Several Canadian media outlets gave prominent coverage in December to a new report arguing that exporting massive amounts of natural gas from British Columbia to Asia will be good for the global fight against climate change.

But stories in Canada’s national newspaper of record, The Globe & Mail, as well as an influential conservative outlet called The Hub, didn’t mention that one of the report’s authors worked for a lobby group that has represented some of the country’s largest oil and gas companies.

“A new report is giving fresh support to Canada’s ambition to be an energy superpower as the federal and B.C. governments push for increased exports of liquefied natural gas,” read the Globe story.

It noted that the report “stands in sharp contrast to studies from climate groups and environmental think tanks, which say the world needs to focus on renewable energy, not on fossil fuels such as LNG.”

The report was co-authored by Mark Cameron, who from 2022 to 2025 served as vice president, External Relations, with Pathways Alliance, a consortium of Canadian oil sands producers — a fact not mentioned by Globe reporter Brent Jang.

The Globe story also didn’t note that Cameron currently works as a senior associate with Bluesky Strategy Group, a lobbying firm that has counted major players in Canada’s fossil fuel sector — including Pathways, Cenovus, Pembina Pipeline and Cedar LNG — among its clients. Those clients are listed on the Bluesky site and in federal lobbying records. 

The report, which was published by Public Policy Forum and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, “reads more like an echo of industry narratives than a rigorous, independent assessment—while keeping its modelling and assumptions out of public view,” said Thomas Green of the David Suzuki Foundation, in a statement to DeSmog.

DeSmog reached out to the Globe and Mail and Cameron for comment but didn’t receive a response.

Bluesky Boasts of Connections to Media

The report rehashes an argument frequently made by oil and gas producers that exporting gas will reduce emissions worldwide because that gas will replace more polluting power sources such as coal.
 

Inez Jabalpurwala, president and CEO of the Public Policy Forum, said in a release that “the report’s conclusions counter the simplistic narrative that more oil and gas equals more emissions.

Though Cameron’s past affiliation with Pathways Alliance is mentioned in the report, his connection to Bluesky Strategy Group, where he is a senior associate, is not. Neither affiliation is mentioned in the statement accompanying the report that was published on the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s website.

Bluesky describes itself as “a leading-edge, full-service public affairs firm based in Ottawa, Canada, with national and global reach.” The group says on its website that it has close “integrated” connections to Canadian media and boasts to clients that “Our team has the reach to get your story told where it will be seen and heard.”

A week after the LNG report was published, Cameron authored a commentary in The Hub, entitled “Here’s how Canadian oil and gas can fuel global emissions reductions.”

“While more Canadian exports are not automatically ‘good for the planet,’ under the right conditions, they can lower global emissions compared with the most likely alternatives,” he argued.

The Hub also didn’t note Cameron’s connection to Bluesky. But it appears to be a valuable outlet to land for the report, boasting that “Canadians engage two million times monthly with The Hub’s content, generating over 200,000 hours of user interaction.”  

Bluesky says on its own site that “we connect clients to the right audiences, on the right platforms, whether in government, media, industry, or the public sphere.”

Dubious Climate Claims

Climate experts and advocates argue that the report significantly undercounts the climate impacts of natural gas exports.

“A Coal-to-LNG transition is being championed by fossil fuel exporters who are racing to make the last buck on LNG before the market gets flooded with oversupply,” said Emilia Belliveau, energy transition program manager with Environmental Defence, in a statement to DeSmog. “Countries transitioning off of coal and looking for energy security are better served by moving from coal directly to the clean energy technologies supplying and shaping the future like wind, solar and batteries.”
 
 Scientists, environmentalists and energy economists have been consistently warning that there’s little evidence Canadian oil or gas resources will displace fossil fuel use elsewhere and that continued production of fossil fuels will exacerbate climate change and delay transition to renewables. Some liquid natural gas (LNG) projects in Canada are expected to be so carbon intensive they’ve been called ‘carbon bombs’.

DeSmog reached out to Rewa Mourad, strategic communications specialist with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, as well as Alison Uncles, vice president of media and communications with the Public Policy Forum, with questions about the report. Mourad did not reply, while a spokesperson for the Public Policy Forum told DeSmog the group is fully transparent about Cameron’s role and experience.

Steven Haig, a policy advisor for IISD’s Energy Program, whose work focuses on oil and gas policy in Canada, is also unconvinced by the report’s conclusions.

“We’re unlikely to see a widespread global transition from coal to Canadian LNG,” he wrote in a statement to DeSmog.