Over the past five years, I have gone though more than 100,000 pages of U.S. tax returns and traced more than 2,000 grants from U.S. foundations to environmental and First Nations groups in Canada. Most of my research is based on U.S. tax returns because the Internal Revenue Service requires greater disclosure than the Canadian Revenue Agency.
While the volunteer activists on the front lines of the Tar Sands Campaign are every bit as Canadian as I am, their big funders are not. According to U.S. tax returns and other documents, the Tar Sands Campaign is co-funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Sea Change Foundation, the Marisla Foundation and at least a dozen other foundations – most of which are based in California. These are the big green elephants that have fueled efforts to thwart the development of Canadian oil and gas for more than a decade.
By my analysis, more than a dozen U.S. foundations have granted at least US$75 million between 2009 and 2013 for initiatives that stymie the Canadian energy sector. This does not include grants for general or unspecified purposes nor for large-scale conservation initiatives that aim to put huge blocks of land off-limits to natural resource development.
So, what’s the motivation of the funders? One of the few documents that provide insights into the funding of the climate movement is a strategy paper, Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming. According to Design to Win, the overarching goal of voter and consumer education campaigns is to create a policy context for a massive shift in investment capital and a billion-dollar market for renewable energy. Without a negative foil of bad press about fossil fuels, it would be much harder to justify the billions of dollars that government has invested in solar and wind.
Small correction:
“it would be much harder for Emperor Barry to justify
the billions of dollars he has wasted on his crony
capitalist and other assorted solar/wind rent seeking
Democ-Rat Party friendly filth.
One has to wonder whether the names MAURICE STRONG or DAVID SUZUKI get woven into the “BIG BUCKS” AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS involved in Canadian affairs of OIL & PIPELINES!
“CIRCUMPOLAR TRAVELLER” STRONG punched well above his weight class during the PAUL MARTIN ERA in Canada.
AND Ontario Hydro to this very day carries a “shit load” from the same MAURICE STRONG involvement form an earlier time!
Invested? P!ssed away…
I admire the work that Vivian Krause has steadfastly pursued. She might be right that the only objective for the attack on Canadian oil production is fears of global warming. For some time I have had a bigger fear.
My concern comes from a geopolitical perspective. It is what has driven world decision making for centuries. World crude consumption is approximately 92 million bpd. The price of crude has been controlled by OPEC since the first crisis in what 1976? A 5% increase in world crude demand equals roughly 4.5 mil bpd. Non-OPEC sources of crude have been inching higher annually. Canada has the resources and the ability to produce in excess of 10 million bpd. The impact of that level of production on the industry and on the geopolitical fallout would be huge.
I suggest the following impacts of Canada becoming one of the dominant world oil producers;
1)OPEC’s political influence globally would drop even faster than it is. It’s ability to dictate pricing would become less.
2) ME countries which form the base for OPEC currently spend 100% of their oil revenue, much on social subsidies. Less oil revenue would cause domestic unrest and possibly regime change. Since these countries host Muslim jihadist elements the unrest could be global.
3) Russia: Russia is the energy supplier to Europe. Putin absolutely uses what influence that garners for his political objectives. He is trying to retain what influence Russia has in the parts of Russia that left back in the ’90’s. It cannot escape the Russian elite that Putin’s government has failed to deliver the improvement in life style that the west enjoys. At some point the Russian people will question their form of government.
As much as many Canadians condemn our economy which depends so much on resource extraction the same could be said about Russia. Russia produces roughly 14 million bpd of crude and huge amounts of natural gas. Increased Canadian production not only threaten the price they get but also threatens access. Canada claims a very large part of the Artic which has hydro carbon reserves. Russia wants access to those reserves and will contest Canadian ownership. A much richer Canada will be able to defend those claims not just militarily but also through enhanced political influence globally.
4) the USA: Has been Canada’s ally for decades yet is actively funding forces who are attempting to thwart Canada’s oil development. It initially appears counter intuitive that Americans would not welcome enhanced Canadian production as it would provide continental energy security. Again I have to consider the impact of a much more powerful Canada on the USA’s northern border. What would this threaten?
Increased Canadian oil production threatens a number of American interests;
a) OPEC fallout: USA global presence is all about economic order and the wealth that brings back to the USA. Destabilizing OPEC cost both political influence as well as potential military actions. A poorer Russia could become more erratic.
b) Artic claims: The USA has claims in the north as well as Russia and sees the same economic benefits. A richer Canada can resist those claims.
c) Continental imperialism: American money, technology and industrial production have sourced resources and enjoyed the Canadian market for 200 years. Canadians take this relationship for granted as it has benefited both countries enormously. It should never escape Canadian’s that even within a structured agreement like NAFTA that the USA has used their civil courts and State legislatures to counter any trade disputes that have arose through NAFTA. In essence NAFTA is designed primarily to benefit American industry with continued access to Canadian resources and markets. Of course the unspoken resource that the enviros do not talk about is the inevitable demand for Canadian fresh water in the USA. This will become a national security issue for the USA.
Conclusion: I apologize for this long winded essay. Truly I believe Canadians have to wake up to some global realities. Movements like the eco effort to frustrate Canadian oil development have been used in the past for political purposes. I suspect that anyone or all three of the groups above are doing just that in Canada today. Just as the Soviets used Hollywood in the ’50’s, the Saudi’s financing world Islamic revolution and the USA through the Monroe Doctrine. A Canada that produces + 10 million bpd of oil would fundamentally change the wealth and political influence of Canada globally. Funding and providing operatives to ensure Canada does not realize that goal is most certainly happening today. This money will move into the political arena in 2015 when all stops will be pulled to ensure the PM Harper is defeated.
We can rant and rave all we want about “big green elephants”, crony capitalism, geopolitical oil production manipulation, etc., but we might want to think about reality…
http://rightreactions.blogspot.com/2014/08/wake-up-america.html
So a bunch of uber rich American Trust Fund kiddies who have grown up in a spilled rotten bubble without a care in the world or the need to earn a living have now chugged the Eco Greenie Kool Aide and have decided to inflict their Gaia religous beliefs on everyone else.
And they have found numerous sympathetic Canadian Quislings will to accept $Greenbacks and sell out their neighbours.
If they were proud about their funding, they would be bragging about it, but that is not the case. In fact they go to great lengths to conceal the money sources, to hide their bought and paid for allegiance to foreign interests. One of the worst of these sell outs is Vision Vancouver, a subsidiary of Tides Canada and up to its ears in Greenwashing.
Vivian deserves the Order of Canada for her work exposing this web of Green corruption.
Thank you CT for your well written, concise description of the reality for maintaining Canada as both a sovereign nation and an acceptably free nation.
As you pointed out, the obvious need for any Rockefeller entity is to inhibit Canadian oil as their rice bowl will be impacted. This is true of many U.S.A. investing concerns. However; the other items for concern outlined in your opinion, which I essentially agree with in content and expression, is the main area to prepare Canada.
I do sincerely hope this is the goal for our Federal; Provincial; and Municipal Governments. I do sincerely hope we are able to re-establish and maintain an educated electorate to ensure this. Cheers;
Just demonstrates once again how leftists and the MSM have sold this country out. Always hear about the money being spent by the “big” oil companies on their agenda. Never once heard anything about the millions in offshore money being spent by the greenies. How much of this money has gone to fixing local elections?
Note that lately the left and CBC have been bleating about CRA audits of “charities” because green piece and others are now being squeezed. They don’t use the green “charities” as examples in their whiny articles, mainly because I suspect they don’t want to draw Canadians attention to the fact that most of their budgets come from Americans, Arabs and Russians trying to buy control of the politics in this country.
I don’t think it should be just the CRA investigating these people. I think an investigation from CSIS might also be in order.
Fracking traitors.
CT – It would be more accurate to call the conspiracy agains oil sand development a LEFT WING American conspiracy, rather than simply an American conspiracy, because only the left in America, and their subsidiary, the Democrat Party, oppose Canadian oil sand development.
The Republicans, in fact, officially support the Keystone pipeline, and the full development of the Bakken, which supplies the extra light crude which is exported to Canada, and when mixed with raw bitumen, permits shipment of the bitumen through the pipeline system.
On the geopolitical side, it is again the left, only, which wishes to stop oil sand development. The Republicans platform calls for reliance on NORTH AMERICAN petroleum, because of the multitude of problems created by dependence on the Middle East oil, and the shipment of hundreds of billions of dollars to terrorism supporting regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Vivian Krause is dead on in her claim that the greens true motive in shutting out Canadian oil is to force hundreds of billions of dollars in the US to flow to the solar and wind projects that the greens make their living on.
The fact that Canada has been selling her energy resources to our U.S. ‘friends’ for 30% below world market prices up until just last year, really grates in light of such information.
It appears further comment by me is being considered by mods. We will see if my replay to ‘small C’ is posted or not.
Green theocracy activism is pervasive and goes well beyond the anti oil sands campaigns. Anti-fracking campaigns have had more success in various US States, than in Canada. The latest Left-Coast (US and BC) campaign has been to attempt to halt all new coal export terminals, touting “pollution” from rail transport. This phenomenon is the rich Greens of the left Coast and other urban centres continuing to actualize their narratives while impoverishing the “low-life” who generate wealth from conquering nature or depend on affordable resources and energy. Canada is an easy target as most resources are publicly owned thereby leveraging campaigners money a hundredfold over what it would cost them to shut down private resources (no need to buy the land when you can buy voters and their pimps).
Green theocracy is a form of pantheism and they currently believe that CAGW is their best means of moving their agenda. And it’s worked well for them. They have the entire institutional left on board as theocracy may not be all leftist’s cup of tea but to them any means that advances statism is worth hitching a ride. This is why the old left is now embedded with the Greens (watermelons).
The sabotage of MacMillan Blodell should be obvious to all by now.
The same logging practises continue, with ever accelerated export of raw logs, yet where for are those “environmentalists”?
Remember the ones who harassed M&B at very turn and opportunity.
What Vivian documents is Economic Warfare.
Funnelling resources to sabotage your competition is the heart of crony capitalism.
Why be efficient or compete if you can hire well meaning fools to cripple the competition.
If one doubts the nature of the world, I guess they remain a Libtard, however Canada is under attack from without and within.
A weak Canada serves many well.
The Liberals and their Progressive Conservative comrades have served their masters well.
As CT lays out a rich Canada threatens many useless greedy people.
Can you re-post? Things seem to get sucked up randomly by a filter.
It sucked up a comment of mine as well.
Is it possible to only allow tax free donations from Canadians? any outside donations are taxable at the highest rate. any non-profit that tries to act as a tunnel to get foreign funds into Canada should be jailed for a significant length of time. It is economic warfare and we must start to do something to protect ourselves!
The moderating filters are sucking comments more often now. It’s strange when it rejects articles that have no ‘trigger words’ and quoted from news sources.
I’ve never had a fairly tame dirty word filtered but have lost many posts that have nothing controversial. They never seem to show up either.
Here is a better article about the subject:
The green ‘billionaires club’ is undermining Canada with bogus science
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/08/08/peter-foster-green-billionaires-undermining-canada/
The more solar the Chinese install, the better. It is a total waste of money and resources.
These organizations are performing no charitable acts. They are not charities.
A little off topic but still of interest perhaps the CBC should take a run with this.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715538/London-tourist-flies-latest-holiday-accessory-Gold-Range-Rover-worth-150-000-666-number-plate.html
It might bring some of the native bands, who are opposed to the pipelines, around. After all isn’t an Indian chief equivalent to an Arab Sheik. I’m sure Theresa Spence among others would feel hard done by in their Caddys.
like said upthread, the yanks want to maintain things their way despite Snowden. And the crony skum are no better than commies or nazis, and the growing police state has to be countered. And the arctic should be set up like the antarctic.
The more solar the Chinese install, the better. It is a total waste of money and resources. Posted by: Robert of Ottawa
Not in all cases.
Chinese solar is cheap because the pollution from the factories is dumped into the environment and the non-union labor costs are very low.
As a result, cheap Chinese PV can economically displace diesel fuel for off-grid electrical generation, especially in Alaska and the Canadian Territories with the midnight sun for half the year. That’s a lot of diesel fuel that doesn’t get burned all summer long.
What you got against the NWT?
In our short summer, if the smoke ever lets up, sure we get lots of weak sun.
But this is when we need very little power.
One could probably save more power by reverting to root cellars rather than wasting money on solar panels.
Until useful and affordable storage is developed diesel wins.
small c;
Glad to hear that my lost post is not that unusual by notes from other posters.
My point to your post was that geopolitics transcends ideology in many cases. In the history of North America it has not made a huge dif whether the GOP or the Dems were in control. The American concerns about a more affluent Canada would be about access to resources which could evolve into a national security issue for the USA.
Do not misinterpret my line of thought. The Americans have been good friends and allies for many years. I might think the balance has been in their favor but Canada has benefited from the relationship. Simply put at some point as a nation Canada does have to exert her own drive and pursue her own self interest. Clearly, however, the actions being taken by USA money trying to influence internal Canadian affairs and possible political elections is a unfriendly act. This is something to be expected from the Russians and Saudis but not the Americans.
I suspect that Northwestel knows more about that than you do.
Following the success of a 2013 pilot project, Northwestel Inc. has installed four additional photovoltaic arrays that use solar energy to power remote northern sites.
Two arrays were completed in the Northwest Territories and will power the microwave sites of Courageous and MacKay Lakes.
These sites are the first of their kind in the territory and are located near the diamond mines north of Yellowknife.
Two additional arrays were completed to power sites north of Ross River.
“As a corporate citizen, Northwestel aims to leave the smallest carbon footprint possible,”president and CEO Paul Flaherty said Monday.
“We are very proud of our arrays and are eager to continue building sites.”
Photovoltaic arrays, casually referred to as solar paneling, convert sunlight to usable electricity.
The electricity generated from the solar panels significantly reduces the amount of fuel Northwestel requires to operate its microwave sites.
Northwestel’s fuel consumption for operating remote sites costs the company upwards of $2.5 million annually.
With the newly installed panels, Northwestel projects fuel related savings of $46,000 – or up to 20,000 litres – by the end of 2014 as the sites will run entirely diesel-free for several months of the year.
Northwestel currently maintains 156 microwave stations in its operation area.
Of these sites, 87 rely on independent sources of power and 37 are only accessible by helicopter. These sites currently rely on air-cooled diesel engines depending on their energy needs.
In 2013, Northwestel, Cold Climate Innovation and the territorial Department of Energy, Mines and Resources installed the first solar panel site at Engineer Creek as part of an initial pilot project.
The project proved an overwhelming success. producing 64 percent of the required energy at the site in the first three months.
Northwestel is currently reviewing the possibility of installing four more sites in 2015 and another four in 2016.
If these sites are completed, Northwestel expects additional fuel cost reductions of $192,000 in 2016.
Northwestel services the largest operating area of any telecommunications company in the Western Hemisphere over the most remote and rugged terrain in Canada.
Sure Fixed load,light load, lead acid batteries government guaranteed monopoly.
This is not new, this is NWTel milking the taxpayer.
As for those air-cooled diesels, every repeater station I have worked on had liquid cooled genets.
Paul is a great shill, if he was any more full of it, his eyes would be brown.
Exactly how does this overpriced technology benefit the normal home owner here?
You will notice the absence of capital costs?
This is on par with Diavik Diamond Mines, Two wind turbines saving $1 million per year in diesel.
Sounds wonderful right?
Except cost of install is apparently $50 million for a mine with less than 20years life.
The cost of construction comes from site workers as they are not published anywhere on Diaviks site.
Nor is the tax deductions/subsidizes acknowledged.
Yet the GNWT budgets $65 million/year on this fakery.
CT – I think there would be a huge advantage to a unified Republican government acting in concert with a Harper government.
The money flowing into the Tides Foundation from George Soros is truly a transnational menace; he has been the lead financier of a huge radical network which is really the true source of almost all of Obama’s ideology and advisors.