PROBE COULD SHAKE UP ENVIRO CHARITIES.

In a drive-by take-down editorial this past weekend, the Globe and Mail blasted Alberta’s public inquiry into foreign funding of anti-Alberta energy campaigns. The editorial had few facts on hand to support its claims, but it let loose with a series of cheap shots, glib commentary and a conclusion that fell back on an ancient tribal chant: “For Alberta to create a public inquiry to go after critics is a McCarthyesque misuse of power.”

Ah, McCarthyism, the old ideological cushion of the lazy lefty — although most Canadians under the age of 50 would have to Google it.

Alberta’s inquiry into the foreign funding of Canada’s green anti-oil activist groups is headed by Steve Allan, by all accounts a solid and objective forensic accountant who is as far from being Joe McCarthy as Mr. Rogers is from being Donald Trump.

The inquiry’s mandate is not without its flaws, but when it reports next year the results could shake a few ramparts in the vast operating arena of Canadian charities. Charged with probing the funding of anti-oil groups, the inquiry has the potential to open a national debate over the tax-free funding of Canada’s environmental organizations. It might also trigger interest in opening the doors into the strange multibillion-dollar world of Canadian charities, through which tax-free money is pipelined in and out of government with little or no accountability.

The Globe editorial dismisses the whole issue of foreign funding as something of a figment of the imagination of Vancouver researcher Vivian Krause. A frequent contributor to FP Comment over the years, Krause maintains a lively Twitter feed and an information-packed blog. Krause has documented that hundreds of millions of dollars have been flowing out of U.S. foundations and then have been circulated into Canada to specifically target Alberta’s oilsands.

Krause is also not alone in assembling open-source data from Canada Revenue Agency’s charities directorate site. Rob Scagel, who runs a Vancouver consulting firm, reports that it is a matter of public record that Canadian enviro groups “are in receipt of foreign donations, have made financial political contributions and have engaged in political activities.”

It’s all legal, but is it right?

According to the Globe, Krause and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney are helping to use “the heavy hand of government power” to suppress free speech. “The anti-carbon views of Canadian environmentalists are, lest anyone need reminding, constitutionally protected freedom of expression.”

Free speech, however, is not directly under any great threat. As Krause noted to me in an interview, it’s not about speech, it’s about the role of charities and whether the green attack on the oilsands should be backed by tax-deductible funds. “There is nothing charitable about trying to land-lock Alberta oil,” said Krause.

The Globe’s conclusion, supported by other Globe columnists, is that the Allan inquiry is charged with looking for “something that isn’t there.” That seems unlikely, in view of the massive data record of U.S. foundations — Rockefeller, Hewitt, Moore, Tides — funnelling money into Canada with specific objectives, including shutting down Alberta’s oilsands.

On one point the Globe may be right. The Allan inquiry is mandated to determine whether a Canadian organization “has disseminated incomplete, misleading or false information about the Alberta oil industry.” Whether the anti-oil charities did or did not mislead should be irrelevant.

More relevant is the inquiry’s mandate to determine if the Canadian organizations receiving funds have “charitable status and/or receive grants and other funding from municipal, provincial and federal governments.” That should be interesting.

The underlying issue that the Allan inquiry should raise is: What is the purpose of a charity, specifically an environmental charity?

Lurking in the background of the foreign-funding issue is the fact that we have seen all this before. Charitable status and imported foreign tax-free money to undermine the Canadian resource economy was a well-documented part of the takedown of the B.C. forest industry 25 years ago.

Consider these comments from the late Simon Fraser University economist William Stanbury, from his 2000 book, Environmental Groups and the International Conflict Over the Forests of British Columbia, 1990 to 2000:

“Money is the fuel of interest group activities. Let us turn to the role foreigners played in financing B.C.-based E groups. A recent study indicates that between 1993 and 1997, E groups active in B.C. received almost $9 million from U.S. foundations. The most money (over $2 million each) came from the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Virginia and the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia … Other major foundations were C.S. Mott ($600,000), Rockefeller Brothers Fund ($525,000) and the Brainerd Foundation ($440,000).”

That last foundation, the Brainerd, is still slagging Canada. In 2018, the foundation says it “invested” in B.C.’s Ecojustice group which “won a six-year battle to block the Trans Mountain Pipeline and succeeded in reforming the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to recognize every Canadian’s right to a healthy environment.”

In 2000, Stanbury warned that this “internationalization of the conflict over the B.C. forest industry” had wider implications. He questioned activist ethics in using blockades and boycotts that amounted to “extortion,” he saw a loss of domestic sovereignty in their activities, and he viewed the environmentalist claims to the right to civil disobedience as “exploitation” of the detailed rules that protect individual rights.

One of the heroes of the 1990s anti-B.C. forest campaigns documented by Stanbury was Tzeporah Berman, creator of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest hysteria and the current international director of Stand.earth. Earlier this month, Berman received $2 million from the San Francisco-based Climate Breakthrough Project, in turn funded through the U.S.-based David and Lucile Packard Foundation in partnership with the Oak Foundation and the Good Energies Foundation.

The Allan inquiry has a lot to work through.