Blacklock's Reporter

Alberta for generations was famous for mountains, rodeos, Mormonism, football, Ukrainian culture, meatpacking and Social Credit. Say “Alberta” today and any focus group replies, “oil”. That’s no accident, writes Prof. Geo Takach of Royal Roads University. From the 1947 oil strike at Leduc Number One, “resource extraction became heroic”. Alberta’s very identity was intertwined with oil sands production, for better and worse.

Tar Wars documents this modern cultural phenomenon. Takach calls it framing: “The concept of framing has roots in the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry. When we frame something, we make meaning of it as we locate, perceive, identify and label it.”

It need not be valid or even accurate, or distinguishable from crude propaganda. Tar Wars covers all angles. “Albertans transcend what one scholar aptly capsulized as ‘the ghoulish image of Alberta that haunts the imagination of many progressive Canadians’,” writes Takach.

Yet Albertans themselves framed the oil sands as the “engine of Canada’s economy”, a self-serving slogan that asserted the wellbeing of every family was linked to the stock price of Imperial Oil. Tell that to Goderich, Ont. when they closed the Volvo road grader factory, or Charlottetown when the $1 billion lobster fishery collapsed. Canada is a $2 trillion economy. We are bigger than Encana Corp.

“Beyond Alberta, the bit sands” – short for bitumen sands – “has become an escalating magnet for international interest and controversy,” writes Takach. Tar Wars bookends the thesis with two media spectacles.

One is a chirpy 2006 episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes that depicted Fort McMurray as a “boomtown” where “there is so much money to be made”. The TV story breathlessly chronicled billions in investment “bigger than a gold rush”, with throwaway quibbles from a Sierra Club naysayer.

The other bookend is Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives On The Alberta Tar Sands, an unnerving film featuring long, agonizing bird’s-eye views of open pit mines like gaping wounds in a pristine forest, accompanied “by a haunting, tonal soundscape with a rhythm suggesting a heartbeat.”

Somewhere between Boomtown and Black Death is a depiction of reality. Tar Wars looks for it. The search is compelling and clever. It dramatizes conflicting facts and imagery of the oil sands through familiar slogans: “Alberta is energy”; “Albertans are doing their best”; “Alberta is a safer, friendlier and more democratic source of oil than petro-dictatorships.”

Prof. Takach cites a 2013 documentary Oil Sands Karaoke that profiled community life in Fort McMurray, specifically to counter the “dark, disturbed, Hiroshima-like landscapes” outside of town. “We see karaoke singers, poured cocktails, a gargantuan warehouse interior, massive haul-trucks, rowdy pub dancers, a quiet residential street” – you get the picture.

Of course Alberta is more than the smell of jobs. Oil Sands Karaoke filmmaker Charles Wilkinson is quoted, “Raising issues like the science of climate change in Alberta is walking on eggshells all the time. It feels like you’ve walked onto the set of Fox News. As an Albertan myself, I’m really troubled by that. We should be able to talk about this stuff. We shouldn’t get angry at each other and label each other.”

By Holly Doan

Tar Wars: Oil, Environment and Alberta’s Image, by Geo Takach; University of Alberta Press; 256 pages; ISBN 9781-77212-1407; $34.95

A whistleblower fired after alleging misconduct at Employment Canada says she was left penniless and unemployable. Members of the Commons government operations committee yesterday cited other “horrific cases” of Canadians ruined for exposing federal wrongdoing.

“I’m in debt, I’m no longer considered employable, I don’t have any money,” said Sylvie Therrien, a former Employment Insurance claims investigator; “It was a horrible situation.”

Therrien was fired in 2013 after alleging managers were offered $50,000 bonuses for disqualifying legitimate claims for benefits. The Federal Court of Appeal in a January 20 ruling cited the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner for procedural unfairness in mishandling Therrien’s case.

“I was ostracized,” said Therrien. “People didn’t want to talk to me, and people started questioning how I did my work. Everything I did was wrong. If I took a five-minute break, people said I took 10 minutes.”

“People who are in fact responsible for wrongdoing are often the people with the power,” said Therrien. “They are high up. People below them are made to suffer. They are put through the wringer. That was my experience.”

“The employer has lots of lawyers and a whole range of people who can destroy your reputation, and this is in fact what they do,” said Therrien; “You should review the Act to provide proper protection so the system protects the whistleblower, instead of protecting people who already have the power.”

MPs conducting the statutory review of the 2007 Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act said the law has failed. “Whistleblowers are ethical and yet they get penalized,” said Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi (Don Valley East, Ont.).

“The Act is more of a paper shield than a metal shield,” said Ratansi; “I want to ensure this culture of intimidation – that the big guns come to extinguish you – I want to ensure that in the public interest we are letting the public know they can report wrongdoing without being persecuted.”

“Lives Were Destroyed”

MPs on March 21 heard testimony from a Hope, B.C. plumbing contractor, D.R. Garrett Construction Ltd., that was blacklisted and bankrupted after complaining of hidden asbestos at the Kent penitentiary in Agassiz, B.C. “I was put out of business by the federal government,” said owner Don Garrett.

“We have seen some horrific cases of the government going out of its way to destroy people’s lives,” Conservative MP Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West) yesterday told the committee: “Obviously, we’re going to have some major changes.”

“How do we protect whistleblowers and their staff from bad government practices so their company is protected from being blacklisted?” said McCauley; “Any contractor sitting at home is going to see how lives were destroyed and say, ‘There’s no way in the world.’”

Integrity Commissioner Joe Friday, faulted by a federal judge for breaching procedural rights in the Therrien Employment Insurance case, said he was committed to improvements. “I can assure you that is my goal as commissioner,” said Friday. “Sensitivity training, a different organizational culture – it’s a very daunting challenge, but one we have certainly identified.”

By Staff

Federal contractors should be covered by whistleblower protection, the Commons committee on government operations has been told. Witnesses yesterday complained of an active federal blacklist of contractors who report wrongdoing.

“The system is set up to attack the whistleblower,” said Don Garrett, owner of D.R. Garrett Construction Ltd. of Hope, B.C. “There’s a 3-D process: it’s deny, delay and eventual destruction of the whistleblower, and I’ve lived it.”

MPs are conducting a statutory review of the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, the first since the law was introduced in 2007. Limited protections under the Act do not apply to federal contractors or 895,000 employees who work in federally-regulated industries – both deficiencies that should be corrected, witnesses said.

“I have lost my bonding status and my business is bankrupt,” said Garrett, a longtime plumbing contractor who complained the Department of Public Works concealed evidence of hidden asbestos on a 2008 job at the Kent penitentiary in Agassiz, B.C. “I was put out of business by the federal government,” he said.

“I was treated as a problem,” said Garrett, who said his company was placed on an “unofficial blacklist” after he challenged authorities. “Every effort was made to deny what happened and to punish me,” he said; “Where do I turn to now?”

Conservative MP Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West) described Garrett’s account as a “horror story”; “How do we protect private contractors working for the government so they can blow the whistle without having their lives ruined or seeing their companies blackballed?” said McCauley.

Duff Conacher, co-founder of the advocacy group Democracy Watch, gave MPs a 21,000-name petition appealing for whistleblower protection for contractors, federally-regulated employees, the RCMP and military. “Everyone needs to be protected including suppliers to the government,” said Conacher.

“Such protection is needed, not just for public sector workers but federally-regulated employees,” said Conacher; “You cannot have open government if whistleblowers are not protected fully and effectively.”

Conacher complained under the current Act there are no financial penalties against wrongdoers, and no method to name offenders. “You can hide people who are employed by the public who have done wrong,” said Conacher. “That’s just a bad idea.”

MPs have heard repeated testimony describing the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner as weak, indifferent and ineffectual. The Office was earlier cited by the Federal Court of Appeal for breaching a whistleblower’s right to procedural fairness. The ruling came in the case of a Department of Employment claims investigator fired after complaining staff were awarded bonuses to disqualify legitimate employment insurance applications.

By Tom Korski