The teacher’s guide for a trip to Alberta’s oil sands talks about what they’re made of, how they were formed and how many jobs they provide. There is a brief mention of finding ways to “balance” energy needs with “environment needs of our planet.”
But the guide, made by Inside Education, a long-running education charity in Alberta that creates resources for schools, mentions nothing about greenhouse gasses, emissions or climate change.
That’s a problem, said Anne Keary, co-author of the report released this week by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the climate advocacy group For Our Kids.
Inside Education is one of the groups highlighted in the report for accepting money from fossil fuel companies, though it says they don’t influence content.
Keary said similar examples exist in multiple provinces, including B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.
When it comes to teacher resources, “it’s both a matter of what they are saying and what they’re not saying,” explained the independent researcher and historian, who is active in climate advocacy in Toronto.
Environmental advocates are sounding the alarm about fossil fuel industry influence on energy, climate and environmental education in Canada’s classrooms, with a new report that cites efforts ranging from direct funding of school science fairs, field trips and school activities to sponsoring educational resource creators to partnerships developing curriculum with government.
Resources felt ‘easy-to-use, reputable,’ says teacher
Retired Alberta science teacher Tylene Appel remembers her early days as an educator, scrambling to create engaging lessons in the 1990s. She recalls being thrilled to find locally relevant, curriculum-aligned, Alberta-branded material to help her teach high schoolers about energy sources and usage.
“I felt these materials were amazing. They were so ready and easy to use,” recalled Appel.
“They really made you feel confident that the material was reputable — that it was factual and that it was evidence-based and that it was in the best interest of our students to use it.”
Over time, however, Appel — who has a background in biology, taught for more than 30 years and, after retirement, worked as a substitute teacher until spring 2024 — noticed a bias to these resources: a reliance on fossil fuels and individual action on environmental concerns rather than exploration of collective or systemic change.
When she probed further, she found ties to funding from fossil fuel companies.
Having seen funding cuts, Appel said Alberta teachers are trying to do more with less, so when they encounter educational resources that are “easy-to-use, bright and shiny” — and avoid complicated or tough discussions — these can be very appealing.
After looking deeper, Appel noticed many assignments of a certain type: suggesting students track things like personal energy usage or recycling, for instance, and encouragement on how they could improve on it.
Missing were projects exploring the bigger picture, she said, like “‘What are the health impacts of air pollution on your health?’ … ‘If wind and solar were used, how would that compare [to fossil fuels] in costs or in job creation?'”
Education researcher Ellen Field offers a quick portrait of how climate change education fares across Canadian jurisdictions, how prepared our teachers feel in offering it and whether a climate strategy is a priority for school boards.
Fossil fuel companies step in
Despite the clear evidence humans are causing climate change, primarily by burning fossil fuels, and students calling for better education about it, the subject is unevenly taught in Canadian classrooms, with only about a third of teachers confident in tackling it.
It’s against this backdrop that fossil fuel companies step in to influence what students learn — and not only in those provinces heavily tied to the industry, according to Keary
Resources offered for classrooms may reference that burning coal, oil and gas drives climate change or mention greenhouse gas emissions, she said, but downplay or distance the role of the fossil fuel industry.
Deeper discussion of renewable energy sources or transitioning away from fossil fuels is not present, Keary noted.
She also blasted fossil fuel companies sponsoring initiatives like school food gardens or tree-planting activities.
While students planting trees is wonderful, “it is a very concerning thing when the industry associates itself with tree-planting, puts its logo beside tree-planting and young people get the message that the fossil fuel industry is a supporter of tree-planting, a supporter of nature and a supporter of healthy ecosystems, when nothing could be further from the truth.”
Conflict of interest, says researcher
The report coincides with research by Emily Eaton, a University of Regina’s Geography and Environmental Studies professor who investigates the influence and impact of the fossil fuel industry on society and institutions. She was not involved with the report, but it points to some of her work.
Corporations have shifted from denial of human-caused climate change toward “climate delay,” a strategy she describes as downplaying the scale and scope of the crisis and the degree of action needed to address it.
Given a climate emergency where the fossil fuel industry is responsible for more than three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, “they have a conflict of interest in terms of presenting those ideas,” Eaton said.
“We need actually to study what the oil and gas industry is doing, in our classrooms, but we need that to happen in a way that’s independent.”
In past research, Eaton found resources spotlighting industry were regularly accessed by Saskatchewan teachers in communities heavily connected to fossil fuel companies. Though curriculum expectations might require teaching about climate change, she said, some teachers felt social pressure to include industry perspectives as a balance.
While it’s important for students to understand the science of climate change, there are other subject areas — discussions about politics and influence, for instance — that “we’re not teaching our students about,” she noted.
“How to analyze that [different] stakeholders have perspectives and interests, and how do we take those into account?”
Inside Education responds
CBC News reached out to companies named in the report — including Cenovus Energy, Suncor Energy, Imperial Oil, ConocoPhllips, MEG Energy, Enbridge Inc., TC Energy and Fortis BC — and they either declined or did not respond to requests for comment.
The report identified Inside Education, a long-running Albertan non-profit that creates environmental and natural resource material for schools, as a recipient of fossil fuel funding. It’s executive director denies being influenced by sponsors.
Inside Education provides “engaging and fact-based learning experiences that equip students with the knowledge and critical thinking skills necessary to understand topics from multiple viewpoints,” Kathryn Wagner said in a statement, which added that its sponsors also include all levels of government.
Programs are created by staff, “most of whom have degrees in education, science or both, with the advice and input of educators and content experts from a wide variety of backgrounds,” she said. They “are in no way led, approved or dictated by any of our funders or board members.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) declined to comment on the report itself, but a spokesperson touted federal funding for recent climate education efforts, including Cape Breton University research into the energy literacy of students and teachers and a Canadian Association of Science Centres and Science up First initiative to address climate change misinformation.
Keary applauds ECCC for its work on a national policy to improve environmental learning, but notes that groups it consulted with included environmental groups identified in the CAPE/FOK report as past or current recipients of funding from the fossil fuel industry, like Earth Rangers or Ducks Unlimited.
She and her colleagues want action at every level of government, and are calling on:
- The federal government to not work with groups that receive fossil fuel funding when developing climate education policy and to better support provinces in boosting climate change education.
- Provinces to ban fossil fuel promotion or partnerships in schools, dedicate funding to boosting high quality climate change education and to integrate it age-appropriately into all subjects across K-12.
- Municipalities to work with school boards to engage students in local climate action.
- School boards to establish a vetting process to keep fossil fuel-funded resources out of classes and to ban fossil fuel sponsorships.
“The very industry that is causing the climate pollution and the global warming that we’re seeing, the climate disasters that are occurring… those companies should not then be the ones generating the materials about environmental science and climate science for our students,” said Appel, the retired science teacher.