Rebel News Podcast - How much “green money” do ENGOs have to steer politics in Canada？ (Guest： Michelle Stirling, Friends of Science)

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.

00:00:06.600 Today the guest on my show is Michelle Sterling from the Calgary-based climate realist group

00:00:13.180 Friends of Science. They've just released a shocking new report that shows just how much

00:00:19.200 money environmental NGOs have at their disposal to influence politics and politicians here in

00:00:27.480 Canada. Now if you like listening to this podcast then you are going to love watching it but in

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00:01:22.240 support the rebel without having to spend a dime and now please enjoy this free audio only version of

00:01:28.740 my show. Just how much cash do environmental non-governmental organizations have in their

00:01:37.160 war chest to influence politics here in Canada? My guest today has all the numbers and they shocked

00:01:43.360 even me. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:02:05.140 Earlier in the week Justin Trudeau in what was very obviously a desperate and frankly pathetic

00:02:10.860 attempt to change the channel on the snowballing SNC-Lavalin obstruction of justice problem he has

00:02:16.760 on his hands right now held a pro-carbon tax event in Toronto. Now several people had to be removed from

00:02:23.620 the event and hecklers abounded. Trudeau seemed overly animated and out of sorts even for him and my news

00:02:32.400 my news the environment minister Catherine McKenna was there to remind everybody that unfavorable weather

00:02:38.740 conditions that they may have experienced in the past year are likely deadly climate change. She shouted

00:02:45.960 in the microphone that people have quote-unquote literally died. You know what just listen for

00:02:53.400 yourself here. Who remembers last summer? Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?

00:03:02.500 Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat? Now I'm more inclined to think that people 1.00

00:03:08.900 might die from not being able to afford the electricity and energy required to cool themselves

00:03:14.660 in the odd and completely normal spell of extreme heat they may experience because of expensive liberal

00:03:21.540 taxes. Now like Ezra says when he gets a little down or stressed out he eats I go pull a few arrows

00:03:27.880 through the compound bow in the backyard but McKenna here she's clearly stressed out by the SNC-Lavalin

00:03:34.160 scandal and she has taken to shaking her fist at the sky and yelling at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson. 1.00

00:03:42.220 Now with your recent elections of three carbon tax fighting premiers in the country Blaine Higgs,

00:03:48.100 Scott Moe and of course Doug Ford and nearly the guaranteed impending election of one more in Alberta,

00:03:57.020 Jason Kenney. Why are these liberals so hung up on pushing an unpopular carbon tax to fight

00:04:03.840 climate change especially when climate change is not even close to a top of mind issue for regular

00:04:11.260 Canadians at the ballot box who are worried about jobs, pipelines, taxes and of course corrupt Quebec-based 0.98

00:04:17.860 businesses co-opting the justice system for themselves. It has a lot to do with the amount of power and

00:04:25.340 influence environmental NGOs have in this country. It's really unfettered and our friends at Friends

00:04:32.320 of Science have all the details about just how much money these NGOs have at their disposal these days.

00:04:39.160 So joining me now in an interview we recorded yesterday is the communications manager for Friends

00:04:46.580 of Science, my friend Michelle Sterling and of course at some points her cat Mustache.

00:04:52.280 So joining me now from Calgary is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science. I love having Michelle on

00:05:16.400 because first of all when Michelle's on the show I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hydrant and not a

00:05:22.900 garden hose. It's just so much information coming all at once and I think that's really great but

00:05:28.480 secondarily on Monday evening Justin Trudeau embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a carbon tax rally

00:05:36.780 and around these parts when you have a carbon tax rally it's against the carbon tax. Justin Trudeau had

00:05:43.340 one in favor of the carbon tax and you know he did get some booze he did get some heckles. Environment

00:05:49.360 Minister Catherine McKenna was you know shouting in the microphone and very enthusiastic that forest fires

00:05:56.800 are caused by climate change and people are dying because of climate change and heat and I thought I'd have

00:06:02.200 Michelle on to tell the other side of this story the more scientific side of this story and the less

00:06:11.440 hysterical side of this story. So Michelle thanks for coming on thanks for joining me. Pleasure. Now Friends of Science

00:06:19.840 has a really great report out right now and I was reading through it this morning and I thought it was

00:06:25.680 very timely and very pertinent to what's been happening here in Alberta with regard to the Bighorn

00:06:32.380 the Bighorn backcountry. The motivation for that park has not come from the people who live in the

00:06:39.520 communities within the Bighorn backcountry. It's really come from foreign funded environmentalist groups

00:06:45.740 like Yellowstone to Yukon and Seapaws both of which receive money from the Wilberforce Foundation and

00:06:53.840 from Tides Canada to use things like the grizzly bear habitat to block oil and gas development and

00:07:01.940 you'll see in the press releases about the castle park before the Bighorn that grizzly bear habitat was

00:07:08.720 a big concern and you have this really great report that is out that basically shows just how much

00:07:16.700 money these foreign funded organizations have to do work in Canada and in some instances they have

00:07:25.220 more money in the bank than our major political parties. They have way more money in the bank than

00:07:31.600 our major political parties way way more. I believe they have let me just make sure that I get the

00:07:38.380 numbers right this is called Money Matters the ENGO political advantage and it's on our blog

00:07:44.120 so this is kind of the short overview so the top 40 so that's not all the ENGOs but the top 40

00:07:52.580 between 2000 and 2018 I believe it was received 11.2 billion dollars in revenues some of that from

00:08:01.420 offshore quite a big chunk of it and the enviro law groups like ecojustice and environmental defense

00:08:09.720 and west coast environmental law had revenues of 167 million in that same time period and all of

00:08:17.760 these groups of course work hand in hand so the ENGOs and enviro law groups had 18 times the revenues of

00:08:26.460 of all the federal political parties and 27 times the revenues of market-oriented groups like say Fraser Institute

00:08:36.920 and other I don't know Frontier Center other groups like that that you know really do economic analysis of these

00:08:47.300 proposed climate and energy policies so you can see that the the information has been really skewed

00:08:56.360 and of course these groups also have lots of money to buy op-eds in in mainstream media and lots of

00:09:03.260 influence in other ways too one of the things we're working on another report right now that's

00:09:08.000 just doing a very simple overview but looking at say social media Greenpeace I think has a million

00:09:14.540 followers this is in Canada on their Facebook page and they claim to have 1800 volunteers in Vancouver

00:09:21.980 or another 1800 or 1500 in Toronto so you have these groups with tons of money lots of cause-oriented youth

00:09:31.880 lots 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

00:09:49.980 West 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

00:10:19.960 ask 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

00:10:49.940 dark 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

00:11:19.940 again 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

00:11:31.940 see 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

00:11:47.940 is 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

00:12:12.940 little 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

00:12:37.000 to 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

00:13:03.000 Well 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

00:13:32.980 unlikely 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

00:14:02.960 of 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

00:14:26.960 signatory 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

00:14:36.660 not to mention banks are constantly being hammered by all of these big ENGOs they band together from time to time 1.00

00:14:45.860 uh hammer the uh hammer the banks on uh tar sands on pipelines uh you know they uh try to shred their

00:14:54.500 reputation just like uh Greenpeace did to Resolute over the years so um it's interesting that

00:15:01.620 very few of these corporate uh bodies ever fight back and they should and the public should fight back

00:15:08.220 too the public should be writing letters to their banks and writing letters to the charities uh directorate

00:15:14.160 and saying I don't want my money funding organizations that are blocking my jobs our economy

00:15:20.760 you know I I really do think it is um we might see the tide turning now that Resolute

00:15:28.760 forestry products based in Montreal of all places um is fighting back against Greenpeace and likewise the

00:15:36.080 developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline is also suing some of those same environmental organizations

00:15:42.060 for the damage they did to uh their company's bottom line while they waited and waited and waited for

00:15:50.580 Obama to do nothing to get that pipeline going so I mean we we're seeing people and

00:15:58.740 companies go bankrupt all the time because of bad environmental policies and it I think it's time

00:16:04.580 for some of these environmental charities to experience some of the same pain well you know

00:16:10.600 they certainly have lots of money so their shareholder action I uh just saw I note the other day from

00:16:16.960 the Alberta uh remember what the name of the group is but they were talking about how share prices have

00:16:24.900 declined 67 percent on a lot of the big companies I spoke with one person who used to be with Total and

00:16:32.660 he told me that their oil sands share prices are down something like 80 percent so either these offshore

00:16:39.220 groups are trying to create a market situation where they can be vulture investors and take advantage of

00:16:46.220 these low prices and they certainly have tons of money so they have the ability to wait and then jump in

00:16:51.420 or you know they're they're just trying to uh crater the market completely and probably because they have

00:16:58.540 other oil interests worldwide we're the only place in the world that's facing this kind of NGO opposition

00:17:04.220 you know it really is true um it's funny because when you were talking about SNC-Lavalin

00:17:11.660 um it occurred to me that a lot of people are outraged because it appears as though Justin Trudeau um

00:17:19.820 politically interfered in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin for political gain but is it really any different

00:17:28.520 than calling off the audits of the environmental charities and helping them skirt prosecution for what they had

00:17:35.580 been doing breaking the law around charities here in Canada I mean everyone's mad because it's SNC-Lavalin

00:17:43.580 but it's been happening to Alberta for years yes well that's an interesting point because um not only were

00:17:51.260 the audits of the charities cancelled uh also in the fall the government uh made the law more lenient in

00:17:58.380 regard to political activity by these charities and in my opinion they were already highly politicized

00:18:05.020 prior to that yeah but they were never really prosecuted or or uh even called out for that

00:18:12.140 but now they apparently have free reign so you know when you add together all this money that's noted

00:18:17.980 on our money matters the engo political advantage blog post and when you add together all of the money

00:18:25.420 and influence that's noted in our report dark green money and in our report big green money you realize

00:18:33.180 that we're just being we the ordinary taxpayer are being crushed by a green titanic and this is 0.98

00:18:40.860 completely contrary to any principle of democracy as far as I can see we're supposed to be the electorate

00:18:47.580 we're supposed to be the ones who are setting policy and agreeing or disagreeing on proposals by the

00:18:53.260 government but it's being driven by these massive engos and all their money much of which is from somewhere 1.00

00:18:59.420 else yeah i mean there are a lot of people out there who still believe that russian collusion

00:19:07.420 helped donald trump get elected um with little to no proof whatsoever and they believe that as

00:19:13.740 though it's the gospel truth but we've seen actual foreign collusion environmental charities dumping money into

00:19:23.260 canada to help sway an election in favor of the liberals we saw it with lead now and how they

00:19:31.500 the whole vote together campaign and all the russian collusion conspiracy theorists seem to think that's

00:19:37.900 perfectly fine yeah yeah it is odd i haven't followed the detail on that i am aware of it but i'm

00:19:43.820 not deeply in involved in in that lead now election issue but uh it you know you can say the same for

00:19:50.380 any of these um uh engos that are pushing for the party that will push renewables and why are they doing

00:19:57.980 that because in the background the climate works foundation which we've talked about before uh these

00:20:03.580 13 billionaires are pumping out hundreds of millions of dollars every year to engos worldwide to push their

00:20:11.180 global cap and trade program and to put 12 trillion dollars of renewables on the grid which don't

00:20:17.100 work we just issued a press release today on greenpeace founder patrick moore calling out aoc alexandria

00:20:27.340 ocasio cortez for her green new deal because it doesn't work and oddly enough mckinsey and company

00:20:35.420 um issued a report on february 14th saying that oh yes renewables will take over the market by 50

00:20:43.340 by 2030 or something like that and the same day robert lyman the ottawa energy policy consultant that

00:20:50.460 we work frequently issued a report by the global warming policy foundation and he demonstrated that

00:20:57.100 these renewables are are not up to the challenge it can't do it and we should really bring our energy

00:21:03.660 policies back down to earth so that would mean getting rid of the carbon tax and getting rid of

00:21:09.420 these renewables except in certain complementary situations certainly not in canada they're not

00:21:16.380 really a viable energy source on the grid in canada yeah and you know that brings me to uh another report

00:21:24.620 that friends of science has done it's about how car the carbon tax has basically made us completely

00:21:30.780 uncompetitive with you know with the united states who was once our largest customer still remains our

00:21:37.100 one and only largest customer but now they are our largest competitor um they're exporting and we

00:21:44.140 can't even build a pipeline it was you know 120 days from signature to oil pumping in the dakota access

00:21:51.340 pipeline and you know in canada to build a pipeline you're looking at 120 months and not 120 days if that

00:21:58.460 if that yeah yes somebody will think of some little uh i don't know spotted owl or something that's at

00:22:05.420 risk but we can't build the pipeline here in fact i did a um a commentary a few years ago called the

00:22:12.140 great eco wall of canada and it looks at all of the environmental regulations and blockades in um bc

00:22:20.140 and sure enough bc is the great eco wall of canada because you can't go anywhere there without running

00:22:25.980 afoul of these various groups so yeah and that's really where these groups are really concentrated

00:22:33.660 um is is in british columbia because it that's our one way to tidewater that's our one quickest uh most

00:22:41.660 uh economically viable way to tidewater and yet we can't get there now you guys at friends of science

00:22:50.140 have something very important coming up um and it's something that i'm pretty well interested in

00:22:56.940 attending um and again it's telling the other side of the story of the demise of the friendly

00:23:05.100 cuddly polar bear yes we have polar bears and solar flares coming up on april 10th at the red and white

00:23:11.660 club 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

00:23:18.380 hosting dr susan crockford who is an author and researcher a zoologist and polar bear expert and

00:23:25.980 also dr willie soon who is an astrophysicist and he'll be talking about how the sun drives climate and

00:23:32.860 solar effects on climate for canada so um both of these uh researchers uh of course hold a somewhat

00:23:41.740 different view dissenting view from the mainstream and dr crockford in particular has been

00:23:48.140 hammered by a large group of um researchers calling her a denier and they issued a paper a couple of

00:23:57.180 years ago uh that really tried to shred her reputation completely and um you know this is not a scientific

00:24:07.900 inquiry this is just a personal attack in my opinion terrible and uh dr soon also he's been attacked by

00:24:14.540 greenpeace um they found that an oil company was funding some of the research through the smithsonian

00:24:21.100 where he uh does his work and uh you know of course almost every oil company in the world funds research

00:24:29.100 at various universities so they give money to places like the pembina foundation right so give me a

00:24:35.420 break yeah that's no smoking gun claim that an individual researcher is somehow pocketing millions

00:24:42.620 of dollars and again when you look at our reports and you see the money that's out there from climate

00:24:46.860 works billionaires you recognize that the whole funded by big oil scenario is it's just um a lark it's the

00:24:55.020 it's the alinsky version of you know blame them for what you're doing yeah yeah so true 0.98

00:25:02.620 so how do people get tickets to polar bears and solar flares and secondarily how do people

00:25:09.900 find you and support what you're doing well you can get your tickets for polar bears and solar flares

00:25:15.980 on our website uh there's a link through there or through eventbrite in calgary look for calgary events

00:25:23.500 and um also on our facebook page we have an event page there so our website is www.friendsofscience.org

00:25:33.500 and eventbrite just look for polar bears and solar flares and um on facebook you'll just find it posted

00:25:40.460 at the top so we don't have any more early bird pricing but we are still selling tickets um to the

00:25:46.060 end of this month we have to close the ticket ticketing early just you know for the catering because

00:25:51.420 it's a big event it's from six to nine we have a buffet dinner we have two speakers and uh we'll be

00:25:58.140 selling some books and offering some reports and and susan has released is releasing a brand new book

00:26:04.940 that day so it'll be yeah it'll be a a big event it's usually like lots of fun people have a very

00:26:11.500 nice social yeah i uh i went to one a couple of years ago that the boss spoke at and uh dinner or

00:26:19.900 something else like it's worth the price of admission just for dinner and all the um great

00:26:27.580 discussion and incredible speakers and being in a room of like-minded people is just an added benefit

00:26:34.700 because the dinner was amazing yeah well you know we also thank you we also have a number of people who

00:26:40.300 come who are brand new to the whole issue and uh we welcome them you know nobody is required to agree

00:26:47.260 with us we simply want open civil debate we want people to be able to ask their government to provide

00:26:54.060 cost-benefit analysis and to do smart goal planning you know specific measurable achievable realistic and

00:27:02.940 time-based so that we're not getting into like a carbon tax that will incrementally go up forever

00:27:09.180 you know yeah but we tried the carbon tax for a year or or a few in alberta and it's not working so

00:27:15.820 let's get rid of it because you know our report um carbon pricing consequences for alberta certainly

00:27:22.620 shows that there was a huge domino principle and many things fell apart in alberta in that time frame

00:27:30.700 simply because of the carbon tax and we will be paying billions of dollars for many years because of

00:27:37.020 that one policy bad policy but we should stop it now so you know this is what we are trying to get

00:27:44.540 across to the public that you have a right to call for open civil debate on these issues and a right

00:27:50.780 to call for smart goals not this we're all gonna die so anything goes um yeah there's there's so much

00:27:59.740 urgency that we just have to do whatever the government tells us to do without questioning it

00:28:05.340 um michelle how do people let's say people want to get involved with friends of science throw a couple

00:28:11.340 bucks your way um to help support these reports these very comprehensive reports that you guys are

00:28:17.980 putting out uh well there's a donate and membership button on the upper right hand corner of our website

00:28:24.780 so you can just go there and become a member and donate um and uh we'd be happy to have you and members

00:28:30.860 get a uh bi-weekly um sorry bi-monthly um edition of our fos extracts which is a world roundup of news

00:28:41.260 related to climate and energy issues around the world which people may not see here with only the cdc

00:28:46.940 providing at this point of view and katie telford making sure that that's right that's the right

00:28:53.020 um and we also provide cli sci which is a roundup of recent academic and uh um peer-reviewed papers

00:29:01.740 on climate science so uh you know and some of our events and so there's lots that you get our press

00:29:08.780 releases well and more importantly i think people just want to give money to someone who is fighting

00:29:17.820 for not only um transparency but just the ability to have these discussions because as we know from

00:29:24.060 the cbc there will be no discussion um michelle i want to thank you so much for coming on the show

00:29:29.500 i try to keep these things to 20 minutes but i always always go over um and hopefully your event

00:29:37.420 sells out um i think it's going to be a big hit um and uh thank you again for being so generous with

00:29:43.340 your time my pleasure thanks for having us on the show and we appreciate everything that you do too

00:29:48.460 at the rebel and you especially sheila up there in the cold with your billboard oh it was great

00:29:55.180 thanks michelle okay thank you

00:30:07.180 as michelle and i touched on in our interview the real foreign meddlers in our elections are the

00:30:16.060 environmental ngos and if we really want to get technical it actually might be the russians meddling

00:30:24.060 in our electoral process but not in the way the left would love to have you believe just look at this

00:30:31.020 article here from newsweek magazine first published in the daily signal a june 29 2017 letter from two

00:30:40.860 texas congressmen to treasury board secretary steve munchen details what they call a covert anti-fracking

00:30:48.620 campaign with little or no paper trail representatives lamar smith and randy weber quote sources saying the

00:30:58.140 russian government has been colluding with environmental groups to circulate disinformation

00:31:05.260 and propaganda and undermine hydraulic fracturing of course commonly known as fracking the sources cited

00:31:13.900 include a former secretary general of nato who is quoted by these gop congressmen as saying russia

00:31:21.260 as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations engaged actively with

00:31:27.500 so-called non-governmental organizations environmental organizations working against shale gas to maintain

00:31:36.460 dependence on imported russian gas the article reads that gazprom a large russian oil company with

00:31:44.620 ties to putin stands to benefit from russian-funded environmental activism resulting

00:31:50.780 in reduced levels of fracking and natural gas production in the united states and that same

00:31:56.300 propaganda campaign is spawning all those talking points environmentalists now use against canadian

00:32:03.340 gas that's your real russian collusion right there that's your real foreign meddling that's a real

00:32:10.140 russian attempt to subvert north american energy production but you won't hear any democrat or liberal

00:32:18.380 conspiracy theorist talking about any of it will you well everybody that's the show for tonight thanks

00:32:25.580 again so much for tuning in i'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week

00:32:31.740 and remember don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think

Rebel News Podcast - March 07, 2019

How much “green money” do ENGOs have to steer politics in Canada？ (Guest： Michelle Stirling, Friends of Science)

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