Canada's high-powered energy advocates Too bad it doesn't have a national energy policy yet: former diplomat By Carl Meyer Published August 4, 2010

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Sam Garcia, Embassy

Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, was at a recent energy roundtable in Denver.

On July 28, a major roundtable on energy in the Americas met in Denver, in a large opera house. Roughly 1500 people watched the participants discuss the future of continental energy. On stage was Canada's ambassador to the US, Gary Doer.

It wasn't Mr. Doer's first roundtable with the organizers, as he participated in another on March 12. It also wasn't his first appearance in front of the players, as he had already given a luncheon speech to a number of the panel participants.

But what is most interesting is what Mr. Doer was expected to discuss at the roundtable: the oil sands. As a man in the know, Mr. Doer was sought after to provide an insider's view of the emerging energy picture on the continent. The Americas Roundtables president Jim Polsfut said it was an easy choice. "Obviously—the largest supplier of oil to the United States is Canada," he said.

Mr. Doer might have been there to have other sideline meetings as well. After all, Colorado's biggest oil and gas company is Calgary-based Encana, which can lay claim to major reserves in the state, says Rocky Mountain Institute's Robert Hutchinson, who moderated the Denver talks. And Colorado's governor Bill Ritter has a plan to increase demand and encourage more drilling.

But Denver was only one of a galaxy of recent talks on climate change and energy that are bringing all the players together. While international talks on climate change have stalled, and controversy surrounding the energy sector is ramping up—from the oil sands, to the BP oil spill, to the Enbridge oil spill, to the pipeline extension to Texas—interaction is increasing rapidly but quietly.

In fact, some suggest that the energy file is by far the biggest issue that the Canadian-US diplomatic network deals with, and consumes the most personnel and resources. Some point to major conferences hosted by the embassy, such as a June 22 meeting on "greening the oil sands" that was so big it had to be relocated to the Washington Four Seasons. That meeting was sponsored by major oil corporations as well as the Government of Alberta and featured, among others, Mr. Doer.

The federal government is not overly vocal about this networking. Queries to the Washington embassy were referred to the Department of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Doer's comments in his Denver appearance were not divulged. A departmental spokesperson would not confirm the specific number of employees currently working on energy files.

"What I can tell you is that numerous employees in the Canadian Embassy's Washington Advocacy Secretariat, which includes the Province of Alberta's office, are engaged in various aspects of energy advocacy, as is the Ambassador and other sections within the Embassy," wrote the spokesperson in an email.

"Given the importance of the Canada-US energy relationship, energy advocacy also extends well beyond the Embassy to regional and local levels through our network of 22 offices across the US....[but] a specific number [of employees] is not available."

But former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson, who has met with some of the players recently, says Canada has an emerging dream team for energy advocacy.

The challenge has been that there is no national energy policy, he says, and it is difficult to get the provinces and the federal government all in sync.

"We've got all the pieces in Canada. We've actually got both the capacity and certainly the energy supplies, and we've got the diversity, everything from uranium to oil and gas. [The government] understands that," said Mr. Robertson, who recently penned an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail calling for Canada to "play the energy card."

The dream team is headed by Mr. Doer, who as the former premier of Manitoba has extensive experience in that province's electrical sector. It also includes Gary Mar, Alberta's representative at the embassy who often promotes oil sands; Marc Lepage, the embassy's special advisor on climate change and energy, who was a former consul general in San Fransisco; and David Fransen, the Los Angeles consul general, who has worked in the Privy Council as a senior officer for environmental policy.

"We're working together much better than I think we did in the past, because we have to. There was this period where we didn't. I think Copenhagen was kind of a low point. But people are saying we have to go forward," said Mr. Robertson.

There are other major players in the picture, such as Environment Minister Jim Prentice, a former Industry minister who has made several trips to Washington recently; British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell, who signed on to California's Western Climate Initiative, becoming the first international partner to do so (since then, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have joined, and Saskatchewan has observer status), as well as US heads of departments in the White House and across the US governmental system.

The players regularly meet with US congressional delegates, as well as make contact with industry representatives and think tank leaders, who are organizing with increasing rapidity. For example, in October, ten big think tanks gathered in Winnipeg to hammer out some sort of progress on reaching a national dialogue. What was noticable about the meeting was that it brought together the odd assortment of policy wonks, business-focused researchers and environmental NGOs, all with the same objective—more collaboration.

Then in April, sixty movers and shakers of the energy world met in Banff, including representatives from banks, traditional energy producers, renewable energy producers, business councils, public policy NGOs, environment NGOs, universities, consulting firms, provincial corporations, and others. The group emerged with the notion that a national strategy is clearly needed.

Hosting the Banff meeting was another key player, Bruce Carson. A former PC Hill staffer who spent decades as a political aide before working as a senior adviser to Prime Miniser Stephen Harper, he left government following the most recent election to head up the Canada School of Energy and the Environment in Edmonton, a research collaboration between the three main Alberta universities. A Conservative strategist once told the Hill Times Mr. Carson was "probably the most strategic mind" in the PMO.

At the end of that month, the first "greening the oil sands" meeting was held in Ottawa, which would lead to the second meeting at the Four Seasons in June. Then in July, the first-ever "Clean Energy Ministerial" in Washington, an international event featuring ministers and delegates from dozens of countries, included, among others, Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis.

But Mr. Hutchinson disagreed that there was an emerging energy consensus.

As former industry observer, who spent decades at the well-known Boston Consulting Group and more recently as a clean technology venture capitalist, he said there was a long way to go/

"When we say 'energy' it tends to be the supply industry, not the demand industry. At the moment, the demand industry is getting more air time at the federal level than the supply," he said.

He felt that the Denver talks were a good platform for Mr. Doer to get outside the beltway, but felt that it will take a whole lot more talking in order to see something clearer emerge.

cmeyer@embassymag.ca