If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter, the latest attempt by the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns to get its long-overdue report in by July 30 surely looks familiar. You probably didn’t get four extensions and an extra million dollars for your work back in the day. But it’s hard to miss the stink of desperation coming from commissioner Steve Allan’s inquiry as it tries to spin the conspiracy straw it was handed into political gold — and get a passing grade from Premier Jason Kenney.

Even with such a generous marker, it’s clear this isn’t going to be the A-plus work some were hoping. The Allan Inquiry won’t reveal any grand conspiracy to land-lock Alberta’s oil, much less one that’s being funded by American commercial interests. Instead, it will show something far less controversial: that international environmental organizations and interests invested some of their funds in Alberta, a province with huge reserves of oil and huge problems getting them to market.

Those funds pale in comparison to the money raised right here in Canada, and barring that U.S. cash from crossing the border wouldn’t have changed a thing when it comes to pipeline projects and the resistance mounted against them. These organizations were simply trying to maximize the return on their environmental investment, just as the oil companies routinely do when they drill in different parts of the world.

As with

most last-minute efforts, the Allan Inquiry’s report seems much more about reverse-engineering a conclusion than actually digging into the evidence. Those who have seen it already say the supporting “research” apparently consists of Google searches, social media screenshots and a few half-hearted attempts to actually talk to the people it was tasked with investigating — or, in some cases, no effort at all.

“At no point did Allan interview our staff or any other witnesses that we know of,” Dogwood, a B.C.-based organization, wrote in its formal response to the Allan Inquiry and its draft report. “There are no sworn affidavits related to Dogwood’s work or anything else that would be considered reliable evidence of the legal standard normally expected of a public inquiry.” Greenpeace’s Keith Stewart was even more withering in his criticism of Allan’s work. "If I got this as an undergrad paper,” he told the CBC, “I would ask them to resubmit or take a failure.”

Worse, the report apparently flirts with the sorts of conspiracy theories about climate change that were discredited many years ago and have now been rejected by everyone from the International Energy Agency to large oil and gas companies. The inclusion of those theories, and their validation by the commissioner of a public inquiry, suggests the current government of Alberta isn’t ready to embrace this reality.