Meanwhile, Jenny Uechi from The Vancouver Observer has got a response from Minister Clement's office re the fact that the Ethical Oil Institute is using his old mailing address:
Tony Clement's communications director Jennifer Gearey called to say that it was "sheer coincidence", asking if living in the same house as a previous tenant indicated a connection between the residents. She requested the story to be taken down.
Uechi goes on to quote one Ian McGugan, a Vancouver based "analyst":
"The balance of probabilities makes me think that the P.O. box [shared by Ethical Oil and Tony Clement] is still under the control of the Ontario PC party."
McGugan probably thinks this because, if you google the toll-free number linked to Clement's old mailing address--1-866-257-4499--you find it linked to Ontario PC stuff going back for years.
Also, I found this interesting bit from an earlier DC post:
It turns out the Ethical Oil Institute was a “birdie” sponsor of this year’s Kinnear Classic celebrity golf tournament, an annual fundraising event in support of the Calgary Health Trust.
Ethical Oil launched in late June 2011, but even from the get-go they had the $8,000 on hand to send four golfers off to a golf tourney for Alta. lobby groups. That's what a "birdie" sponsor costs (see page 10 of the .pdf).
Question: Is Ethical Oil the fakest of fake "grassroots" groups in the history of fake grassroots groups?
7 comments:
This is such a big story for so many reasons. It will reverberate for a long time to come. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting, BCL.
Excellent work, BCL. Dare I dream that this will backfire big time with respect to the current Joint Review Process for the pipeline? Harper and his minions have just blown any cover of government impartiality out the window.
Christ on a crutch...
Do you naive fools not yet realize that just because something is demonstrably so does not mean it will automatically be featured on all national news sources?
Did you catch this
Ha! This satirical tweeter calls it a gasroutes organization!
https://twitter.com/#!/ethicaloil/status/157997408117207041
Just for interests sake, the location is a Canada Post Operation so who knows who else has a box there without being linked to Clement or ethical tar? (h/t commenter Jim at Dawgs)
The telephone number could be interesting tho'
Interesting comments at Deep Climate about a bunch of fake facebook pages for Northern BC towns appearing last fall:
http://deepclimate.org/2012/01/13/ethical-oil-political-connections-part-1-conservatives-go-newclear/#comment-10815
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