After months and months of delays, the Alberta inquiry was finally released late last week. It was a comprehensive report into the funding given to environmental charities and ENGOs, as they say, to block Canadian oil and gas development. Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science joins me tonight to break down what she read and her takeaway from this somewhat complex report.
00:11:03.140Or, sorry to interrupt you, Yellowstone to Yukon, which is basically a tool to use grizzly bear habitat
00:11:11.880to block eastern slopes oil and gas development.
00:11:15.780Right, like I wrote an op-ed in 2013 and I called it the Great Eco Wall of Canada.
00:11:23.040And it was precisely that, that all of these areas are being staked out in, particularly in British Columbia,
00:11:29.880as, you know, special areas, conservation areas, et cetera, et cetera.
00:11:34.720Well, then you can't put any kind of resource development there, but look, you're saving the planet.
00:11:39.740So, you know, so to say that these conservation programs had nothing to do with blocking resource development is false.
00:11:50.320Although, again, it's very hard to say, oh, look, they put together this park and now it's untouchable.
00:11:58.700But did the people involved intend to block development or were they really, you know, park lovers and this was their passion in life?
00:12:07.720And, you know, and I think that that was actually kind of very fair of the commissioner to note that many people are concerned about climate change.
00:12:17.900Many people are concerned about nature and conservancy.
00:12:21.920But the way in which this whole program has developed was not open and transparent.
00:12:28.580So those who had different views did not have the same opportunity to challenge or confront these groups as they developed their plans.
00:12:38.680You know, we saw this unfold in real time right after the NDP got elected here in Alberta,
00:12:42.720where they tried to basically turn a big chunk of southern Alberta near the Crozas Pass into a park.
00:12:50.460And the people who actually used the land said, oh, no, no, we don't need a park here because that will prohibit what we are able to do here.
00:12:57.980The people who actually, for generations of their own cost and time, went out and took care of the land and used the land.
00:13:05.660And there was no government involvement.
00:13:07.640It wasn't like it was being damaged irreparably in any way by the use of the people who are using it.
00:13:13.960But the NDP figured, oh, we'll just turn this into a park.
00:13:56.080Well, this was in the fall of 2018, I believe.
00:14:01.040And they were about to make it possible for charities to use 100% of their revenues in nonpartisan political activities.
00:14:10.940And up to that point in time, they'd only been allowed to use 10%.
00:14:15.240So if people want to have sort of a quick view of some of the what we think are damaging implications of these environmental charities actions in Canada,
00:14:28.240you could just look at that letter because we list about 10 items there that show very simply the direct activities that were damaging to this nation and to our economy.
00:14:42.160And then you don't have to kind of go through 600 pages of material.
00:14:47.800And of course, by the spring, they did pass that legislation.
00:14:51.420So now these big fat charities, NGO charities, have the right to use 100% of their revenues in nonpartisan political activity.
00:15:03.780But since they have so much power and money, most politicians play along with them or go along with them because otherwise they won't get elected.
00:15:16.000So, you know, they've completely skewed the election platform of Canada just by their power and money.
00:15:23.140You know, I do sign up for the emails from these environmental NGOs just to see what they're up to.
00:15:29.820And you cannot go in your email inbox during election season because that's all you get from them.
00:15:36.620And so, you know, when they say, oh, we're nonpolitical.
00:15:39.880Yeah, but you've just emailed me, email blasted me four times today on liberal policies without ever saying liberal, liberal, liberal.
00:15:50.720And I guess based on the Deloitte, really, it's a forensic audit as best that they can do.
00:15:59.060I guess stopping at 2019 because of what Bill Morneau did, that's the best we can do because going forward, it's going to be even harder to track this money.
00:16:08.460And I think it was Mark Bloomberg from Charities Law, I forget the name of his organization.
00:16:17.680Anyway, he deals only with charities, but he noted, and it's in our report, Green Titanic, that up until the change of law, if we took just the 10% of the charities, and this is all charities in Canada,
00:16:32.400the 10% that they were allowed to spend on political activity, that would be $25 billion.
00:17:45.200And now we are 10 years later, and they're getting their way on basically everything.
00:17:49.560We haven't had a pipeline built in this country in Lord knows how long.
00:17:54.360Well, it's interesting to note that in 2014, I believe it was, we had gotten kind of a toehold in Italy as a supplier.
00:18:02.180And, of course, in Europe, there had been quite a fight under the EU Fuel Quality Directive where they wanted to label Alberta Oil as dirty oil.
00:18:12.700And we managed to evade that labeling.
00:18:17.200But after we got that toehold in Italy, the government announced that we would be, you know, that Canada would be building pipelines in all directions.
00:18:26.240And within two or three years of that, all of those pipelines were blocked.
00:18:31.940So you have to recognize that this was a very strategic plan and implemented very well.
00:18:40.940But, yes, in fear and loathing, what we try to do is to give the big picture of how the Tar Sands campaign unfolded and some of the other moving parts behind it.
00:18:51.780Like a lot of it is funded by these organizations that also belong to Climate Works in the States.
00:18:58.720And Climate Works is a group of big, green, tax-free philanthropies who want to impose carbon cap-and-trade worldwide.
00:19:08.480They want to develop two cap-and-trade systems, one in North America and one in Europe.
00:19:15.080And they want to cause a sea change in the world economy.
00:19:21.820That's literally how they describe it.
00:19:24.040So this comes from the work of Matthew Nisbet.
00:19:27.180He's an American climate change communications researcher.
00:19:32.940And he's done a peer-reviewed study that's also quite good to read.
00:19:37.060Mostly because, again, it simplifies the story.
00:19:41.880It's not really about the Tar Sands, but all the people involved are associated with funding of the Tar Sands campaign.
00:19:49.100And so you can draw the conclusion that Design to Win, which was featured also in the Allen Inquiry report,
00:19:56.100but he focuses on Design to Win and how, say, Bloomberg has pumped, I don't know, $150 million or so into the Sierra Club
00:20:04.240to denigrate coal, to phase out coal, and to denigrate fossil fuels.
00:20:10.260So, you know, you have these charities that are getting hundreds of millions of dollars because they're charities,
00:20:17.640other donors and individuals give to them thinking, yeah, I want a clean planet.
00:22:22.600And as you point out, a lot of these people are true believers for whatever reason.
00:22:28.380So that makes them really easily weaponized because they don't ask that extra layer of questions like, oh, hey, we just we just drove past that refinery in Bellingham on our way to Vancouver.
00:22:45.980And I think that's a question that Ezra's always asked, too.
00:22:48.880Like, why are they only protesting Canadian oil?
00:22:51.400Why not Saudi oil, Russian oil, Norwegian oil?
00:22:57.200You know, it's ironic, especially thinking of the influence of Greta Thunberg coming here.
00:23:04.000Well, back in Sweden, London Energy is the one that discovered the Johann Sverdap play, which is a huge oil and gas play in the North Sea that's being developed by Equinor,
00:23:22.480I never hear Greta say a word about that.
00:23:25.820No, I mean, Russia is a lot closer to her than we are here, but they never mosey over that way.
00:23:32.960They did that one time and lived to regret it pretty quickly when Greenpeace tried to protest.
00:23:40.020I think it was an offshore Russian oil rig.
00:23:42.300Maybe that's why they don't protest in those despot nations is because in the Western world, we believe in freedom of speech and we think it is your right to protest.
00:23:54.160And so these green groups, they use our best qualities, our civil liberties against us.
00:24:01.060Yeah, well, and I think the other implication that people have to recognize about this foreign funding, it was kind of like the seed money that watered these little flowers that grew into big bushes and trees.
00:24:14.640And now these green groups have this vast forest of themselves that needs to be fed.
00:24:21.220So they turn to governments at provincial, municipal and federal levels, and they're literally sucking the money from the tax pool.
00:24:31.200They're already tax subsidized, most of them, if they're federally registered charities.
00:24:38.020Many of them have huge endowment funds.
00:24:40.120Like, I think the interest on the David Suzuki Fund, endowment fund, is more money per year than what we actually get from our loyal member donors.
00:24:53.220So, you know, and many of them also over the years have acquired tax-free real estate, land, and all kinds of other benefits like that.
00:25:03.180But to feed themselves, because now it's a huge industry that will crumple without this support, now they go to government.
00:25:12.420So many of them get these $24,999 grants from the feds.
00:25:20.540This number is special because under $25,000, you don't have to issue a tender.
00:25:27.040So these are kind of handed out like candy.
00:25:29.560And many of them get very large consulting contracts.
00:25:34.320I've seen one recently where Pambanay Institute got something like $700,000.
00:25:40.680I'm not sure what for because they're not really experts at anything.
00:25:45.300You know, and we've recently reviewed their proposals on renewables and found significant errors in their understanding of how the power grid works.
00:25:54.560And that's dangerous because they have been consulting to provincial, municipal, and federal governments for years by giving them inaccurate information.
00:26:04.440And I think they even go one step further.
00:26:09.200They now embed themselves into government.
00:26:15.820She was on the Oil Sands Advisory Group, thanks to Rachel Notley here in Alberta, advising about the future of oil and gas when she doesn't think there should be a future for oil and gas.
00:26:26.280There was, I mean, Stephen Gilbeau, as we're talking today, he will likely be shuffled out of the Heritage Ministry as a cabinet minister for Justin Trudeau into the Environment Ministry.
00:26:38.440And he was the head at Equitair, one of these organizations that did receive money from the Tides Foundation.
00:26:46.540I think they even received a grant directly related to the Tar Sands campaign.
00:26:56.140She is currently the Senior Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Canada.
00:27:04.860She's the co-author of Global Warming for Dummies.
00:27:07.520She worked as Chief of Staff for Jim Carr and Amarjeet Sohi when they were in cabinet.
00:27:13.440She's the past president of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club Canada.
00:27:18.940And she volunteered for 10 years with a nonprofit organization, the World Wildlife Fund Clean Energy Canada, Sierra Club Canada in Norway and Canada.
00:27:49.140Well, and one has to realize that Marlo Reynolds, and he wrote about this in his Mutart Foundation-sponsored report on how to get your nonprofits going.
00:27:59.920He organized what's known as the Strathmere Group, which is the top 12 or 13 ENGOs in Canada.
00:28:13.280They've been funded by various big foundations, tax-free foundations like the McConnell Foundation, Trottier Foundation.
00:28:21.040They claim to have 358,000 followers and $50 million in resources.
00:28:30.020And Boothroyd Communications notes that prior to the 2015 election, they organized a media training session with them and with a number of marketing influencers and journalists to set the messaging for the 2015 election campaign.
00:28:49.420So this is tremendous political and financial influence and cross-funded by these other big tax-free foundations.
00:28:59.880And I don't believe that it's actually being done in a very transparent way.
00:29:06.220Like, it was Parker Gallant who first ran across the Strathmere Alliance and brought it to our attention.
00:29:12.640And it's a very powerful organization, although loosely knit and not much talked about in the press.
00:29:24.120You know, and that's what helps them further their goals.
00:29:28.400You know, that's been the story of this from the very beginning.
00:29:30.900They were talking about carbon pricing 10 years before we were even worried that a government would bring it in.
00:29:40.480But you've been dealing with this, Michelle, for a very long time.
00:29:44.340You have a book called My Tar Sands Tipping Point.
00:29:47.860And you are, Michelle, I love you, but you are terrible with promoting yourself and the work you do and the books you write.
00:29:55.400But your book, My Tar Sands Tipping Point, is based on your correspondence with CBC over nine months regarding what you saw was an unbalanced documentary that CBC had broadcasted.
00:30:17.560So it's kind of ironic to me that this Allen inquiry report comes out now, you know, like a decade later, because I know when I first was writing to CBC, they thought I was completely mad.
00:30:32.480And perhaps I am, but, you know, but I watched The Tipping Point, Age of the Oil Sands.
00:30:39.720I think it was broadcast first in February of 2011.
00:30:42.960And because David Suzuki was fronting it, because it was co-produced with CBC, I thought, great, for sure, they're going to set the record straight on the oil sands.
00:30:53.520And I knew quite a bit about it, having worked at Alberta Environment not long before that.
00:31:04.580Well, first of all, I asked them to not run it again, because they were going to run it again within a week, which is quite unusual in broadcasting, or it was at that time.
00:31:15.760And it was coming up to an election, although the writ hadn't been dropped.
00:31:20.700And I said, you know, you're going to make people hate Alberta and hate the oil sands.
00:31:26.520And they were like, no, no, no, that's, you know, how can you say that about us?
00:31:34.380But, you know, the other thing is that this thing ran on CBC's website 24-7.
00:31:40.720And it was also later recut into a theatrical release movie that was released around the world.
00:31:48.940So to my mind, you know, and it was all financed by taxpayer money.
00:31:53.720So to my mind, this was the actual death blow to the Alberta oil sands, financed by Canadian taxpayers, created and co-produced by the CBC national broadcaster.
00:32:08.980And it, in my mind, it did the single most damage of any element of the tar sands campaign.
00:32:17.300And in it, there is a scene where Susan Casey-Lefskiewicz from the Natural Resources Council of the United States, who'd been working on the tar sands campaign since 2000, as it turns out.
00:32:33.060So, you know, she's sitting either in Fort Chip or Fort Mac in the film, and she's saying, you know, so how do we go about blocking the development of the oil sands?
00:32:42.300And lists off everything, you know, we're going to litigate, we're going to go to Ottawa, we're going to, you know, turn public opinion against it.
00:32:54.580So, so for me, it is kind of a vindication.
00:32:59.380Because, you know, I wrote many letters to CBC, and ultimately, the ombudsman said, oh, and they often wrote back and said, look, we've covered the oil sands for years, we always gave it, you know, great coverage.
00:33:10.940And I'm like, okay, well, then give it great coverage again, you know, but they didn't do that and destroyed the reputation of what was once the pride of Canada.
00:33:24.260You know, it's, it's, it's a real tragedy, because like you say, maybe you were crazy, but I think maybe you're crazy like a fox.
00:33:34.860And, and it doesn't end, I was just looking at the Globe and Mail synopsis of the Deloitte report, and they, instead of saying all the things that we said, you know, 1.3 billion dollars spent to block Canadian jobs and Canadian prosperity, and this is what they publish as their headline, Alberta Energy Inquiry says,
00:33:59.940no wrongdoing by anti-oil sands activists, well, I guess, technically, since they changed all those laws.
00:34:07.680However, the whole point is, this is how much money they dumped to get the success that they do have.
00:34:13.720But this is what the mainstream media says about oil and gas.
00:34:17.380They've completely, this, I think, is proof.
00:34:21.680This sort of headline is proof of what all that money did.
00:34:26.100Well, of course, you know, the Globe and Mail is quite a climate activist outlet.
00:34:31.700John Stackhouse used to be their editor in chief, and now he's with RBC.
00:34:36.140And yesterday, I heard a podcast with them with Roy Green, talking about how well Canadians will just have to be prepared to suffer for the good of climate change.
00:34:51.600My point here is that, you know, this is an activist newspaper, and people probably don't know, but many of the newspapers in Canada have been compromised.
00:35:00.860For instance, Toronto Star ran a six-month series leading up to the Paris Agreement, which was funded by Tides.
00:35:09.560Of course, they had the big disclaimer saying, yeah, well, you know, we're not interfering with the editorial workmanship here.
00:35:16.920But in fact, most of the articles made ridiculous claims, like that people were divesting from the oil sands when they were not, not at that time.
00:35:30.100And, you know, so that kind of big money and that influence, I mean, look at every newspaper article.
00:35:55.240Or they don't give them much space if they do.
00:35:57.980So, you know, there's not been any effort on the part of Canadian media to understand this, or to understand the implications to their own country.
00:36:09.680Imagine if right now Canada had that $1.7 trillion from the oil sands.
00:36:15.200In that same tipping point documentary, Don Thompson, who was then the CEO of the oil sands developers group, said that during the 2008 recession, the oil sands was churning something like $30 billion through the Canadian economy and generating 450,000 jobs.
00:36:35.500So, you know, those jobs also have a trickle down effect, because if you have half a million people making good money, they're also spending that money, they're buying a truck, they're buying a car, they're going to a restaurant, they're having a massage, they're getting their hair done, they're buying their ATV, whatever it may be, but they're generating lots of business for other businesses.
00:36:58.400So, you know, and you're not going to get that with wind turbines and solar farms.
00:37:06.500The principal reason being is they generate nothing, nothing but renewable energy certificates, you know, oil, gas and coal generate not only the energy that's portable and energy dense, but also they generate all the byproducts and the product stream like plastics and all the useful things that we use.
00:37:28.340All the things we need right now for the pandemic, all the things we need right now for the pandemic, what would you do without the PPEs in a hospital?
00:37:35.520What would you do without the plastic, single use sterile materials for whether it be a ventilator or surgery or whatever you need?
00:37:47.240So, I mean, people who are advocating for the phase out of fossil fuels, and particularly the oil sands, they're advocating for the death of many people, because we need those things.
00:37:58.280We need that energy, we need that money, and we need those product streams.
00:38:04.240Now, and for people at home who may not know, you might see a stark uptick in your local newspaper talking about climate change, and you're like, oh, maybe the climate is changing, because even in my local newspaper, they're talking about it.
00:38:19.660Part of the media bailout was funding for local climate reporters.
00:38:25.120And so these failing local newspapers in a dying print media market, they are willing to take this money to produce this content, fear-mongering content at the local level.
00:38:39.920And it sort of skews the public's viewpoint on this, because not only are you getting it at the national level from the CBC, you can ignore that, everybody else does, but also when you pick up your local newspaper and you're like, oh my goodness, the Sherwood Park News is concerned about climate change.
00:39:31.940It's like the Narwhal and Esmog and Grist and Vox, I don't know if exactly those are the names, but those types of alternative journalism.
00:39:41.940And those alternative journalists have taken away from the former market of conventional media.
00:39:50.840So they too have been funded by these big green philanthropies.
00:39:53.940And so you're getting climate change from them, from the philanthropies, they're taking market away from the conventional mainstream media, which then ends up being funded from tax dollars from you to these local entities who are trying to survive.
00:40:12.500So they take the money and employ, you know, nice young reporter, fresh out of journalism school, who's been watching Greta for the past few years.
00:40:22.360You know, so you're not getting any kind of objective reporting from any source anymore.
00:40:28.240And you, you're getting it from all sides when you turn on the TV or open up the newspaper, Michelle, I could talk to you all day about this.
00:40:37.220And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm so happy that, uh, there's some vindication for everything that you've been talking about for at least the last 10 years.
00:40:44.460How do people support the work that friends of science does?
00:40:48.820Because like I just said, you guys have been on this for years and you don't have the big dark money that the people on the other side of the debate have.
00:40:59.620So, uh, how do people throw, uh, some money towards you guys?
00:41:03.480Because you really do work on a shoestring budget.
00:41:05.840You compile these comprehensive reports, you take these big issues and make them digestible for the normal person.
00:41:11.520And so how do people support your efforts?
00:41:14.960It's a bit of a ministry, what you guys do.
00:41:27.720We have an additional bonus report called manufacturing, uh, climate crisis.
00:41:32.220So if people read those four green reports, these were written long before the Ellen inquiry and drawn from public records.
00:41:39.720And you'll see how this money is flowing through Canada and the implications to you because Robert Lyman wrote it and he was a federal public servant for many years.
00:41:50.420So he knows what influence that has internally.
00:41:54.340So those are, are very important to have a look at and they're short.
00:41:58.940Each of them are quite short, but they make the point.
00:42:01.480So to help us, to support us, you can go to our website, friendsofscience.org.
00:42:07.540You can, uh, join us on Facebook and, and interact.
00:42:11.860You can be part of our conversation on Twitter.
00:42:27.860And, uh, we also have a kind of a youth friendly bilingual site as well called climatechange101.ca.
00:42:34.420So, uh, have a look at that too, but we'd just be happy to have you join in the conversation.
00:42:40.260And, uh, let's talk about climate change and these policies because the implications for you and me and everyone else are huge.
00:42:50.160You know, and that's one of the things the other side doesn't want us to do is to talk about these issues.
00:42:55.040They'd rather censor us, uh, get us kicked off YouTube, um, you know, kill our podcasts, kill our Twitter accounts, kill our Facebook pages.
00:43:03.260Um, and simply because, um, we want to have an open and civil debate, which is all friends of science has ever asked for.