convince British Columbians that open net cage fish farms were not a threat to our province's wild salmon stocks. In B.C., you would think Enbridge would have learned from the salmon farming industry that hiring expensive multinational PR companies does not make for better environmental practices, but only increases public suspicion of industries already suffering from a lack of trust.

The fact that Enbridge has enlisted Hill and Knowlton is not surprising, given the track record of collaboration. As the Globe and Mail reported in July 2010, as part of an effort to "restore its reputation" Enbridge hired Hill and Knowlton to "provide communications advice" after the Kalamazoo River spill. Given the harsh criticism leveled in the just released review of the Enbridge pipeline rupture in Michigan by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, all that "reputation recovery management," as they say in PR speak, has probably gone for naught.

What is remarkable is that Enbridge has engaged the services of Hill and Knowlton before the Northern Gateway project has even completed the regulatory review process -- this attempt to buy British Columbians' approval is an indication of desperation by a company that, despite having a massive war chest at their disposal, just can't win public approval in our province.

In the past year, Enbridge has lost key local governments in the province's north such as Terrace, Smithers and Prince Rupert, who now formally oppose the company's proposal. And they have attracted the opposition of southern local governments in politically important areas, the province-wide Union of B.C. Municipalities and the B.C. NDP.

Enbridge says their hope for the ad campaign is to "help British Columbians understand what the project is about," but being unable to change the fact oil spills happen all the time and pipelines simply don't create long-term jobs means they will continue to face an impenetrable wall in B.C. -- now they're just $5-million poorer.

A version of this article previously ran in the Nanaimo Daily News.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1269386 2012-02-13T00:07:07-05:00 2012-04-13T05:12:01-04:00

Emma Gilchrist http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-gilchrist/ open letter, which was released on the eve of public hearings into Enbridge's tanker and pipeline proposal to B.C.'s West Coast, concerns how he equates shipping oil to Asia as unquestionably being in the "national interest."

There are at least five key reasons why he's wrong.

1) Protecting B.C.'s coast is about protecting B.C. jobs. According to a B.C. government report, more than 45,000 people are permanently employed by B.C.'s coastal seafood and ocean recreation industries. We're not just talking the fishing fleet, but also processors, anglers, and tour operators. Enbridge's pipeline and tankers project will create 560 long-term jobs in B.C., but an oil spill could wipe out 45,000 jobs -- in other words, B.C. would be risking 80 jobs for every one it stands to gain.

2) Canada's already got a bad case of Dutch Disease. When a currency becomes tied to the price of a single commodity, such as oil, due to a rapid surge in exports, it frequently causes job losses in the manufacturing sector. A recent University of Ottawa study found that Dutch Disease was responsible for 42 per cent of currency-related job losses in Canada between 2002 and 2007. That works out to about 140,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector because of the rapid expansion of the oil sands.

3) Exporting raw bitumen exports Canadian jobs. A recent public opinion survey by ThinkHQ shows 84 per cent of Albertans would prefer to see oil sands bitumen refined in their province. Further to that, 81 per cent of Albertans think the government should be taking steps to increase the amount of oil sands upgrading and refining provincially.

Even the Alberta Federation of Labour, which represents 29 unions and 145,000 workers, has spoken out against Enbridge's tankers and pipeline proposal because it would export unrefined bitumen -- and 50,000 high-quality jobs -- to China. Dogwood Initiative is not prescriptive about whether new refineries should be built or where (because we believe local people should make those decisions), but one thing is certain: it never makes sense to sell the wood and buy back the chair.

4) Half of Canada is reliant on foreign oil. Most of eastern Canada is currently dependent on foreign oil from declining or volatile reserves in the North Sea and the Middle East. If our government really cared about the best interests of Canadians, they'd be at least considering Canadian domestic energy security. Instead, they are selling off our oil to foreign oil companies and pushing to have it shipped to Asia on supertankers through an ocean environment that Environment Canada rates as the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world (which also just so happens to be one of the last remaining pristine places on the planet).

As former senior federal government geologist David Hughes writes in his 30-page report submitted to the joint review panel: "The proclivity to liquidate these resources as fast as possible in the name of economic growth is a very short-sighted policy practised by the Alberta and federal governments at the expense of the long-term energy security of Canadians."

5) What's the hurry? It is former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed who says that we should go slower on oil sands/pipeline expansion and use the oil we have left in the ground wisely. And one of Canada's top investors, the 85-year-old Stephen Jarislowsky, has said: "Long term, I think oil in the ground is a good asset."

Enbridge's pipeline and tanker scheme is predicated on the assumption that oil sands production could (and should) be tripled in less than 25 years -- that calculation goes beyond even the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers' predictions. Without that expansion, there is no oil to fill West Coast pipelines.

Given the plethora of unaddressed environmental and social concerns related to oil sands developments (as pointed out by six independent reports in 2010 and 2011), Canadians should be thinking long and hard before embarking on further rapid expansion. After all, this is a valuable non-renewable resource that we only get to dig up and use once. Let's use it in the best interests of Canadians, not for the short-term gain of multinational oil companies.

Every time you hear the federal government say "national interest," insert "corporate interest" and you'll see a clearer picture. The prime minister is abdicating his responsibility to serve in the best interests of Canadians -- and Canadians, such as University of Alberta political economy professor Gordon Laxer, are right to be asking: when will Harper stop thinking as an oil CEO and start acting like he is Prime Minister of Canada?

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