$3.5-million provincial inquiry into 'anti-Alberta' activities struggles to find a bad guy

This column is an opinion from Graham Thomson, an award-winning journalist who has covered Alberta politics for more than 30 years. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage is urging all Albertans to read the final report of the government-sponsored Steve Allan public inquiry into anti-Albertan activities.

I'm not sure how many people will do that considering the report that is 650 pages long.

So, let me sum up the inquiry's conclusion into one brief paragraph from Allan himself: "To be very clear, I have not found any suggestions of wrongdoing on the part of any individual or organization. No individual or organization, in my view, has done anything illegal. Indeed, they have exercised their rights of free speech."

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of Premier Jason Kenney's assertion that a conspiracy of environmental organizations funded by sketchy foreign forces had used subversive means to successfully shut down a litany of Alberta energy projects.

It would seem the targets of the government's $3.5-million, two-year-long inquiry into "anti-Alberta energy campaigns" did nothing wrong or illegal and were in fact simply practising a basic constitutional right.

During a news conference Thursday, Savage said she didn't care whether any of the "anti-Alberta" activities by environmental groups were legal or illegal; she just thinks they were wrong and that they killed various energy projects including pipeline projects such as Northern Gateway, Energy East and Keystone XL, as well as the Frontier Oilsands Mine.

Except that neither she nor Allan can say any anti-pipeline campaign definitively stopped any projects. And in fact, you could easily argue that projects such as Northern Gateway were fatally wounded by court decisions and Keystone XL was a victim of American politics.

Allan was also unable to "trace with precision" the amount of foreign money that made its way into Canada for environmental campaigns against pipelines or the oilsands.

The report suggests the amount is around a billion dollars but that seems to be a puffed up number. It includes "environmental initiatives" for all kinds of national programs and organizations including more than $400 million directed to Ducks Unlimited, a water-fowl-friendly organization not known for any anti-Alberta activities – that, by the way, happens to have Jason Kenney's former principal secretary, Larry Kaumeyer, as its CEO.

You won't find many financial details about Ducks Unlimited in Allan's report or in a report he commissioned from the accounting firm, Deloitte. Oddly enough, some sections of the Deloitte report have been redacted.

That's a hypocritical look for an inquiry and government demanding environmental organizations be more transparent and accountable about their finances.

Even after all that digging into finances, Allan could only find $54 million that was specifically detailed to "anti-Alberta resource development activity" from 2003 to 2019, or a little more than $3 million a year.

Compare that to the government's much maligned – deservedly so – Canadian Energy Centre that was originally awarded a $30 million-a-year budget that was whittled down to $12 million once the government realized its "war room" was adept at little more than shooting itself in the foot.