Foster … The Parkland Institute’s Marxipedia.

When Joe Oliver was Natural Resources Minister in the Harper government, he identified “foreignfunded radicals” as obstructions to Canadian resource development. He was pilloried for speaking the truth. Imagine if any government-funded organization had given out millions of dollars to study those sources of foreign funds? There would have been political and academic outrage, cries of “witch hunt” and “muzzling.” Well, the muzzle is now off, and foreign-funded radicals have nothing to fear. They are seated at the right hand of power, radical funding has been repatriated, and the anti- corporate witch hunt can begin in earnest right here in Canada with local funding.

Last week, a grant of $2.5 million dollars by the taxpayerfunded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, was announced for a project called “Mapping the Power of Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector.” An additional $2 million for this guaranteed hatchet job is being provided by the likes of trade union giant Unifor.

The study is being “hosted” by the University of Victoria with partners the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, CCPA.

Parkland was founded by “political scientist” Gordon Laxer. Laxer believes that climate policy is not being held back by uncertain science or cost-benefit analysis that is all costs and no benefits, but by the selfish influence of Big Oil. He is rabidly anti oilsands.

According to current Parkland Director Trevor Harrison, “Albertans are all too familiar with the influence that the fossil fuel industry exerts over the political process in Alberta and beyond.”

So why would they need a study? Because, according to Harrison, “what has been missing is a comprehensive understanding of which individuals and corporations are applying this political influence, and how. This project will fill that gap.”

In other words: “We know the industry is guilty. All we need is evidence to back up our ideological convictions.” Dissenting opinions need not apply.

The study is to be divided into four areas: identification of the guilty and their international tentacles; analysis of the octopus’s influence on public debate and policy making; case studies of “contentious flashpoints” ( essentially any resource project proposed by any corporation anywhere); and, most potentially insidious, “Development of an open source, publicly accessible corporate database and train-

Parkland Institute’s $4.5-million witch hunt: They know Big Oil is guilty, we just need the evidence

ing program for citizens and civil society groups, many of whom will contribute and update data.” Kind of a Marxipedia for misinformation. The “training program” will presumably be about techniques for venting your righteous anger and pursuing civil disobedience against those whose efforts and taxes provide the comfortable life you enjoy but long to tear down, at least for others.

Any truly balanced study of influence in energy policy would have to investigate the extraordinary power of the anti- market and anti- corporate sector too. This sector includes environmental non- governmental organizations ( ENGOs) both domestic and multinational. Of particular interest should be the WWF, whose Canadian subsidiary was headed by Justin Trudeau’s principal adviser, Gerald Butts. Then there are those giant American foundations that have been pouring vast sums into blocking Canadian resources development.

Indeed, if one were to look at who is calling the shots on resource (non) development these days, it is the very “civil society groups” that are identified as partners and researchers in the study. For example, the CCPA is big on something called “Climate Justice,” that is, green socialism. We do not call it the Centre for Alternatives to Good Policy for nothing.

Such groups achieved an enormous success in pressuring President Obama to kill Keystone XL. Their power has been confirmed by the Trudeau government’s ban on crude oil tankers on the Northern BC coast, a potentially mortal blow to Enbridge’s stalled Northern Gateway pipeline. That ban also essentially blows up the authority of the National Energy Board, which is due to be reformulated by the Trudeau government into something a little more malleable/emasculated.

According to Parkland’s Harrison, “The transparency this project will provide about who is involved in shaping these choices will be critical to ensure that the decision is made in the public sphere, not in corporate boardrooms.”

But business decisions need to be made in corporate boardrooms, not at Town Hall gabfests dominated by the cadres who can talk longest and loudest.

While we should perpetually be on guard against corporate rent- and favour-seekers, bailout artists, and all business attempts to bend legislation against the public interest, business has a very legitimate interest in informing sensible policy and opposing interventions that are in the interests of nobody but policy makers and radical minorities.

The main problem with the resource sector is not its surfeit of power, but its lack of it. It has pursued a policy of appeasement, of begging its sworn enemies for “social licence.” And it has been spectacularly unsuccessful.

Nobody in any resource company should give one second of precious productive time to answering questions for this bogus study. Playing nice would be dumb. They are out to get you. Tell them to take a hike.