Energy Minister Mel Knight was forced to apologize for comments he had previously made about the position of environmental group the Sierra Club in the Legislature this week, as his government launches a $25 million public relations offensive selling the tar sands as environmentally responsible.
 

On Apr 24, the minister told the legislature that “it might be very interesting ... to understand that one of the ... major forces working with respect to environmental concerns globally, the Sierra Club, runs ads in Europe in favour of nuclear energy, Mr Speaker, in favour of nuclear energy.” 
 

The comments raised eyebrows, and a demand for a public apology from the Sierra Club, who called the comments “slanderous,” pointing out that the Sierra Club does not have a European arm and the Sierra Clubs of Canada and the United States both oppose nuclear energy. 
 

On Apr 29, Knight rose in the legislature and apologized for his comments, saying, “Mr Speaker, thank you very much for affording me the opportunity here this afternoon to clarify a statement that I made in this Assembly on Thursday last. The statement was regarding nuclear energy and the Sierra Club. I have since learned it was incorrect. As soon as I learned that the statement was incorrect, I called the director of the Sierra Club and expressed regret for the error and assured her that it was not done with intent. Today I just want to take the opportunity to correct the record in the Assembly as well. I understand that the Sierra Club does not operate in Europe and does not support nuclear energy.

My statement that this organization took out ads in Europe was, in fact, wrong.”

 

Minister Knight’s comments came in response to questions about the impartiality of the government’s new expert panel on nuclear energy. 
 

Sierra Club Prairie Director Lindsay Telfer says that the chair of the panel, John Luxat, is a “past president of the Canadian Nuclear Society, which is well known as a pro-nuclear lobby organization.”
 

In his conversation with the Sierra Club, Telfer says the energy minister declined to revisit the makeup of the nuclear study panel, insisting that it was unbiased. Telfer adds that the minister also refuses to publicly release the panel’s terms of reference.
 

The Energy Minister’s false statements about the Sierra Club were not the first time last week that the Sierra Club was mentioned by a high-ranking Conservative politician. 
 

After Greenpeace activists dropped a banner at a $450 a plate Conservative party fundraiser, Premier Stelmach told the news media that he wasn’t “going to leave it up to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club or any of these other groups ... to get the message out to other jurisdictions,” a message he repeated the same evening Knight issued his apology. The Sierra Club had nothing to do with the Greenpeace action.
 

Greenpeace tar sands campaigner Mike Hudema says the government has stepped up its rhetoric against environmental groups—whether it was Greenpeace in the wake of the banner action at the fundraiser, or comments made about the Sierra Club—as environmentalists have been successful in raising awareness about the effects of unchecked development in the tar sands. 
 

“All of this is a renewed attempt at discrediting us ... mostly because many groups have been quite successful in talking about the environmental and social consequences of this dirty source of oil.”
 

The Stelmach Conservatives are spending $25 million of taxpayers’ money on a ‘branding’ exercise, attempting to paint the Alberta tar sands as an environmentally responsible source of oil. Telfer says most of the money will be spent in the United States. 
 

Hudema says several opinion polls, as well as calls from labour, poverty and landowner groups, have shown that there is considerable public appetite for a slowdown in Ft McMurray amongst Albertans. 
 

Still, Hudema says the battle is national and international in scope.