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Alberta smear campaign founder not backing down
News Articles | Fort McMurray Today | Carol Christian | July 19, 2010
The creator behind the Re-Think Alberta Campaign says Albertans have too much blind faith in the provincial government when it comes to the environmental impacts of oilsands development.
The creator behind the Re-Think Alberta Campaign says Albertans have too much blind faith in the provincial government when it comes to the environmental impacts of oilsands development.
That was an assertion made this morning by Michael Marx, founder of Corporate Ethics International that launched the campaign last week. It urges American tourists to stay away from Alberta where the “most polluting and toxic oil on earth” is being extracted.
Originally saying the goal was to wean Americans off their dependency on oil, he now adds the campaign also seeks to spur meaningful dialogue between the government, industry, environmentalists and aboriginal communities coupled with a moratorium on oilsands expansion.
“It’s natural for them to really believe that their government is really looking out for them and they have become very reliant on an oil industry and we just know that the natural inclination is not to want to bite the hand that feeds you,” he said. Mar, who said he doesn’t own a car, claimed the general public doesn’t track the oilsands as closely “as those of us who have been involved in this is for over two years, and some as much as nine years.”
He admitted his campaign took a credibility hit last week when it had to correct a claim in its 90-second video that said oilsands development is destroying an area twice the size of England.
“We corrected that to say only the size of one England and we did that within 24 hours and it was back up Friday morning.”
He also countered the mistake saying the provincial government has made a number of statements that “have been proven incorrect and they have not backed off those at all.” For example, Marx said there is clear evidence proving a government claim there are no non-naturally occurring toxic compounds in the Athabasca River.
But it’s that inaccuracy that has also generated much criticism of the CEI campaign.
“Both the U.S. and Canada have advertising standards to protect the public from claims that are not truthful, fair and accurate,” said Janet Annesley, vice-president of communications for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in a statement it noted CEI had to pull several ads in the U.S. because of inaccurate statements. “We suggest to Corporate Ethics International the only ethical response is a full correction to their ads, website and statements to media.”
CAPP research indicates
that Canadians want a more
balanced discussion than activist groups have so far provided, she added.
“Saying ‘stop the fill-in-the-blank’ over and over with no realistic energy or economic solutions offered is a message that appeals to peoples’ environmental concerns but does not recognize our needs also for energy and economic growth,” added Annesley.
“We’re prepared to defend our statements,” replied Marx who has visited the oilsands including participation in a tour of Suncor Energy. “If someone wants to provide counter-documentation that those are wrong, and if the evidence is clear that we are wrong, we’ll change the statements.”
That accuracy was also challenged in a forum section of the Rethink Alberta website which had to be shut down because of a flood of statements — both profanity and a swell of negative reaction to the campaign.
While CEI anticipated a negative response from Albertans, Marx admitted “it generated an even broader negative response than we expected.”
And that, he stated, shows that “Albertans really believe what their government has been telling them.
“That is something we hope as tempers start to cool, people will take a second look.”
When the campaign was launched, Marx had said it would also utilize social media such as Facebook. A check this morning of the Facebook page for Corporate Ethics International listed 13 members while. a grassroots Shut Down Corporate Ethics International page had slightly more at 15.
Meanwhile on Twitter, real time results had no recent tweets for CEI at 8:45 a.m. The most recent was 15 hours earlier. It listed 68 followers.
Also, CAPP had pointed out that individual Canadians created other websites condemning the campaign, such as http://rethinkrethinkalberta.blogspot.com/.
Meanwhile on Thursday night during a reception for the Federal Conservative Energy Caucus, Don Thompson, president of the Oil Sands Developers Group, said the real losers in the campaign “will be the people naive enough to believe it because they will have foregone the opportunity to visit such wonderful places as Jasper, Banff, the Badlands and even Fort McMurray.
“I also think it’s reprehensible these people target an unrelated industry — the tourism industry — an industry that employs a lot of people in the summer tourist season; people who use these jobs to finance their university careers. I think that’s simply reprehensible.”
But the campaign has brought increased attention to Fort McMurray Tourism.
On an average week day, the bureau’s website has about 7,000 hits. On Wednesday, the first day the news of the Corporate Ethics anti-Alberta campaign started, that number hit almost 14,000.
Attributing that jump in part to curiosity, Randy Edison, executive director, said the bureau is spending some time with those numbers to learn where the hits were generated from.
“If we can pin that down to the cities where this campaign was geared, we’ll be able to see if it was very effective at all.”
He did acknowledge that even though it is a negative campaign, that spurred interest in this area is invaluable in terms of advertising dollars.
“You’d never be able to come up with the budget to buy that kind of advertising. That’s 7,000 extra people that came to our website just on this one day, so yes we get now to get in front of people and that’s what designation marketing is all about: getting in front of people.”
As for those virtual visitors, Edison pointed out
Fort McMurray Tourism’s website depicts the true Wood Buffalo.
“We show the broad range. We have some information about oilsands and the oilsands tours, but we also speak about the outdoors, adventure, the boreal forest and the beauty. It’s a broad picture,” said Edison.
“It’s showing them the real picture and again, in our case, we always just invite people to come and see for themselves. Once they get here, I don’t know of anyone whose ever come here that I’ve spoken to that hasn’t been impressed by what they see as far as the natural surroundings.”
Tagged with: corporate ethics international, rethink alberta
