A pipeline wake-up call

The Canadian pipeline crisis is developing along the usual constitutional divide and within the tired context of party politics punditry. Will Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government use its federal powers to overrule the unconstitutional moves by B.C.’s NDP government? Will B.C.’s attempt to block the $7.4-billion expansion of the Trans Mountain oilsands pipeline to the West Coast lead to a trade war with Alberta’s NDP?

And what will the Liberals’ new plans, announced Thursday, to gut the National Energy Board’s power and responsibilities, and new environmental rules released this week to protect the lives of fish against human encroachment by pipeline do to the state of the federation?

Wake up, Canada. This is not another political game show about the powers and rights of different levels of government. Nor is it about ritual inter-party rivalries among Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives. The Trans Mountain constitutional meltdown is the product of an aggressive radical campaign by green extremists to rip up the Canadian economy.

It seems to be working. Through more than a decade of gross disinformation, quasi-illegal activity and backroom political campaigns funded by Americans, the manipulative green tail of Canadian politics is now wagging the Canadian economic dog.

Wake up to the fact that tiny minorities of fringe activists now populate key power bases in Ottawa and the provinces. Most party politicians, from the prime minister to premiers to energy and environment ministers, have become puppets of green activists.

Driven by their quasi-religious belief in the wrath of climate change, the green machine had its road to power paved by funders, mostly from the United States, whose sole objective was to destroy Alberta’s oilsands. From that starting point they have expanded their power and funding base.

Nobody has done more to document the underground rise to dominance of the green subversion of Canadian politics than Vivian Krause, the Vancouver researcher and writer whose blog is a storehouse of documented evidence on how activists used climate change apocalysm to seize control over oilsands and other policy areas. Her latest effort, “The Tar Sands Campaign Against the Overseas Export of Canadian Oil: Activism or Economic Sabotage?”, was posted last month.

It’s impossible in a brief column to capture more than a glimpse into the origins and workings of the green takeover of Canadian politics and their role in subjugating the oilsands and Canada’s energy sector. But here’s a peek at just one element.

In October 2008, American activist Michael J. Marx, representing a U.S. organization called Corporate Ethics International, based in San Francisco, was asked by two major U.S. foundations — Hewlett and Rockefeller Brothers — to recruit, organize and fund a donation “re-granting agency” for a campaign to shut down Canada’s oilsands. Writes Marx: “From the very beginning, the campaign strategy was to land-lock the tar sands so their crude could not reach the international market where it could fetch a high price per barrel. This meant national and grassroots organizing to block all proposed pipelines.”

From Keystone XL to Trans Mountain, Marx today claims success for a plan hatched almost a decade ago via a 2008 briefing document obtained by Krause. Marx says the plan is to stop growth of the oilsands “by increasing the perception of financial risks by potential investors and by choking off the necessary infrastructure (inputs and outputs) of the tar sands. We will accomplish this by raising the visibility of the negatives associated with the tar sands (and) initiating legal challenges in order to force government and corporate decision-makers to take steps that raise the costs of production and block delivery of infrastructure.”

Among the Canadian green groups cited by Marx as eager recipients of funding were Environmental Defence Canada, World Wildlife Fund Canada, ForestEthics Canada, Greenpeace and others. At the time, in 2008, the head of World Wildlife Fund Canada was Gerald Butts, currently Prime Minister Trudeau’s principle secretary and top adviser. Other green activists sit on panels and outside cabinet rooms, providing bad advice and misguidance to politicians and business leaders.

In Alberta, veteran green activist Tzeporah Berman cochaired the premier’s oilsands panel. Thus embedded, she gained authority to simultaneously appear to support the oilsands while advocating its demise. “No one’s saying we shouldn’t produce” oil, she said in 2016, but then at the same time she opposed the Trans Mountain pipeline and supported the utterly impossible and destructive target of reducing fossil fuel emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.

This fabricated fantasy flies in the face of actual energydemand expectations. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that fossil fuels will hold at 80 per cent of U.S. energy consumption through to 2050. While the U.S.based green militants and their Canadian cohorts have successfully promoted the shutdown of Canada’s pipeline development, American oil production hit record levels in January.

By Krause’s estimate, U.S. foundations and their Canadian branches have directed more than $600 million over the years to fund scores of Canadian activist groups, Indigenous organizations and green political manipulators. Krause’s lively documentation of these organizations and their activities includes major exposés of the Dogwood Institute and Leadnow, two groups that have been instrumental in feeding the anti-oilsands movement.

They have also run successful political operations at the provincial and federal level. Dogwood, for example, had more than 20,000 supporters in the riding won by B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver — now an influential force in the province’s pipeline-troublemaking government.

Vancouver columnist Gary Mason opined the other day that, in the end, Trudeau will push the Trans Mountain pipeline to approval. “I think this is probably the only pipeline — the last pipeline — that will be built in this country.” He’ll be right, if Canada doesn’t wake up.