Canadian Geographic denies oil lobbyist influenced its educational materials

Canadian Geographic magazine, run by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, denies it has allowed the energy industry to interfere in the content of its educational materials that reach thousands of students across Canada.

“The society has never relinquished control of and pride of authorship in the content of Canadian Geographic and the educational resources created by Canadian Geographic Education,” the organization said in a statement Wednesday.

The comments were in response to a new investigation that charged CanGeo allowed representatives from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) to edit parts of its Energy IQ program, which is available online and distributed free to 13,000 public school teachers.

Calgary-based CAPP lobbies for the natural gas and oil sectors, and says its 90-plus members account for about 90 per cent of the industry in Canada and generate revenues of about $120 billion a year.

“We enable the responsible growth of our industry and advocate for economic competitiveness and safe, environmentally and socially responsible performance,” the group says on its website.

CAPP’s logo does appear on the Energy IQ site.

Journalist Jesse Brown, who hosts the Canadaland podcast and website, found documents showing a series of articles in the Energy Mix Library section of the program were marked up by a CAPP employee — edits that could be construed as showing the industry in a more favourable light, such as removing the controversial terms “tar sands” and “clearcut.”

An intern who worked on the articles told Brown he felt all along something was amiss.

“Everyone knew it was wrong but everyone had their reasons to ignore it,” Jimmy Thomson said in Brown’s article, published Wednesday.

A CAPP spokeswoman reiterated to Yahoo Canada News on Wednesday that the industry group is not responsible for creating the content of Energy IQ, only for reviewing it for accuracy.

“When CanGeo was developing this content, they sent us documents to fact-check. We didn’t have control over the curriculum,” Chelsie Klassen said.

Klassen said CAPP uses terminology consistent with the Alberta government’s – like the term “oilsands” – and with its own members’.

“A lot of our info that we collect and give out as data points is taken from many of our producers. We’re using terms that we use in our language every day,” she said.

Energy IQ has drawn fire since its creation for its close ties to the energy industry.

In November 2013, a coalition of environmental groups and students complained in an open letter posted on the PowerShift website of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.

“The unfortunate reality is that by associating yourself with CAPP, you have reinforced a biased view that downplays and ignores facts about climate change, First Nations rights, community impacts and economics that challenge their vision for fossil fuel expansion in Canada,” wrote the coalition, which included the Canadian Federation of Students and the Council of Canadians among its signatories. “As an educational non-profit you have a responsibility to students to present a full picture, no matter who is funding the project. Right now you are failing that responsibility, and presenting a dangerous vision of Canada’s energy future to the generation that will inherit it.”

Then, as now, both CanGeo and CAPP defended the independence of the materials.

On Wednesday, CanGeo didn’t specifically mention CAPP but said over the years it has worked with many partners that have helped it “create innovative, curriculum-linked, educational resources” and further its mandate of “making Canada better known to Canadians and to the world.”

“As one of Canada’s largest non-profit educational organizations, the Society has constantly strived to ensure that the content of Canadian Geographic magazine and of its educational resources meet the highest standards of accuracy, balance and fairness.”