Cameron Fenton: Harper Government Can't See the Forest for the Trees. I've started to have a repetitive nightmare.
The light in the hearing room is bright, hot and pointed right at me. The heat is suffocating, and I am visibly sweaty, the senator leans over, taps his microphone and begins to read questions from a typed sheet. "Mr. Fenton, Have you ever donated to or been a member of the Sierra Club of Canada? " "Do you own a book or books written by Dr. "Did you or did you not write blog posts that were critical of the oilsands? " “Charitable” Fraser Institute accepted $500k in foreign funding from Koch oil billionaires. In four years alone, U.S.
Tea Party architects the Koch brothers poured half a million dollars into Canadian right-wing think tank, the Fraser Institute. As the Conservative assault continues against Canadian environmental charities, The Vancouver Observer has learned that since 2007, foreign oil billionaires the Koch brothers have donated over half a million dollars to the “charitable” right-wing Fraser Institute. According to U.S. tax documents, the Fraser Institute received $150,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation in 2008, $175,500 in 2009, and another $150,000 in 2010.
The grants were purportedly for "research support" and "educational programs". Fraser Institute co-founder confirms 'years and years' of U.S. oil billionaires' funding. U.S. Republican Koch oil billionaires help fund the Fraser Institute. Why the Fraser Institute? U.S. libertarian oil billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch have poured at least half a million dollars into The Fraser Institute over the last few years.
In case you haven't been following their trail, here's a bit about them: If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits. -- Rolling Stone Magazine. Illegal lobbying complaint against CAPP dismissed - Edmonton. Feds deny lobbyists influenced weakening of fisheries protections. Oil lobbyists approved Harper’s climate policy as ‘elegant’ approach. OTTAWA — The federal government asked the oil and gas industry last fall to review its foreign climate change policies, which were then approved by lobbyists as “an elegant” approach, reveals newly-released correspondence.
The government was consulting the industry about European climate change legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels, according to an email exchange between senior bureaucrats at Natural Resources Canada. Lobbyist defends shale gas industry - New Brunswick. Concern about hydro-fracking has sparked several protests across New Brunswick in the past year.
(Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon/CBC) A senior advisor with the shale gas industry says the New Brunswickers she talks to are overwhelmingly in favour of the industry. Angie Leonard, an official with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, was responding to a recently released opinion paper by four professors at the University of New Brunswick. Canada News: Alberta, Ottawa, oil lobby formed secret committee. The federal and Alberta governments struck up a secret, high-level committee in early 2010 to coordinate the promotion of the oilsands with Canada’s most powerful industry lobby group, a document obtained through an access to information request reveals.
The committee brought together the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) with deputy ministers from Natural Resources, Environment Canada, Alberta Energy and Alberta Environment to synchronize their lobbying offensive in the face of mounting protest and looming international regulations targeting the Alberta crude. Environmental organizations criticized the existence of a committee they said they were hearing about for the first time. “I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that there should be a separation between oil and state, but with these types of secret committees it’s hard to see any daylight between them,” said Keith Stewart, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace. “It wasn’t about messaging. Government deal with charity cut after Enbridge pressure - Politics.
The Conservative government cancelled an agreement with a charity that supports environmental causes eight months after energy firm Enbridge Inc. lobbied against the deal, The Canadian Press has learned.
The federal Fisheries Department said last September it would no longer use an $8.3-million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a U.S. -based environmental trust. The foundation donated the money through charity Tides Canada, which was to distribute the funds with federal oversight to support a departmental marine-planning initiative. The reversal came almost a year after Ottawa accepted the deal, and scrapping the arrangement went against the advice of public servants, documents show. The grant was to provide the bulk of funding for consultations launched by the department, paying for scientific research and to gather advice from stakeholders on balancing conservation with economic use of ocean waters on British Columbia's north coast.
Fed deal with charitable group scuttled after Enbridge pressure.