THE DEEP LIBERAL STATE BITES BACK.

The Trudeau Liberals, like the old comic-strip character, Pogo, are discovering that when it comes to pipeline policy, the real enemy is themselves. Their acquisition of the Trans Mountain pipeline is yet another example of their progressive pretension colliding with economic reality. The contradictions of their climate and energy policies have put them in a mighty pickle, after they effectively killed all other domestic alternatives to bring oil to tidewater.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bland declaration in 2015 that “The Great Bear Rainforest is no place for a pipeline” has returned to haunt him in the form of a much more valid criticism: that a pipeline is no place for a government. But that is almost a peripheral issue. At some stage — assuming TransMountain survives endless court challenges and the diehard opposition of the B.C. government — push will come to shove. In the case of protesters hurling their bodies in the pipeline’s path, quite literally.

Ironically, one of the main nodes that might be helping to provide that physical opposition to construction is funded by a government entity that was set up when Justin’s dad was prime minister in 1977. Justin Skywalker is about to discover the figure inside that Darth Vader suit, the one helping the empire of eco-extremism now fighting his pipeline, is… his father.

A sizable portion of opposition to Trans Mountain is being funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, an entity set up as part of what might be called the “Deep Liberal State” — that is, government-funded institutions created to make sure that the progressive agenda continues, whatever that agenda happens to be at the time, and whichever government happens to be in power.

The SSHRC doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in academic research grants. You might recall the unwelcome attention it received last year when it turned down a research grant to celebrity anti-progressive Jordan Peterson (who had received considerable previous funding) suspiciously soon after he had refused to be forced to use genderneutral pronouns. How dare ze.

Three years ago (significantly when Stephen Harper was prime minister), the SSHRC gave a hefty $2.5-million grant for a six-year study to expose the supposedly insidious political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Other entities such as union giant Unifor kicked in an additional $2 million.

The title of the project was Mapping the Power of the Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector. It was to be hosted by the University of Victoria, the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta (the place where they think David Suzuki is honourable), and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, CCPA. The academic leader of the study is sociologist William Carroll, an old UVic Marxist.

Visit the power-mapping project’s website today and you will find a picture of Trudeau alongside the words: “Power and influence in the fossil fuel industry today place sharp limits on our democracy.” The juxtaposition might suggest that the words are a quote from the PM. They are not. Still, one must admit that the observation is insightful — except the power really undermining democracy is coming from radical environmentalists entirely unconcerned that a majority of both Canadians and British Columbians support building Trans Mountain. The radicals’ idea of “democracy” is, more accurately, minority rule by social-mediated mobs in endless town hall meetings.

But the left is nevertheless obsessed with corporate power for one very practical reason: the more power that corporations are accused of having, the more coercive “countervailing” power is justified in opposing them. This power takes the form of “market campaigns” of consumer disinformation and client intimidation, for instance, high-pressure demands on customers to boycott oilsands or forestry companies, or sometimes-violent protests at development sites. That brings us to the power-mapping project’s activist bit: Its plan for the “Development of an open source, publicly accessible corporate database and training program for citizens and civil society groups, many of whom will contribute and update data.”

Although they are still working on the database, it’s starting to become clear just what sort of training they’re offering citizens and civil society groups. Earlier this year, the project co-sponsored a presentation in Vancouver by U.S. activist Winona LaDuke. Since twice running on the Green Party’s vice-presidential ticket alongside Ralph Nader, LaDuke has featured prominently in protests against Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement in Minnesota and the illegal week-long sit-in against the Dakota Access line, in which Enbridge also has a significant stake.

LaDuke declared in her Vancouver speech that Canada was a “petrostate,” and that she “understood” that climate change would cost 20 per cent of global GDP “in a few years.” That’s a pretty serious misunderstanding. After running through the stock litany against GMO foods and fracking, she proposed a locavore society where everybody would live on solar power and grow their own crops. “You don’t need a lawn. Grow food,” she lectured. “Be smart,” she said, “like Denmark and Germany” (whose off-carbon transition policies are comprehensive disasters, as anyone who’s paid attention well knows).

LaDuke also declared her determination to continue fighting Enbridge in the U.S., and ridiculed the company’s efforts at appeasement. And she urged on Canadian activists in their the fight against Trans Mountain. LaDuke concluded by demanding the audience not relinquish power to “the one per cent.”

In reality, it is LaDuke and her ilk who represent the grossly disproportionate power of the tiny one per cent or less of radical activists. They are funded not only by the American 0.0001 per cent, made up of billionaires and their foundations who think Canada should be one big national park, but, thanks to Pierre Trudeau’s SSHRC, Canadian taxpayers, too. And those government-funded radicals are about to bite Trudeau fils in the butt.