Built to take on Big Green, it took on cartoon film Bigfoot Family instead. Premier Danielle Smith is dissolving the Canadian Energy Centre.The Alberta government spent tens of millions on pro-oil ads through the Canadian Energy Centre, like these 2021 billboards in New York. It was never really the war room that former Alberta premier Jason Kenney dreamed of.
That line worked well in a room full of pro-oil partisans who felt their province's main industry under siege. And it surely felt familiar to Kenney himself, who'd spend so many federal elections in the Conservative Party war room, pumping out attack after counter-attack against the Liberals, NDP or any other would-be threat to his own faction.
And in time, its bid to become to pugnacious attacker of oil and gas detractors faded. It instead became a content factory of stories that promoted the sector, and a— where most of its budget went over the years. It spent $26 million overall in 2022-2023, the last year for which figures are publicly available.
"If all you're doing is targeting the people that already agree with you, you're not able to get to the rest of them," said Ryan Williams, the president of Drake Oilfield Supply, in 2020, one year into the energy centre's life. A sampling of pro-industry stories on the Canadian Energy Centre website. Government-funded staff writers and freelancers pumped out more than 100 articles a year, but the website logged a little more than 1,000 visits per day.
"This was meant to close that gap and change the narrative. I don't think that anything changed," said Deborah Yedlin of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in an interview with CBC News.