Rethink Alberta, indeed: Why smear video won't work

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There's something oddly satisfying about being the victim of a smear campaign. It means you're on someone's radar screen - and often that's better than not being on any screen at all.

Alberta has recently had the pleasure of being such a victim. The Rethink Alberta campaign, a scheme of a U.S. environmental group called Corporate Ethics, is an ugly, graphic video targeting the province's oil sands and urging American tourists to boycott Alberta. It's full of errors and misleading information. But many Albertans fear the loss of valuable tourist dollars.

They needn't worry. This smear campaign won't work.

The reason has to do with demographics. Americans, like everyone else, can be roughly divided into three schools of thought on the environment: those gravely concerned about the impact of carbon emissions and human activity on the planet; those who don't believe in the threat of global warming; and those who are uncertain or just don't care.

The Rethink Alberta campaign will do an excellent job in convincing those very concerned about the environment, but not the other two groups. Unfortunately for Corporate Ethics, those concerned about the environment are not coming to Alberta anyway.

In 2008, there were 828,000 U.S. overnight visits to Alberta. About 350,000 came for pleasure, and 240,000 for business. Assuming the business travellers really had no choice, that leaves a mere 588,000 visitors who willingly came to Alberta - or about 0.2 per cent of all Americans who could potentially boycott the province.

As well, almost all of the U.S. visitors came from four states: Texas, Washington, California and Montana - hardly hotbeds of environmental enlightenment. California may harbour a few more anti-oil sands folks than Texas, but they should be embarrassed enough by their own oil industry. Besides, California's unemployment rate is 12 per cent, so they're probably not taking holidays anyway.

The 350,000 leisure travellers come in gas-guzzling 40-foot motor homes. They come to hunt and fish, and they come to the Calgary Stampede. Some come to ski or golf, and some come to shop at the West Edmonton Mall.

But these are not the kinds of people who are motivated enough by environmental videos to alter their lifestyles. You don't drive a giant motor home from Texas to Alberta if you fret about the impact of carbon on our planet.

This isn't to disrespect our American friends who do choose to visit Alberta. Most of them are intelligent, articulate and wealthy. They're concerned about a lot of things, including their families, their quality of life and the kind of America they want to leave to future generations. They are politically active and engaged in community life. But, in general, carbon emissions and global warming are not high on the things that keep them up at night.

There is, of course, a middle ground of Americans uncertain about the impact human activity is having on the planet. The smear campaign video may dissuade some of these folks from coming to Alberta, but, as the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad publicity. For most Americans - be they believers, non-believers or undecided on global warming - Alberta isn't on their radar screens anyway. The fact that Alberta is being talked about at all south of the border is news.

On top of that, the smear video has spurred the provincial government to (quite rightly) retaliate with its own debunking campaign. This counter-campaign represents provincial government spending in addition to the usual budget allocated to promote tourism in Alberta.

The message of this smear campaign will be ineffective simply because the target audience doesn't really care that much. If the Corporate Ethics folks really want to do damage to Alberta's tourism industry, they'd be better off with a campaign that reads like this: "Don't go to Alberta. They support public health care. They strongly restrict guns. And they allow gay marriage." Not only would these points resonate more strongly with Texans and Montanans, they're also true.

Todd Hirsch is a Calgary-based senior economist at ATB Financial. The opinions are his own.