EDMONTON -- The Canadian Association of Journalists has awarded the Government of Alberta with a dubious honour for what it calls secrecy surrounding the province’s oil and gas “war room.”
The association said it was bestowing the UCP government with the Code of Silence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Government Secrecy for 2019.
The award is given annually by four press-freedom advocacy groups, including The Canadian Association of Journalists, Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University, News Media Canada and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
The press-freedom groups use the award to "call public attention to governments that put extra effort into denying public access to government information to which the public has a right under access to information legislation."
Alberta's oil and gas inquiry was cited as the reason for the win, in a news release saying the "energy war room" was created to counter conspiracies by foreign-funded interests to attack the province's energy industry, while actually attempting to silence truth-tellers about Alberta's oil patch, and it's contribution to climate change.
The release went on to say the Government of Alberta created the Canadian Energy Centre and made all internal operation exempt from FOIP legislation, ensuring no transparency of public access to information.
A statement from the Senior Press Secretary to the Minister of Energy Kavi Bal says, "The Canadian Energy Centre (CEC) abides by the Fiscal Planning and Transparency Act, works through a strict budgeting process with detailed business plans and reporting and is subject to a code of conduct policy, whistleblower policy and review by the Auditor General."
It goes on to say that for over 10 years there has been "a coordinated campaign by foreign funded special interests" to discredit and attack the province's energy industry, and that the CEC's internal operations are not subject to FOIP to prevent a "strategic advantage" to those groups.
The four press-freedom organizations are advocates for reform to Canada's federal access-to-information law.
