So many self-inflicted wounds, so few allies. Alberta's energy war room was long doomed

It was never really the war room that former Alberta premier Jason Kenney dreamed of.

And even if it had turned out that way, it's not clear it would have worked any better than the pro-oil entity his UCP government actually wound up creating.

Either way, the Canadian Energy Centre never seemed to reach its promised potential. And this week Premier Danielle Smith abandoned the idea, dissolving the organization into her own government, making it a lesser tool in her own fight on behalf of the oil and gas sector.

Kenney, at a 2018 gathering of his United Conservative Party, pledged a «fully staffed rapid-response war room in government to quickly and effectively rebut every lie told by the green left about our world-class energy industry.»

That line worked well in a room full of pro-oil partisans who felt their province's main industry under siege. And it surely felt familiar to Kenney himself, who'd spend so many federal elections in the Conservative Party war room, pumping out attack after counter-attack against the Liberals, NDP or any other would-be threat to his own faction.

Un-declaring war

After Kenney was elected premier in 2019, his team quickly realized that electoral skirmishes and industry advocacy didn't quite work the same way.

The «war room» title would have to go, in favour of the more genial-sounding Canadian Energy Centre, even if detractors never abandoned the combative term which Kenney used at its conception.

The «rapid response» element remained the provocative part of its initial mission, but only part, along with teams focused on research and «energy literacy.» And while Kenney pitched it as a $30-million-a-year operation that would outduel the climate-activist PR machine, it instead became notorious for