A shocking new report from the Calgary-based group Friends of Science reveals just how much money environmental NGOs have at their disposal to influence politics and politicians here in Canada. My guest today has all the numbers and they shocked even me.
00:00:00.000Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.
00:00:06.600Today the guest on my show is Michelle Sterling from the Calgary-based climate realist group
00:00:13.180Friends of Science. They've just released a shocking new report that shows just how much
00:00:19.200money environmental NGOs have at their disposal to influence politics and politicians here in
00:00:27.480Canada. Now if you like listening to this podcast then you are going to love watching it but in
00:00:32.600order to watch you need to be a subscriber to premium content. That's what we call our long
00:00:37.480form TV style shows here on The Rebel. Subscribers get access to watching my weekly show as well as
00:00:44.300other great TV style shows too like Ezra's Nightly, Ezra Levant Show and on Friday night David Menzies
00:00:51.780Rebel Roundup. It's only eight bucks a month to subscribe or you can subscribe annually and get
00:00:57.960two months free and just for podcast listeners you can save an extra 10% on a new premium membership
00:01:03.720by using the coupon code podcast when you subscribe. Just go to the rebel.media
00:01:09.420slash shows to become a member and please leave a five-star review on this podcast and subscribe in
00:01:16.000iTunes or Google Podcasts or wherever you find your podcasts. Those reviews are a great way to
00:01:22.240support the rebel without having to spend a dime and now please enjoy this free audio only version of
00:01:28.740my show. Just how much cash do environmental non-governmental organizations have in their
00:01:37.160war chest to influence politics here in Canada? My guest today has all the numbers and they shocked
00:01:43.360even me. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:02:05.140Earlier in the week Justin Trudeau in what was very obviously a desperate and frankly pathetic
00:02:10.860attempt to change the channel on the snowballing SNC-Lavalin obstruction of justice problem he has
00:02:16.760on his hands right now held a pro-carbon tax event in Toronto. Now several people had to be removed from
00:02:23.620the event and hecklers abounded. Trudeau seemed overly animated and out of sorts even for him and my news
00:02:32.400my news the environment minister Catherine McKenna was there to remind everybody that unfavorable weather
00:02:38.740conditions that they may have experienced in the past year are likely deadly climate change. She shouted
00:02:45.960in the microphone that people have quote-unquote literally died. You know what just listen for
00:02:53.400yourself here. Who remembers last summer? Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
00:03:02.500Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat? Now I'm more inclined to think that people
00:03:08.900might die from not being able to afford the electricity and energy required to cool themselves
00:03:14.660in the odd and completely normal spell of extreme heat they may experience because of expensive liberal
00:03:21.540taxes. Now like Ezra says when he gets a little down or stressed out he eats I go pull a few arrows
00:03:27.880through the compound bow in the backyard but McKenna here she's clearly stressed out by the SNC-Lavalin
00:03:34.160scandal and she has taken to shaking her fist at the sky and yelling at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson.
00:03:42.220Now with your recent elections of three carbon tax fighting premiers in the country Blaine Higgs,
00:03:48.100Scott Moe and of course Doug Ford and nearly the guaranteed impending election of one more in Alberta,
00:03:57.020Jason Kenney. Why are these liberals so hung up on pushing an unpopular carbon tax to fight
00:04:03.840climate change especially when climate change is not even close to a top of mind issue for regular
00:04:11.260Canadians at the ballot box who are worried about jobs, pipelines, taxes and of course corrupt Quebec-based
00:04:17.860businesses co-opting the justice system for themselves. It has a lot to do with the amount of power and
00:04:25.340influence environmental NGOs have in this country. It's really unfettered and our friends at Friends
00:04:32.320of Science have all the details about just how much money these NGOs have at their disposal these days.
00:04:39.160So joining me now in an interview we recorded yesterday is the communications manager for Friends
00:04:46.580of Science, my friend Michelle Sterling and of course at some points her cat Mustache.
00:04:52.280So joining me now from Calgary is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science. I love having Michelle on
00:05:16.400because first of all when Michelle's on the show I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hydrant and not a
00:05:22.900garden hose. It's just so much information coming all at once and I think that's really great but
00:05:28.480secondarily on Monday evening Justin Trudeau embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a carbon tax rally
00:05:36.780and around these parts when you have a carbon tax rally it's against the carbon tax. Justin Trudeau had
00:05:43.340one in favor of the carbon tax and you know he did get some booze he did get some heckles. Environment
00:05:49.360Minister Catherine McKenna was you know shouting in the microphone and very enthusiastic that forest fires
00:05:56.800are caused by climate change and people are dying because of climate change and heat and I thought I'd have
00:06:02.200Michelle on to tell the other side of this story the more scientific side of this story and the less
00:06:11.440hysterical side of this story. So Michelle thanks for coming on thanks for joining me. Pleasure. Now Friends of Science
00:06:19.840has a really great report out right now and I was reading through it this morning and I thought it was
00:06:25.680very timely and very pertinent to what's been happening here in Alberta with regard to the Bighorn
00:06:32.380the Bighorn backcountry. The motivation for that park has not come from the people who live in the
00:06:39.520communities within the Bighorn backcountry. It's really come from foreign funded environmentalist groups
00:06:45.740like Yellowstone to Yukon and Seapaws both of which receive money from the Wilberforce Foundation and
00:06:53.840from Tides Canada to use things like the grizzly bear habitat to block oil and gas development and
00:07:01.940you'll see in the press releases about the castle park before the Bighorn that grizzly bear habitat was
00:07:08.720a big concern and you have this really great report that is out that basically shows just how much
00:07:16.700money these foreign funded organizations have to do work in Canada and in some instances they have
00:07:25.220more money in the bank than our major political parties. They have way more money in the bank than
00:07:31.600our major political parties way way more. I believe they have let me just make sure that I get the
00:07:38.380numbers right this is called Money Matters the ENGO political advantage and it's on our blog
00:07:44.120so this is kind of the short overview so the top 40 so that's not all the ENGOs but the top 40
00:07:52.580between 2000 and 2018 I believe it was received 11.2 billion dollars in revenues some of that from
00:08:01.420offshore quite a big chunk of it and the enviro law groups like ecojustice and environmental defense
00:08:09.720and west coast environmental law had revenues of 167 million in that same time period and all of
00:08:17.760these groups of course work hand in hand so the ENGOs and enviro law groups had 18 times the revenues of
00:08:26.460of all the federal political parties and 27 times the revenues of market-oriented groups like say Fraser Institute
00:08:36.920and other I don't know Frontier Center other groups like that that you know really do economic analysis of these
00:08:47.300proposed climate and energy policies so you can see that the the information has been really skewed
00:08:56.360and of course these groups also have lots of money to buy op-eds in in mainstream media and lots of
00:09:03.260influence in other ways too one of the things we're working on another report right now that's
00:09:08.000just doing a very simple overview but looking at say social media Greenpeace I think has a million
00:09:14.540followers this is in Canada on their Facebook page and they claim to have 1800 volunteers in Vancouver
00:09:21.980or another 1800 or 1500 in Toronto so you have these groups with tons of money lots of cause-oriented youth
00:09:31.880lots of volunteers and these people are easily tapped into by the electoral officials and actually you can see that in another report of ours called manufacturing and climate crisis and this is a rebuttal to West Coast environmental law
00:09:49.980West Coast environmental law you can see that prior to the last election Justin Trudeau was tweeting that if he was elected he would cancel Northern Gateway and when you look at the West Coast environmental law grant from the Oak Foundation you find that they applied for a $97,131 grant to make legislation to ensure that Northern Gateway would be cancelled so then you have to ask the
00:10:19.960ask was that a dog whistle for all these other massive environmental groups to tag on they were not allowed as charities at the time to be political but they could always say well vote for the party that doesn't want Northern Gateway or you know we have to go back through the records and check but I do recall there was quite a bit of stuff about promoting renewables by these anyway so we have actually three reports that deal with this one is called
00:10:49.940dark green money another one is called dark green money and big green money and big green money recounts how much money these groups also get from the federal and provincial government it's amazing they just get hundreds of millions of dollars from the government to block jobs so taxpayers are subsidizing the charities and they're also funding them for these grants where there's no performance requirement
00:11:19.940again again I was looking through reports doing some research on the castle park plan and then the subsequent bighorn plan and you could see I mean they have to publish this information
00:11:31.940see pause gets money from the city of Calgary the city of Calgary with their 30% vacancy rate in the office towers downtown because of the attacks on the industry by the tides foundation is giving money
00:11:47.940is giving money to see pause who also receives money from the tides foundation to block industry it is insane but there's other sinister things in there you see big banks funding these environmental organizations for their environmental good works and I think a lot of people don't realize where the money comes from when they're checking that
00:12:12.940little charitable box on their td um you know on their td account to say we want to I want to give this money to this wilderness foundation whatever it is they don't really know what that money does when it gets in the hands of those people and that's why I think that um friends of science is so great um because you do a lot of the same sort of work that Vivian Krause does and that's tracing the money back to
00:12:37.000to where it's going to where it's going to where it's going and what it's doing um and one of the things in I mean that report on um the amount of money that these environmental charities have blew my mind the Suzuki foundation had more money than the NDP I mean but at the end of the day are they really all that different like I suppose they have the same goals at the end of the day
00:13:03.000Well an interesting note on the David Suzuki fund it has been funded by Power Corporation since 2007 we don't know for how much but um it's interesting to note that Power Corporation is deeply embedded in SNC-Lavalin SNC-Lavalin is very active in BC now and um they were all hoping that they would have some kind of resurrection um by engaging with the Asian Development Bank which um is probably
00:13:32.980unlikely unlikely if the um the um Director of Public Prosecutions proceeds with Prosecution which may be why things are so um hot in Ottawa these days on Lavscam but um you know you have to wonder um uh Questa Depot was one of the biggest shareholders of Kinder Morgan Canada and Questa Depot and Power Corporation are deeply embedded with each other and guess who was the beneficiary
00:14:02.960of the sale of the sale of Kinder Morgan who would have benefited most so you know these are very interesting things but a lot of this is driven behind the scenes by the United Nations principles for responsible investment which most of these major banks and and uh or and the CDP worldwide most of these major banks and uh institutional investors are signatory
00:14:26.960signatory to the UN PRI and they're pushing all of these sustainable goals so that's why a bank turns around and goes okay well we'll throw money at this
00:14:36.660not to mention banks are constantly being hammered by all of these big ENGOs they band together from time to time
00:14:45.860uh hammer the uh hammer the banks on uh tar sands on pipelines uh you know they uh try to shred their
00:14:54.500reputation just like uh Greenpeace did to Resolute over the years so um it's interesting that
00:15:01.620very few of these corporate uh bodies ever fight back and they should and the public should fight back
00:15:08.220too the public should be writing letters to their banks and writing letters to the charities uh directorate
00:15:14.160and saying I don't want my money funding organizations that are blocking my jobs our economy
00:15:20.760you know I I really do think it is um we might see the tide turning now that Resolute
00:15:28.760forestry products based in Montreal of all places um is fighting back against Greenpeace and likewise the
00:15:36.080developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline is also suing some of those same environmental organizations
00:15:42.060for the damage they did to uh their company's bottom line while they waited and waited and waited for
00:15:50.580Obama to do nothing to get that pipeline going so I mean we we're seeing people and
00:15:58.740companies go bankrupt all the time because of bad environmental policies and it I think it's time
00:16:04.580for some of these environmental charities to experience some of the same pain well you know
00:16:10.600they certainly have lots of money so their shareholder action I uh just saw I note the other day from
00:16:16.960the Alberta uh remember what the name of the group is but they were talking about how share prices have
00:16:24.900declined 67 percent on a lot of the big companies I spoke with one person who used to be with Total and
00:16:32.660he told me that their oil sands share prices are down something like 80 percent so either these offshore
00:16:39.220groups are trying to create a market situation where they can be vulture investors and take advantage of
00:16:46.220these low prices and they certainly have tons of money so they have the ability to wait and then jump in
00:16:51.420or you know they're they're just trying to uh crater the market completely and probably because they have
00:16:58.540other oil interests worldwide we're the only place in the world that's facing this kind of NGO opposition
00:17:04.220you know it really is true um it's funny because when you were talking about SNC-Lavalin
00:17:11.660um it occurred to me that a lot of people are outraged because it appears as though Justin Trudeau um
00:17:19.820politically interfered in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for political gain but is it really any different
00:17:28.520than calling off the audits of the environmental charities and helping them skirt prosecution for what they had
00:17:35.580been doing breaking the law around charities here in Canada I mean everyone's mad because it's SNC-Lavalin
00:17:43.580but it's been happening to Alberta for years yes well that's an interesting point because um not only were
00:17:51.260the audits of the charities cancelled uh also in the fall the government uh made the law more lenient in
00:17:58.380regard to political activity by these charities and in my opinion they were already highly politicized
00:18:05.020prior to that yeah but they were never really prosecuted or or uh even called out for that
00:18:12.140but now they apparently have free reign so you know when you add together all this money that's noted
00:18:17.980on our money matters the engo political advantage blog post and when you add together all of the money
00:18:25.420and influence that's noted in our report dark green money and in our report big green money you realize
00:18:33.180that we're just being we the ordinary taxpayer are being crushed by a green titanic and this is
00:18:40.860completely contrary to any principle of democracy as far as I can see we're supposed to be the electorate
00:18:47.580we're supposed to be the ones who are setting policy and agreeing or disagreeing on proposals by the
00:18:53.260government but it's being driven by these massive engos and all their money much of which is from somewhere
00:18:59.420else yeah i mean there are a lot of people out there who still believe that russian collusion
00:19:07.420helped donald trump get elected um with little to no proof whatsoever and they believe that as
00:19:13.740though it's the gospel truth but we've seen actual foreign collusion environmental charities dumping money into
00:19:23.260canada to help sway an election in favor of the liberals we saw it with lead now and how they
00:19:31.500the whole vote together campaign and all the russian collusion conspiracy theorists seem to think that's
00:19:37.900perfectly fine yeah yeah it is odd i haven't followed the detail on that i am aware of it but i'm
00:19:43.820not deeply in involved in in that lead now election issue but uh it you know you can say the same for
00:19:50.380any of these um uh engos that are pushing for the party that will push renewables and why are they doing
00:19:57.980that because in the background the climate works foundation which we've talked about before uh these
00:20:03.58013 billionaires are pumping out hundreds of millions of dollars every year to engos worldwide to push their
00:20:11.180global cap and trade program and to put 12 trillion dollars of renewables on the grid which don't
00:20:17.100work we just issued a press release today on greenpeace founder patrick moore calling out aoc alexandria
00:20:27.340ocasio cortez for her green new deal because it doesn't work and oddly enough mckinsey and company
00:20:35.420um issued a report on february 14th saying that oh yes renewables will take over the market by 50
00:20:43.340by 2030 or something like that and the same day robert lyman the ottawa energy policy consultant that
00:20:50.460we work frequently issued a report by the global warming policy foundation and he demonstrated that
00:20:57.100these renewables are are not up to the challenge it can't do it and we should really bring our energy
00:21:03.660policies back down to earth so that would mean getting rid of the carbon tax and getting rid of
00:21:09.420these renewables except in certain complementary situations certainly not in canada they're not
00:21:16.380really a viable energy source on the grid in canada yeah and you know that brings me to uh another report
00:21:24.620that friends of science has done it's about how car the carbon tax has basically made us completely
00:21:30.780uncompetitive with you know with the united states who was once our largest customer still remains our
00:21:37.100one and only largest customer but now they are our largest competitor um they're exporting and we
00:21:44.140can't even build a pipeline it was you know 120 days from signature to oil pumping in the dakota access
00:21:51.340pipeline and you know in canada to build a pipeline you're looking at 120 months and not 120 days if that
00:21:58.460if that yeah yes somebody will think of some little uh i don't know spotted owl or something that's at
00:22:05.420risk but we can't build the pipeline here in fact i did a um a commentary a few years ago called the
00:22:12.140great eco wall of canada and it looks at all of the environmental regulations and blockades in um bc
00:22:20.140and sure enough bc is the great eco wall of canada because you can't go anywhere there without running
00:22:25.980afoul of these various groups so yeah and that's really where these groups are really concentrated
00:22:33.660um is is in british columbia because it that's our one way to tidewater that's our one quickest uh most
00:22:41.660uh economically viable way to tidewater and yet we can't get there now you guys at friends of science
00:22:50.140have something very important coming up um and it's something that i'm pretty well interested in
00:22:56.940attending um and again it's telling the other side of the story of the demise of the friendly
00:23:05.100cuddly polar bear yes we have polar bears and solar flares coming up on april 10th at the red and white
00:23:11.660club in calgary it's at 6 p.m in the evening it's our annual event our 16th annual event and uh we'll be
00:23:18.380hosting dr susan crockford who is an author and researcher a zoologist and polar bear expert and
00:23:25.980also dr willie soon who is an astrophysicist and he'll be talking about how the sun drives climate and
00:23:32.860solar effects on climate for canada so um both of these uh researchers uh of course hold a somewhat
00:23:41.740different view dissenting view from the mainstream and dr crockford in particular has been
00:23:48.140hammered by a large group of um researchers calling her a denier and they issued a paper a couple of
00:23:57.180years ago uh that really tried to shred her reputation completely and um you know this is not a scientific
00:24:07.900inquiry this is just a personal attack in my opinion terrible and uh dr soon also he's been attacked by
00:24:14.540greenpeace um they found that an oil company was funding some of the research through the smithsonian
00:24:21.100where he uh does his work and uh you know of course almost every oil company in the world funds research
00:24:29.100at various universities so they give money to places like the pembina foundation right so give me a
00:24:35.420break yeah that's no smoking gun claim that an individual researcher is somehow pocketing millions
00:24:42.620of dollars and again when you look at our reports and you see the money that's out there from climate
00:24:46.860works billionaires you recognize that the whole funded by big oil scenario is it's just um a lark it's the
00:24:55.020it's the alinsky version of you know blame them for what you're doing yeah yeah so true
00:25:02.620so how do people get tickets to polar bears and solar flares and secondarily how do people
00:25:09.900find you and support what you're doing well you can get your tickets for polar bears and solar flares
00:25:15.980on our website uh there's a link through there or through eventbrite in calgary look for calgary events
00:25:23.500and um also on our facebook page we have an event page there so our website is www.friendsofscience.org
00:25:33.500and eventbrite just look for polar bears and solar flares and um on facebook you'll just find it posted
00:25:40.460at the top so we don't have any more early bird pricing but we are still selling tickets um to the
00:25:46.060end of this month we have to close the ticket ticketing early just you know for the catering because
00:25:51.420it's a big event it's from six to nine we have a buffet dinner we have two speakers and uh we'll be
00:25:58.140selling some books and offering some reports and and susan has released is releasing a brand new book
00:26:04.940that day so it'll be yeah it'll be a a big event it's usually like lots of fun people have a very
00:26:11.500nice social yeah i uh i went to one a couple of years ago that the boss spoke at and uh dinner or
00:26:19.900something else like it's worth the price of admission just for dinner and all the um great
00:26:27.580discussion and incredible speakers and being in a room of like-minded people is just an added benefit
00:26:34.700because the dinner was amazing yeah well you know we also thank you we also have a number of people who
00:26:40.300come who are brand new to the whole issue and uh we welcome them you know nobody is required to agree
00:26:47.260with us we simply want open civil debate we want people to be able to ask their government to provide
00:26:54.060cost-benefit analysis and to do smart goal planning you know specific measurable achievable realistic and
00:27:02.940time-based so that we're not getting into like a carbon tax that will incrementally go up forever
00:27:09.180you know yeah but we tried the carbon tax for a year or or a few in alberta and it's not working so
00:27:15.820let's get rid of it because you know our report um carbon pricing consequences for alberta certainly
00:27:22.620shows that there was a huge domino principle and many things fell apart in alberta in that time frame
00:27:30.700simply because of the carbon tax and we will be paying billions of dollars for many years because of
00:27:37.020that one policy bad policy but we should stop it now so you know this is what we are trying to get
00:27:44.540across to the public that you have a right to call for open civil debate on these issues and a right
00:27:50.780to call for smart goals not this we're all gonna die so anything goes um yeah there's there's so much
00:27:59.740urgency that we just have to do whatever the government tells us to do without questioning it
00:28:05.340um michelle how do people let's say people want to get involved with friends of science throw a couple
00:28:11.340bucks your way um to help support these reports these very comprehensive reports that you guys are
00:28:17.980putting out uh well there's a donate and membership button on the upper right hand corner of our website
00:28:24.780so you can just go there and become a member and donate um and uh we'd be happy to have you and members
00:28:30.860get a uh bi-weekly um sorry bi-monthly um edition of our fos extracts which is a world roundup of news
00:28:41.260related to climate and energy issues around the world which people may not see here with only the cdc
00:28:46.940providing at this point of view and katie telford making sure that that's right that's the right
00:28:53.020um and we also provide cli sci which is a roundup of recent academic and uh um peer-reviewed papers
00:29:01.740on climate science so uh you know and some of our events and so there's lots that you get our press
00:29:08.780releases well and more importantly i think people just want to give money to someone who is fighting
00:29:17.820for not only um transparency but just the ability to have these discussions because as we know from
00:29:24.060the cbc there will be no discussion um michelle i want to thank you so much for coming on the show
00:29:29.500i try to keep these things to 20 minutes but i always always go over um and hopefully your event
00:29:37.420sells out um i think it's going to be a big hit um and uh thank you again for being so generous with
00:29:43.340your time my pleasure thanks for having us on the show and we appreciate everything that you do too
00:29:48.460at the rebel and you especially sheila up there in the cold with your billboard oh it was great