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Oil and gas lobbyists make up at least six members of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s inner circle in the home stretch of the campaign, raising new questions about his commitment to grant the fossil fuel industry’s wishlist should he be elected.
Two years ago, the Conservative Party’s membership shot down a resolution that would prevent lobbyists from seeking positions on their national council. Today, at least four members of the Conservative National Council are linked to lobbying firms promoting oil and gas companies.
They include National Council president Stephen Barber, a lobbyist with StrategyCorp which represents the Pathways Alliance; Amber Ruddy, representing Alberta, who also works for Counsel Public Affairs whose clients include Imperial Oil and Cenovus; Heather Feldbusch, also representing Alberta, a lobbyist with Alberta Counsel, representing clients like Tourmaline Oil Corp. and the Canadian Gas Association; and Anthony Matar, a Crestview Strategies lobbyist, whose firm represents Tourmaline Oil, Capital Power and right-wing social media site Rumble.
The Conservative National Council is the highest governing body of the CPC. It calls the shots around membership fees, leadership and nomination race rules, the party’s budget and more.
The oil and gas-linked names close to Poilievre go beyond the Conservative National Council; Poilievre’s chief of staff, Ian Todd, has lobbied with Maple Leaf Strategies, which has represented Enbridge in meetings with government officials. And Conservative Party campaign chair John Baird, a former minister in Stephen Harper’s government, is a senior advisor with Bennett Jones LLP — a firm listed in the federal lobbyist registry as working on behalf of Kinder Morgan and Shell Canada.
Shell says it operates roughly one in five of the world’s LNG vessels, and is an owner in LNG Canada. LNG Canada is considering whether to invest in a major expansion — a project Poilievre has said would be a top priority for his government to see through.
The “oily” nature of the national council is interesting but not surprising, said Bill Carroll, a professor at the University of Victoria who specializes in corporate capitalism and the climate crisis.
Poilievre and the CPC, generally, support fossil fuel capitalism publicly and proudly so “it's not that these people are influencing him as an individual,” Carroll told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview on April 25.
“You can imagine on the board of the Conservative National Council that these people who are lobbyists in firms that are strongly aligned with the fossil fuel sector, their opinions and remarks when the Council meets will be reflecting that,” Carroll said.
“It's establishing a certain kind of context and just general level of alignment with the interests of the fossil fuel sector,” he said. “It matters because these networks are operating in the background of the mediascape that we receive during, [before and after] an election campaign.”
During the campaign, Poilievre promised to grant a wishlist put forward by 14 oil and gas executives, representing pipeline giants Enbridge, TC Energy, South Bow and Pembina Pipeline as well as major oil and gas producers such as Imperial Oil, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, MEG Energy, Cenovus Energy, Tourmaline Oil, Strathcona Resources, Arc Resources, Veren and Whitecap Resources — organizations well represented by the lobbyists on the Conservative National Council.
The signatories want to see the next federal government scrap the federal impact assessment, West Coast oil tanker ban, oil and gas emissions cap and the industrial carbon price, accelerate project approvals and double the amount of loan guarantees made available to Indigenous peoples to buy into resource projects.
All of this — and more climate policy rollbacks — featured in the Conservative Party’s election platform, released April 22.
The Conservative Party did not return a request for comment.
‘Swimming’ in corporate lobbyists
Poilievre has not been shy about professing a disdain for lobbyists.
"[M]y experience with the corporate lobbyists in Ottawa ... [has] been that they’ve been utterly useless in advancing any common-sense interests for the people on the ground,” Poilievre told the Vancouver Board of Trade in March 2024.
Martin Lukacs, managing editor of The Breach and author of The Poilievre Project: A radical blueprint for corporate rule, said in an interview that any corporate lobbyist in Ottawa understands that despite Poilievre’s criticisms, business as usual would continue if he were to be elected.
Lukacs said it took a lot of "chutzpah" for Poilievre to go after corporate lobbyists when he is "swimming in them.”
“Poilievre's attacks on corporate lobbyists were always a cynical charade intended to paint himself as an anti-establishment crusader for working people,” Lukacs said.
“All of it, if he were to win, would fall away and you would see corporate Canada with as much, if not more, access than we've seen in recent Liberal and Conservative governments,” he said.
Access is the name of the game. A previous investigation from Canada’s National Observer and the Investigative Journalism Foundation found from 2008 to 2022 the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobbied government officials an average of 117 times per year. The top lobbied officials were bureaucrats rather than MPs, reflecting the oil and gas industry’s effective strategy of shaping government policy by influencing the civil servants politicians rely on, experts said.
In 2023, oil and gas companies and industry associations met with federal officials on average five times per work day, according to an analysis by Environmental Defence.
Environmental Defence identified 1,255 meetings and found the top lobbied departments were those responsible for much of Canada’s emission reduction efforts. Energy and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) clocked 313 meetings, Environment and Climate Change Canada had 253 and Finance Canada — which holds the government’s purse strings — had 118.
Lukacs said while the tone from Conservatives and Liberals are somewhat different when it comes to the oil and gas industry, there isn’t a fundamental difference in vision. During Justin Trudeau’s decade at the helm, Liberals pitched a vision for the industry that would allow a major expansion, as long as there was some show of concern for climate change.
“They had to effectively put a bit of water in their wine by agreeing to, whether it was a carbon tax, or some degree of regulation, but as minimal as possible of the industry so they could build some degree of social license,” he said. “But when push came to shove they were willing to go as far as buying a pipeline, which is something the Conservatives never had to consider, themselves, to do.”
Liberal Leader Mark Carney may have a reputation for understanding climate change, given his role serving as the UN special envoy on climate action and finance and co-founding the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, a gargantuan collection of private financial organizations that aims to make trillions of dollars available for a global transition to net-zero. But the voluntary alliance has suffered major setbacks in recent months as banks have withdrawn to pursue more oil and gas financing.
Lukacs says Carney’s record indicates undeserved faith in markets to solve problems.
“You need the strong hand of the state to rein in and regulate the very industries that have gotten us into this mess in the first place,” he said.
“He was not willing as a climate ambassador banker to advocate for those ideas, and so I don't see any reason why, leading a state, he would be willing to go there.”
A review of the Liberal Party's National Board of Directors by Canada's National Observer did not identify any ties to oil and gas lobbyists.
John Woodside & Natasha Bulowski / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer
Comments
No surprise. The O&G industry was also behind efforts to unseat the Liberals in 2019.
"Conservative politicians, oil executives map out strategy for ousting federal Liberals in growing collaboration" (Globe and Mail, 2019)
"Oilpatch fires 'warning shot' at Trudeau Liberals in Ontario with 'unprecedented' ground campaign" (National Observer, 2018)
This month, O&G CEOs, along with other business leaders ("Friends of Free Enterprise"), signed their names to a newspaper advertisement in support of the Conservatives.
"Business titans take out ad backing Poilievre and Conservatives" (Toronto Sun, April 12, 2025)
But do not imagine for a moment that the O&G industry's influence stops at the Conservatives' door. Industry-captured politicians are to be found in all mainstream parties, including the federal Liberals and provincial NDP. Industry-captured bureaucrats hold sway in all governments.
"TC Energy executive resigns after video boasting of covert lobbying tactics" (Calgary Herald, 2024)
"‘Swimming’ in corporate lobbyists"
O&G lobbyists have no shortage of access to or clout with the Liberal government and federal bureaucrats in Energy and Natural Resources Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), and Department of Finance.
As the article attests: "In 2023, oil and gas companies and industry associations met with federal officials on average five times per work day. … Environmental Defence identified 1,255 meetings and found the top lobbied departments were those responsible for much of Canada’s emission reduction efforts. Energy and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) clocked 313 meetings, Environment and Climate Change Canada had 253 and Finance Canada — which holds the government’s purse strings — had 118."
Hence, the broad support of the federal Liberal government for the O&G industry's agenda, backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies.
In Canada, the O&G industry is financed by the Big Banks and backed by Corporate Canada generally. The Liberals serve Corporate Canada no less than the Conservatives do. In fact, they are more effective.
The revolving door between the O&G industry, the Big Banks, Corporate Canada, and government opens also to Liberal Party offices.
Martha Hall Findlay, another Liberal MP and longtime O&G cheerleader, served as the president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank, and as senior vice-president and Chief Sustainability Officer with Suncor. Still beating the drum for fossil-fuel expansion.
Going back to the mid-1990s, Jean Chretien and Anne McClellan (solicitor general, minister of health, and Attorney General and minister of justice of Canada) were instrumental in the expansion of Alberta's oilsands. Post politics, McClellan sat on the boards of Nexen, Agrium, and Cameco Corp..
Article: "And Conservative Party campaign chair John Baird, a former minister in Stephen Harper’s government, is a senior advisor with Bennett Jones LLP — a firm listed in the federal lobbyist registry as working on behalf of Kinder Morgan and Shell Canada."
Then Baird must know John Manley.
John Manley, former Finance Minister and deputy prime minister under Chretien, served a decade as president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, then known as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. He is currently the chairman of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). In 2019, he joined law firm Bennett Jones as a Senior Business Advisor as part of the Governmental Affairs & Public Policy group.
There are two oil and gas parties in Ottawa — not just one.
O&G industry support for the Conservatives is a given. What would be far more useful is an investigation into the influence exercised by the O&G industry, the Big Banks, and Corporate Canada upon the Liberals.
The Liberals have been in power for ten years, and are on the verge of a majority government. The Liberals are the party executing the O&G industry's agenda. The Liberals are the party leading Canada over the climate cliff. Not the Conservatives.
The likes of Trudeau/Carney, Notley/Nenshi, and Horgan/Eby will take us over the climate cliff as surely as the conservative deni-osaurs will. With climate plans premised on fossil fuel expansion, petro-progressives are leading us to disaster, just as surely as their opponents would.
Whether we go over the cliff at 100 kmh or 50 kmh, the result is the same.
As 350.org's Bill McKibben puts it, winning slowly is the same as losing.
"Bill McKibben: Winning Slowly Is the Same as Losing", (Rolling Stone, 2017)
A vote for the Liberals or provincial NDP is a vote for climate failure. The delusion that the Conservatives are the arch-climate villains (albeit less effective servants of the fossil-fuel industry) is the rationalization that allows progressives to keep voting for climate failure.
The climate plans of the Liberals and provincial NDP are premised on fossil-fuel expansion.
Petro-progressives like Trudeau/Carney, Notley/Nenshi, and Horgan/Eby claim to accept the climate change science, but still push pipelines, approve LNG projects, promote oilsands expansion, subsidize fossil fuels, and let fossil fuel interests dictate the agenda. Canada's idea is to "green" (i.e., greenwash) its fossil fuels, not get off them.
When it comes to oilsands and fossil fuel expansion, Trudeau, Carney, Harper, Scheer, O'Toole, Poilievre; Notley, Nenshi, Kenney, Smith; Horgan, and Eby are all on the same page.
The petro-progressive Liberals and provincial NDP are not in a tug-of-war with Conservatives over climate. They are dance partners. Two sides of the same coin. Regardless of who is in office, Corporate Canada and Big Oil are in power. Corporate Canada dictates the agenda.
Under PM Trudeau, Canada's O&G industry has enjoyed record profits on record production. No accident.
With enemies like the Liberals, Canada's O&G industry does not need friends.
With friends like the Liberals, Canada's climate movement does not need enemies.
Big Oil couldn't ask for a better setup. Terrified by the Conservative bogeyman, progressive voters run into the arms of Trudeau's Liberals/provincial NDP. CAPP sets their Conservative hounds on the Liberals/provincial NDP, while the petro-progressives give the O&G industry just about everything on its wishlist.
Article: "Lukacs said while the tone from Conservatives and Liberals are somewhat different when it comes to the oil and gas industry, there isn’t a fundamental difference in vision. During Justin Trudeau’s decade at the helm, Liberals pitched a vision for the industry that would allow a major expansion, as long as there was some show of concern for climate change."
Paying lip service to climate science. Political theatre. Designed to deceive progressive voters and climate-concerned Canadians into backing the fossil fuel agenda.
And it works. Progressive voters fall for this deception election after election.
Max Fawcett: "The oil and gas sector will miss Justin Trudeau. No, really" (National Observer, January 8, 2025)
"It’s worth noting that while Canada was 'closed' for oil and gas business, the industry increased its oil production by more than a million barrels per day. Its biggest companies posted record profits in 2022, and then almost did it again in 2023. Meanwhile, in 2024 the federal government completed the construction of the first pipeline to Pacific tidewater in decades, one that immediately (and significantly) increased oil prices received by the same companies complaining so bitterly about Trudeau’s reign. LNG Canada, meanwhile, is set to begin operations in 2025, and will have a similarly beneficial impact on the price of natural gas in Canada and the companies that sell it.
"The truth here, one the oil and gas industry’s advocates would never dare acknowledge, is that JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAS BEEN THE BEST PRIME MINISTER THEIR INDUSTRY HAS SEEN IN DECADES. He has done more to advance their interests, often at the cost of his own political capital, than any of his living predecessors. In addition to TMX and LNG Canada it also fought successfully for Line 3, a major expansion project that faced significant political resistance from the Democratic governor and other politicians in Michigan. Oh, and it also threw more than a billion dollars at the oil and gas industry to help it clean up its old oil and gas wells."
Geoff Dembicki: "How Trudeau's Broken Promises Fuel the Growth of Canada's Right" (The Tyee, 2019)
"The Liberal party plays on voters' desire for far-reaching transformation while guaranteeing the endurance of the status quo. The Liberals effectively act as a kind of shock absorber of discontent and anger towards the elite…
"So on climate, Trudeau was presented as this kind of river-paddling environmental Adonis. He promised that fossil fuel projects wouldn't go ahead without the permission of communities. But the Liberals create these public spectacles of their bold progressiveness while they quietly assure the corporate elite that their interests will be safeguarded. So at the same time Trudeau was going around the country and convincing people that he was this great climate hope, the Liberal party had for years been assuring big oil & gas interests that there would not be any fundamental change to the status quo.
"As early as 2013, Trudeau was telling the Calgary Petroleum Club that he differed with Harper not so much about the necessity of exporting huge amounts of tarsands internationally, but because he didn't think Harper's approach — which stoked divisions and an incredible amount of resistance that turned Canada into a climate pariah — was the most effective marketing approach.
"The Liberal climate plan essentially is a reworking of the business plan of Big Oil and the broader corporate lobby. …The plan is to support a carbon tax and to effectively make it a cover for expanded tarsands production and pipelines. That was a plan hatched by the Business Council of Canada back in 2006, 2007. For 20 years oil companies had resisted any kind of regulation or any kind of carbon tax and fought it seriously. But they started to realize that it would be a kind of concession that they would have to make in order to assure stability and their bottom line not being harmed. The climate bargain that Trudeau went on to strike with Alberta of a carbon tax plus expanded tarsands production was precisely the deal that Big Oil had wanted."
You can put 20 comments in here on how the Liberals & Conservatives are exactly alike when it comes to Oil & Gas..
Poilievre’s biggest fans , Danielle Smith and Scott Moe chose to shill for Oil & Gas , instead of standing with our Country against Donald Trump. Poilievre is’ his base..
And Danielle Smith? Scott Moe? They are his base..
The rest of us? Well, we don’t mean all that much to Conservatives .. IMO
I do not claim that the Liberals and Conservatives are "exactly alike when it comes to Oil & Gas".
Canada's two mainstream parties are superficially different on climate/energy, but essentially the same.
Their climate plans are both predicated on fossil fuel expansion. A plan to fail.
The Conservatives practice explicit denialism, the Liberals prefer the implicit kind.
"Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways."
A spoonful of sugar makes the pipeline go down.
Contrast the Conservatives' harsh, abrasive, and relentless rhetoric.
Paying lip service to science and soft-pedalling fossil-fuel expansion, the Liberals get a lot more mileage for the O&G industry than the Cons do with their pedal-to-the-floor approach.
Finesse over brute force.
Unlike the Cons, the federal Liberals and provincial NDP can buy social licence for fossil fuel projects from progressive voters. The Cons just create a wall of resistance.
"… During Trudeau’s comments he criticized his predecessor, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
"'Over a decade in power, they couldn’t build a single pipeline to new markets,' said Trudeau. 'But they did succeed in building up one thing — opposition. Opposition to pipelines and opposition to our vital resource sector.'"
"Corbella: Trudeau must learn it's a Code 1000 for Alberta" (CH, Nov 22, 2018)
The Liberals are joined to Corporate Canada at the hip. Not just the O&G industry, but the Big Banks that back them. The Big Banks and Corporate Canada — these are the entities that dictate Liberal climate policy.
Not surprised, oil & gas are the largest donors the conservatives have.