‘We’ve been given opportunities to write entire briefing notes for ministers and premiers and prime ministers,’ Liam Iliffe told attendees at a TC Energy ‘lunch and learn’ session
OTTAWA — A TC Energy executive and former senior B.C. NDP political staffer has resigned after a video surfaced of him appearing to discuss covert efforts the energy giant allegedly uses to push Canadian governments toward approving liquified natural gas projects .
Planting company staff in events to ask politicians public questions, ghostwriting briefing notes for bureaucrats to give to cabinet ministers, and even an encounter with a top government official in a supermarket produce section are just some of the influence tactics shared by TC Energy’s former B.C. director of operations Liam Iliffe in the internal company presentation in March. Iliffe had previously been a chief of staff in NDP premier John Horgan’s NDP government.
Iliffe resigned from the position on June 17 after video of his comments was obtained by a reporter. In a statement, Iliffe said “some” of the comments he made were “in the moment” and noted that the events and approaches he laid out in detail during the talk “did not occur.”
National Post reviewed two videos from TC Energy’s “lunch and learn” sessions in February and March 2024.
The Feb. 22, 2024, meeting offered an overview of the company’s external relations and featured presentations by top company executives to dozens of members of TC Energy’s Canada, U.S. and Mexican offices.
The March 28, 2024, “lunch and learn” was a presentation by Iliffe to a small number of people in TC Energy’s Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa offices.
Iliffe’s presentation in particular offers an unfiltered glance into how the energy giant purportedly works to influence governments to adopt more favourable positions on liquified natural gas (LNG).
He claims in the video that the company’s efforts “dramatically” influenced B.C.’s carbon-tax rate adjustment in February 2023 and ultimately halved the operation costs of the province’s carbon tax on its projects.
TC Energy senior vice president of external relations Patrick Muttart said many of Iliffe’s claims were either “exaggerated,” “untrue” or “completely unbelievable,” but would not specify which ones he meant specifically.
You have a lot of … public servants who are overworked, underpaid, and sometimes they just want the job done for them
Liam Iliffe in his presentation
Muttart said that he found out about Iliffe’s comments after he learned that the video had leaked and took “immediate action”.
“The moment I found out about his comments, he took accountability, we took accountability, he is no longer with the company,” said Muttart, who formerly worked as a deputy chief of staff to then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.
TC Energy, formerly TransCanada Corporation, is a multinational pipeline company based in Calgary, Alta. with operations across North America.
In recent years, the company has struggled to move some of its biggest infrastructure projects forward, notably the Keystone XL pipeline expansion into the U.S., which was cancelled by the Biden administration, and the Energy East oil pipeline proposal, aborted in 2017 in the face of political opposition in Canada.
It has also faced headwinds in getting political approval in Canada for its LNG projects, although the tide began changing in the last two years, particularly in terms of the B.C. and federal governments.
Environmental groups remain largely opposed to LNG development and have called on B.C. Premier David Eby to pause any LNG approvals. In March, Eby’s government granted approval for a proposed floating LNG facility, Cedar LNG, that has involvement from First Nations in northern B.C.
Some of the activities Iliffe describes in the video seem to fall into regular lobbying or media relations activities, but others appear to cross into more questionable territory.
“My intent was to emphasize the importance of local relationships TC Energy builds in support of projects and operations,” he said in a statement to National Post.
“As someone who has served in Government, it would be remiss of me to suggest that anyone other than our elected representatives make decisions on behalf of British Columbians,” he said.
Iliffe did not respond to questions as to which events and approaches specifically he said in his Tuesday statement did not occur.
But during his March talk, he sometimes went into detail and even referred to specific “case studies” about how his team had worked to change government policy on LNG.
None of the “lunch and learn” attendees, which included other senior Canadian company leaders, challenged Illife’s comments during his presentation or afterwards in a question-and-answer period.
In one case, Illife said his team had more than once drafted entire briefing notes for a bureaucrat, which were then provided to a politician as if produced by the public service.
“A really interesting thing about government is that you have a lot of … public servants who are overworked, underpaid, and sometimes they just want the job done for them,” he told attendees.
“We’ve been given opportunities to write entire briefing notes for ministers and premiers and prime ministers. And it gets stuck on government letterhead and put into an envelope into a briefing package that goes to that elected figure. There’s nothing more powerful than that,” he explained.
He did not mention which governments, briefing notes or bureaucrats he was referring to, nor when this had occurred.
He also explained how he and his team planted staff members at consecutive public events featuring a political “key leader” to consistently ask the same question, with the goal of putting an issue on the government radar or subtly push for a policy change.
“We placed members of our staff in rooms, and we continue to do this to ask questions of key leaders when they are speaking at events,” he said.
He said that his team had a number of “ground-game guerilla tactics” to ensure their question was put to the speaker, including taking advantage of a digital meeting platform that allows attendees to vote for questions to be asked. He detailed one case where he managed to game 160 votes for a question at an event where only 70 people attended.
At the produce section of Costco? No, that doesn’t happen in the real world
At another point, he described a chance encounters with a “significant minister or a bureaucrat” in a Costco “next to the strawberries and romaine lettuce” that allowed him to share the company’s message.
Muttart said the Costco claim was ridiculous.
“I mean, come on. At the produce section of Costco? No, that doesn’t happen in the real world,” he said, adding that the company has a “robust” lobbying framework and ensures that its lobbyists are registered in the appropriate jurisdictions.
Asked if he could guarantee the behaviours described by Illife would not occur at TC Energy in the future, Muttart demurred.
“I don’t like these yes-or-no type of questions,” he said. “We operate within a very robust compliance framework. We follow the letter of the law, we follow the spirit of law, we report our lobbying engagements.”
“I cannot stress enough the importance of opposition research. We were able to launch campaigns, block and tackle campaigns, mute opposition voices because we have an extraordinary and growing team that that really focuses on opposition research,” he said.
Other tactics revealed in the videos seem to align with more traditional corporate communications campaigns.
The editorial denounced the Biden administration’s moratorium on U.S. natural gas export applications, referred to internally at TC Energy as an LNG “pause”.
“I wouldn’t say this much outside the walls of the TC tower, but this editorial wouldn’t have happened without our involvement,” Evanoff said.
Iliffe also discussed the success of the company’s “Canadian LNG” online campaigns to promote its projects or counter its opponents’ messaging, including during the LNG2023 conference in British Columbia and protests against the company’s pipeline projects in Toronto and Ottawa in the fall of 2023.
“The reason that (protestors) chose that area is because that’s where our financiers are,” he said. He said the company launched a “geo-fenced” ad campaign around the protest areas in Toronto and Ottawa to ensure it got its message out to both its financiers and media covering the events.
“Remarkably effective,” Iliffe said. “It really actually did drive some more positive news stories, or at least added balance and in a lot of times, balance is a win.”
“We have had opportunities to shape stories, place stories, develop positive stories, and in some instances, as a corporation, shut stories down, negative stories that were either not true or really, really, really harmed us in some way that was irreparable,” he told attendees.
Illife described multiple strategies used to influence the Eby government in B.C. to approve certain LNG projects, including enlisting Canadian ambassadors oversees to share TC Energy’s message with the premier when he travelled across Asia in 2023.
“We know that premiers, when they go to countries, have dinner with ambassadors. That’s one-on-one period of time that an ambassador can deliver our message,” he said, claiming that meeting with certain ambassadors who delivered “pro-LNG messages” had softened Eby’s former skepticism of LNG.
“It was a marked shift in language when (Eby) came home,” he said.
Muttart confirmed TC Energy had moved “beyond simply engaging domestic politicians” and was spreading its message to diplomats.
“We are informing, educating and engaging with not just Canadian diplomats but other diplomats representing other countries,” he said.
A spokesperson for B.C.’s Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists declined to comment on the claims made by Illife.
National Post
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