Groups linked to oil and gas companies have been spending large sums on Facebook ads promoting the Coastal GasLink project or opposing rail blockades.
[source]
Throughout his entire career, Preston Manning and the Reform Party advocated for socially conservative and fiscally conservative positions. Manning has been deemed the "father of modern-day Canadian Conservatism" and remains active in Conservative Party of Canada politics and campaigns. Manning is also seen as the founder of the green conservative movement in Canada. Upon his retirement, Manning founded the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy [Manning Centre] - not-for-profit organizations based in Calgary, Alberta dedicated to strengthening Canadian democracy in accordance with conservative principles.
The Canada Strong and Free Network is managed by the board of directors with Troy Lanigan as president. Lanigan was formerly president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an organization that advocates for lower taxes, less waste in public sector spending and more government accountability. Lanigan also founded SecondStreet.org, a public policy think tank and educational charity.
Prominent astroturfing ad buyers active on Facebook promoting oil and gas pipeline development belong to the Canada Strong and Free Network. These include groups such as Proud to be Canadian, New Brunswick Proud, NL Strong (Newfoundland and Labrador Strong), and Nova Scotia Proud. Proud to be Canadian describes itself as a group of "grassroots Canadians" who want to "steer Canada in the right direction."
The rise of those groups - and the political manipulation they drive - reflect parallel political and social advocacy campaigns in the United States that serve neoliberal and social conservative agenda. These include anti-abortion movements. anti-union activity, anti-gun control measures, voter suppression (gerrymandering), reductions in healthcare (religious objection to providing healthcare based on moral objections), educational reform (private schools, vouchers, Christian prayer), reductions in the right to self-determination (sexual and gender identity; same sex marriage; access to abortion care), white nationalism, xenophobia, reduction of environmental protections, legislative reform, constitutional reform. ... Prominent groups promoting those agenda include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)], the Atlas Network, the Cato Institute, the Council for National Policy, the Heartland Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network. ... The State Policy Network, for example, receives dark money funding from DonorsTrust, that is dispersed to numerous "policy | research | ..." institutes and groups (well-described in "Dark Money ATM" Pumped Over $137 Million Into Right-Wing Groups in 2020), that seems to be replicated by Canada Strong and Free Network and its various provincial "proud" advocacy groups.
While we as Canadians have little control over U.S. politics, it is important to recognize and understand the forces (ultimately money | corporation driven) that shapes United States law, and the impact of those forces on Canadian politics and society. The influence of Machiavellian billionaires and dark money spending is of particular concern - noting for example that notorious libertarian Charles Koch - an American - had financial investments in the Athabasca oil sands, and provided funding to the Fraser Institute.
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Oil and gas companies, and groups linked to them, have been spending big on Facebook ads that denounce the First Nations-led protests that have targeted rail transport in Canada in the past month. These groups, some of which position themselves as grassroots movements, have spent an estimated $110,000 since the start of the year on Facebook advertising - either to promote the Coastal GasLinknatural gas pipeline at the heart of the protests, or to oppose the rail blockades as illegal. A CBC News analysis found these Facebook ads were shown to Facebook users about 20 million times.
CBC News looked at hundreds of Facebook ads since the start of the year that focus on the protests and rail blockades, which were launched by Wet'suwet'en activists and their supporters opposed to construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
The group Canada Action [Canada Action Coalition | local copy] has been one of the biggest spenders; it spent an estimated $21,000 on Facebook ads, most of them decrying the blockades by Wet'suwet'enhereditary chiefs and their supporters. The group Proud to Be Canadian, part of the Canada Strong and Free Network of third-party groups, spent an estimated $4,400 on the ads, according to data obtained from the Facebook political ad library.
While the groups position themselves as grassroots campaigns in their marketing, they have ties to energy companies and conservative-leaning political groups. Ads in support of the protests, mostly purchased by small activist groups, were viewed about 350,000 times by Facebook users. These groups collectively spent about $3,000 on the ads.
Another big buyer of ads opposing the blockades is Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate Erin O'Toole [update: since 2020-08-24, O'Toole is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada]. His campaign ran 30 ads, in both languages, at an estimated cost of $14,000. Other Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates, including Peter MacKay, Rick Peterson, and Marilyn Gladu, also ran ads pushing their opposition to the protests.
Coastal GasLink behind half of ad buys
By far, the most prolific online advertiser on the Coastal GasLink pipeline project is Coastal GasLink itself - which is building the 670-kilometre pipeline that will connect wells in British Columbia to the coast. It has run 80 ads since the start of the year - almost a quarter of all the ads in the data obtained by CBC. It spent roughly $50,000 on ads citing Indigenous support for the pipeline - almost half of all the money spent on Facebook ads about the project and the blockades. But in other cases, it's not always clear when an entity running online ads about the pipeline or the protests is funded or otherwise supported by the oil and gas industry.
Canada's Energy Citizens is a Facebook page that bills itself "a movement of Canadians who support Canada's oil and natural gas industry." It's run by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers; the ads the page ran mentioned that they were paid for by Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
The second biggest online spender was Canada Action [local copy], a group founded by Calgary realtor Cody Battershill in 2014. As with Coastal GasLink's ads, Canada Action's ads focus on the Wet'suwet'en members who want the pipeline built. Though it describes itself as a grassroots organization, Canada Action - known for its "I love Canadian Gas & Oil" merchandise - has multiple ties to the energy sector.
Lynn Exner [local copy] of Canada Action said the group does accept funding from oil and gas companies, but also from mining companies, farmers, forestry companies and Indigenous groups. "We are Canada's only grassroots group that supports resource workers," Lynn Exner said. "We accept funding from people who are aligned with our values, but don't have our values mandated by funders." She added that Canada Action didn't receive any funding from Coastal GasLink or LNG Canada, which is also pushing for the new pipeline.
Most of the Facebook ads against the rail blockades were run by pages with clear connections to the energy industry. [Source]
The organization Debunk Inc. [Facebook page | Canada Corporate Directory summary; local copy] - which spent about $800 on two Facebook ads - describes itself as a "group of people that believe in supporting the issues that matter most to Canadians," and says it pushes back at disinformation about the oil sector in mainstream media. Debunk Inc.'s Debunk Inc.">website denies it is an oil industry-funded group, claiming it has received contributions from Canadian citizens and from various industries.
Canada Action was one of the main partners of the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary in 2019. This photo was posted by Global Energy Show on its Facebook page. [Source]
During the 2019 federal election, Canada Strong and Proudreceived $240,500 from the Manning Centre, a conservativethink tank [policy institute]. Some of its election campaign messaging was devoted to promoting the Canadian oil and gas sector. "Obviously as a western-based organization, I think some of the pro-energy messages resonate with Manning Centre supporters," the think tank's president, Troy Lanigan [see: Canada Strong and Free Network], said in an interview with CBC last year [2019-10-03].
The practice of funnelling corporate messaging through apparently grassroots organizations - known as "astroturfing" - is nothing new, said Fenwick McKelvey [local copy], Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University. But social media platforms' lack of clear policies makes it easy for companies to "mimic" the work of grassroots movements, he said. "These campaigns come out of nowhere and are playing up their supposed legitimacy, when it's really industrial funding," he said.
Fenwick McKelvey said that while the ads purchased by Canada's Energy Citizens run under the label "paid for by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers," many advertisers aren't so transparent. "What you see here is an example of monied interests being able to exploit simple loopholes and basically being able to buy seeming public legitimacy for a time, at least until people call them out on it," he said.
Franziska Keller said it can be tricky to determine if an online message is coming from a genuine person or is part of a coordinated astroturfing effort. "Social media makes it so much easier to go online and maybe open up multiple accounts and pretend to be multiple people who are all in favour or against something," said Keller. "I think there's a tendency still, among politicians especially ... even among journalists to some degree ... to look at the internet and go, 'Oh well, there we are, this is what the people want.'"
The Canadian Competition Bureaudefinesastroturfing as "the practice of creating commercial representations that masquerade as the authentic experiences and opinions of impartial consumers, such as fake consumer reviews and fake testimonials."
The Canadian Competition Bureau did not want to comment on whether any of the ads examined by CBC could be considered astroturfing. "It would not be appropriate for the Competition Bureau to speculate as to whether the precise behaviour you describe would raise preoccupations in the eyes of the law, since only an exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the facts would permit us to arrive at such a conclusion," said Jean-Philippe Lepage [local copy], media relations adviser [local copy] at the Competition Bureau.
Fewer pro-blockade ads
Facebook ads in support of the Indigenous protesters have been more rare than ads opposing them, and spending on those ads has been lower overall. Only 41 ads out of the 330 identified by CBC support the blockades.
In all, the organizations behind the ads supporting the protests spent about $3,000 on them - just 2 per cent of the sum spent by their ideological opponents. The Canadian Council of Muslim Women was the biggest spender in this category, dropping $750 to run five ads supporting the protests. These were shown to Canadians on Facebook about 130,000 times.
CBC downloaded all the ads in the Facebook Ad Library API shown to Canadian users. To find ads about the rail blockades, CBC isolated political ads since 2020-01-01 that contained the following keywords: Wet'suwet'en (with and without apostrophes), Coastal GasLink, blockade, hereditary chief, blocus, blocage, the hashtag #ShutDownCanada and phrases like "clear the tracks", "rule of law" and "illegal protest."
In total, the CBC collected 333 ads between 2020-01-01 and 2020-03-02. CBC journalists classified the ads as being in favour of, against or neutral on the rail blockades. Facebook does not provide the exact amount spent on each ad or the number of ad views - only a range of values. CBC used the median of the given range to estimate the total numbers per advertiser.
