No one claims the Facebook page, but it’s paying thousands to promote oil and gas

A new anonymous group on the East Coast is pushing people in the region to sign a petition that claims to support Canadian energy in Atlantic Canada — but is actually shilling only for oil and gas.

While the petition’s title is generic, its statements promote fossil fuel production and make no mention of clean energy initiatives like wind, solar or even hydro.

“Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, but millions of barrels are imported into Atlantic Canada every year. Sign this petition to show your support for powering Atlantic Canadians’ lives with Canadian energy and no longer sending billions of dollars overseas,” reads the petition's description. 

“We should power our economy with Canadian oil from Newfoundland and the Prairies. Canadian oil and gas support 27,000 jobs in Atlantic Canada. That’s tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and we have the potential for many more.”

The group – Atlantic Prosperity – created its Facebook page in May 2024 and doesn’t show any organizers or employees. Canada’s National Observer has attempted to reach the group via phone, email and social media, but did not receive a response.

Atlantic Prosperity has spent about $23,000 on Facebook ads and has reached between 250,000 and 300,000 people with their most recent ad. Launched on Sept. 18, their current ads cost between $4,000 and $4,500. Canada’s National Observer used Meta’s Ad Library to see how much the group has spent on advertising.

The group is also running Google ads, some of which appear on the CBC’s website.

It’s one recent example of an ongoing trend in Canadian information ecosystems in the social media age: well-funded, ostensibly grassroots groups that pop up out of nowhere to spread messages that align perfectly with industry talking points. Experts call the trend “problematic” and are calling for rules to force transparency.

Atlantic Prosperity’s petition and ad push is one of a number of campaigns drumming up support for fossil fuels via social media in other parts of Canada, notes Angela Carter, a Canada Research Chair and associate professor of political science at Memorial University in N.L. 

It fits into a “problematic” theme of anonymous groups “claiming the benefits of oil development,” notes Carter. “Very often these are front groups for oil companies or people who are closely affiliated with oil companies,” she said.

Meanwhile, these groups “don’t need to suffer any fact checking or any sort of context,” said Shane Gunster, a professor of communication at Simon Fraser University who studies online misinformation. The approach is effective, he said, because supporters who find the information online will typically regurgitate it on their social networks and via word of mouth, both effective forms of message distribution.

Carter adds the claims made by Atlantic Prosperity are harmful and – in the case of its statement about jobs – false. While the group says the fossil fuel industry supports 27,000 jobs in Atlantic Canada, Statistic Canada’s most recent Labour Force Survey from July 2024 notes only 12,556 people in Atlantic Canada were employed by the oil and gas industry.

“Employment in the oil sector is on the decline, even while production is increasing because the oil sector is trying to shed labour costs as they automate and find other ways of being able to produce the oil more cheaply,” Carter notes.

“This has been a long-standing trend right across the country, and as we look forward, given global energy trends that are unfolding right now, we know that the future of the oil sector is very precarious, and so that means jobs are very precarious in this sector.”

They also cherry-pick positive or neutral stories about offshore oil in Newfoundland to highlight on their website, said Carter; one example is a brief optimistic story about an ExxonMobil Canada offshore oil exploratory well called Persephone. However, the site has so far ignored last week’s news where ExxonMobil Canada announced there is “no evidence of hydrocarbons” at the Persephone exploration well, which the company had hoped would unlock billions of barrels of oil off the coast of N.L.  

Another prime example concerns Bay du Nord, Canada’s would-be first deepwater offshore oil project, which is currently on hold for up to three years partly due to cost increases. On the group’s news section of its website, it lists only positive headlines about Bay du Nord: Bay du Nord’s Potential Surges to more than a billion barrels; Local Economy, Oil Industry optimistic as Equinor signals intention to move forward with Bay du Nord Project and more. Meanwhile, recent exploration efforts to bolster Bay du Nord’s business case have failed, and experts stress that N.L.’s lofty goal of doubling offshore oil by the end of the decade is questionable due to economic and environmental pressures.

Oil and gas groups on social media

The group is one of a handful of oil and gas-associated groups that rely on social media as a form of advertising and who have benefited from the lack of rules and standards on sites like Facebook, explains Gunster.

“People might not believe this stuff… if it comes with a big oil company logo on it,” he said.

“But it's material that's fairly generic like this, and it's given to them or shared with them by a friend, then it's likely that they're going to say, ‘oh, okay, you know, this makes sense.’”

Groups like Atlantic Prosperity have been generally effective over the past decade in creating communities where supporters gather to adopt talking points and a narrative about the importance of the oil and gas industry, to Canadian well being, Canadian prosperity, Canadian identity which appeals to people in the industry and people who hold conservative political values.

He points to Ontario Proud and offshoots like BC Proud as other examples of groups with populist messages, but who specifically push to get provincial and federal Conservative governments elected. Voice for Energy is another comparable effort: the group bills itself as a platform for Canadians to "speak up" against municipalities implementing measures to reduce or ban natural gas to "protect" peoples’ so-called "energy choice."

These groups push their messages anonymously, and the players behind them are often revealed by investigative journalists. In 2022, Canada’s National Observer found that ads run by dozens of supposedly grassroots Facebook pages are linked to Canada Proud, a right-wing political influence group founded by Jeff Ballingall in 2019, and his Toronto-based strategic communications company Mobilize Media Group. Specifically, the investigation connected Angelo Isidorou, now the B.C. Conservatives’ executive director, to the groups via corporate filings.

Because targeting each group individually resembles a game of whack-a-mole, Gunster said Canada needs more stringent rules for the social media platforms that allow these groups to flourish. 

“We need transparency around this…it contributes to a really problematic communications ecosystem when there's no transparency — when groups can just start something, we have no idea where the money comes from,” said Gunster.

-With files from Marc Fawcett-Atkinson