Kathryn Marshall

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“”Look Evan, I am not going to respond to conspiracy theories, we are a small grassroots organization. (Garbled by interruptions)

—Ethical Oil Spokesperson Kathryn Marshall

For what seems like a "sure, what the heck" type of career decision, it almost seems unfair that Kathryn Marshall should have a RationalWiki entry. But maybe this single page will cause pause to those out there thinking about one day doing a deal with the devil Ezra Levant.

Background

The Ethical Oil Institute started out as a joint project by Ezra Levant and Alykhan Velshi. Kathryn Marshall was Velshi's successor at Ethical Oil. She was also married to Hamish Marshall, a former strategic planner in the Prime Minister's Office of Canada at the time (and future Rebel Media board member).

Ethical Oil spokesperson

Despite describing herself as a "student" in an interview on CBC during her role as Ethical Oil Spokesperson, Marshall was also a writer/blogger for Huffington Post Canada and a political commentator for Vancouver 24 hrs. In her Huffington Post Canada role, many of her articles began to take stances sympathetic to the views she was schlepping advocating for on behalf of Ethical Oil. In one HuffPo Canada post, she covered the hard hitting saga of Chiquita Banana boycotting oil from the Canadian Oil Sands. She even used the newly coined term "Ethical Oil" in the title of her piece to make the baffling case that by boycotting the Canadian Tar Sands, Chiquita Brands was basically supporting the Taliban. In another piece, she opined that supporting Ethical Oil was akin to supporting women's rights. Marshall was quickly taken to task for this bizarre viewpoint by fellow HuffPo Canada bloggers, but at least she was finally mentioning that she was Ethical Oil's spokesperson. Take that as a "win" for the good guys.

CBC debate with Sierra Club

All being good in the Ethical Oil world, someone (mostly likely Ezra) decided to up the ante and pit poor Kathryn in a televised debate against Sierra Club Canada executive director John Bennett. The two appeared on one of the more eminent political discussion shows in Canada, "Power and Politics with Evan Solomon" on the CBC, broadcast on January 11, 2012. Whoever thought that this was a good idea should have been fired (obviously Ezra). Turned out that Solomon didn't get the envelope stuffed full of cash that day, because during the broadcast he confronted Marshall with pointed questions about the funding sources of Ethical Oil itself, to which she repeatedly dodged and refused to answer. The result of this line of questioning was a spectacular meltdown on national Canadian television. After this extremely public debacle, a number of parody articles and videos were created by Canadians who had watched the proceedings, with the interview itself and a resulting parody video going viral on Youtube. There was even a parody twitter account created called "BitumenBarbie" to which Levant raged about on Twitter 5 years later, tweeting that senior members of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office and even Environment Canada itself were still following. Man, that's some good action!

In addition to this, Conservative Party of Canada MP Gerry Ritz decided to get in on the action, calling the Canadian Environmental Minister "Climate Barbie", until he sobered up reflected on his deed and retracted the tweet. The term itself has been used on Rebel Media in 114 pieces of crap articles. After the resulting Twitter shitstorm blowup, Ritz tweeted his retirement from political life.

Post-Ethical Oil

Marshall left her role as Ethical Oil Spokesperson shortly after this episode and moved back into the private sector. This is all and all a good thing.