As organized religion has shown us, the noblest ideals are often used to cover questionable motives. Is religious zeal the result of a strong faith or is it a power trip? I'll leave that question to historians, but there are current parallels in the brave new world of charitable activities and none more relevant than the current debate over the proposed Enbridge pipeline.
If this connection seems like a stretch, bear with me. For openers, we begin with the recent Canada Revenue Agency decision to crack down on Canadian charities that funnel foreign funds to Canadian environmental groups. Canadian charitable organizations can receive foreign funding, but Ottawa insists that spending on political advocacy can only amount to 10 per cent of their total revenues. The Harper government has taken a hard line on this CRA funding restriction and drawn the ire of a number of environmental organizations.
Enter freelance writer Vivian Krause, who has spent a considerable amount of time looking at the influence of foreign-based funders on Canadian charities. Krause is a first-class reporter, has a graduate degree in science and writes a blog at www.fair-questions.com.
Her blog is appropriately titled. As an investigator, Krause has spent a number of years posing fair - yet increasingly pointed - questions to the environmental lobby, focused on the inordinate amount of financial support going to groups that oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.
At the centre of Krause's concern is Tides Canada, a Vancouver-based environmental lobby group and an off-shoot of the American-based U.S. Tides organization.
Tides Canada is well heeled. Using information from 2008 to 2010 Tides Canada U.S. tax returns, Krause calculates $56 million has gone to 236 B.C. organizations, all opposed to Northern Gateway.
By way of a breakdown, $28 million went to North Coast B.C. First Nations, $8 million went to B.C. environmental groups and $12.5 million for Tides Canada internal operations. Another $7 million went to organizations outside of the core group of B.C. First Nations, B.C environmental groups and internal operations.
Money is one thing, motives are another.
Going up the food chain, we find Tides Canada was funded by U.S. Tides, in turn co-funded by the Rockefeller Tar Sands Campaign. The stated goal of the Rockefeller Campaign is to stop pipeline and refinery expansion on the basis of environmental damage. But, according to a Krause article in the Financial Post, only pipeline projects exporting oil to Asian markets are being targeted. Don't forget, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil; the firm and its environmental campaigns have a huge and ongoing interest in the well-being of the U.S. oil industry.
Looking at the development of the U.S. West Coast oil industry, Krause is right. As an example, what was the worst oil tanker disaster on the Pacific? Easy, the Exxon Valdez, Prince William Sound, March 24, 1989, somewhere between 250,000 and 750,000 barrels of oil were spilled.
That oil came from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska by way of a 1,287 Kilometre pipeline and was to be shipped from the Alaskan port of Valdez to Cherry Point, Washington. Following the Exxon spill, did USA Tides mount or fund opponents to Alaskan crude being shipped down the West Coast to a few miles off the Canadian border?
Not a peep, not a penny spent on opposition to the shipments. Not in 1989 and not now. Indeed, every day thousands of barrels of Alaskan crude transit our Canadian West Coast, through the Straights of Juan de Fuca, to Rosario Straight into the Straights of Georgia and are off-loaded at Cherry Point, Washington. The only difference between this pipeline and tanker shipping and the Enbridge proposal is that the Alaskan crude is going to U.S. refineries, while the Enbridge line will take Canadian crude to Asian markets.
Clearly, big oil interests in the U.S. want to continue their hold on Canadian crude exports and the evidence would suggest opposition funding to Asian-bound crude oil is more tied to U.S. profit motives and energy security than environmental concerns.
None of this, including increasing CRA scrutiny of Tides Canada, is in any way meant to lessen the focus on the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal.
But, a few points must be made. First, Canada is not the United States's fifty-first state. Where and how we ship our exports must be decided in Canada without undue influence by foreign interests.
Second, with Adrian Dix and the provincial NDP so strongly opposed to Enbridge, it would be in everyone's best interests for the party to disclose whether or not Tides Canada, or an affiliate, has contributed to the NDP.
Finally, we must make a decision on the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal based on the best scientific evidence and the projected benefits to the Canadian economy. We cannot sell out our sovereignty to U.S. oil interests or its well-funded lobbyists.
