In mid-September, Ralph Klein’s Alberta government launched a massive advertising campaign against Canadian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The government estimates that the campaign will cost Alberta taxpayers $1.5 million dollars.

According to Alberta Environment Minister Lorne Taylor, "the campaign is aimed at providing Albertans with the facts about the Kyoto Protocol and its potential impact on the province and the rest of the country."

Amongst the claims made in the advertising, which includes print, television and radio, are that Kyoto will cost Canada 450,000 jobs, lead to an increase in income taxes, and cause investment to "flee" the province.

Critics, however, accuse the Alberta government of wasting taxpayer money. New Democrat Opposition Leader Raj Pannu says the campaign is full of exaggeration and errors, calling it "a propaganda campaign pure and simple."

Alberta Liberal Leader Ken Nicol agrees, saying the money could be better spent on consumer education on reducing energy consumption.

Nicol also accused the government of seriously underestimating the cost of the campaign, referring to a "leaked document acknowledging at least $2.2 million in costs," and estimating the true tab to be closer to $3 million.

While Taylor insists the campaign presents "clear facts on exactly what the costs of this agreement will be," many of the claims, which are based primarily on a report issued by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, an anti-Kyoto industry lobby, have been discredited by other research as factually incorrect or misleading.

Dale Marshall, a researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives who has studied the economic impacts of Kyoto, calls the CME numbers "completely misleading and baseless."

Marshall points out that their numbers assume an impossible worst-case scenario which has already been rejected by the Federal government and considers only losses from action on climate change, but not gains created from continued growth in the economy.

"Even when applying these distortions and omissions, it is still impossible to determine how the CME derived its estimates," says Marshall.

While the Alberta government originally planned for a national anti-Kyoto campaign in the fall, Klein says that he has dropped the idea after focus groups in Toronto showed that the campaign would be seen as self-serving in other parts of Canada.