The journalist in me cannot help but admire the doggedness of North Vancouver freelancer Vivian Krause in getting to the bottom of U.S. foundation funding of B.C. environmental groups.
She claims to have had to sell her house to finance her unrelenting digging into tax returns of U.S. foundations to drive home her point that the Canadian economy is being undermined by these American interests. “Millions of dollars in foreign funding have given the Canadian environmental movement a level of influence it would not otherwise have had,” she concludes – correctly.
From there, though, the discussion lurches into the ditch of extremism and witch-hunting more characteristic of Fox News – one of her admiring outlets – than typically Canadian civil discourse.
As one of her Calgary-based supporters put it in a recent column, “Canadians should be outraged there are organizations based outside this country that feel they have a right to interfere in the development of Canada’s natural resources.”
Really? Should we? Since when were organizations outside this country not “interfering” with Canada’s natural resources? Starting with the Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada has depended on all manner of foreign investors to make us the rich nation we are today.
Krause takes special aim at Tides Canada, an umbrella funding organization similar to the Vancouver Foundation, which manages other people’s money to achieve its mission of fostering “a healthy environment and just Canadian society.”
She assiduously tracks down $300 million that has been invested by U.S. foundations over the past 10 years in “various green groups, mostly in B.C. By far, the largest B.C.-based recipient organization is Tides Canada, which has been paid nearly $60 million by U.S. foundations.”
In Krause’s world, Canadian greens taking U.S. money are part of a hidden agenda to kill the Canadian economy and promote American interests. She says U.S. money behind Tides Canada-financed organizations challenging the B.C. farmed salmon industry, where she used to work (and which is 80% Norwegian owned), is secretly aimed at boosting the market for Alaskan wild fish. She refuses to acknowledge that protecting wild salmon habitat and making B.C.’s wild seafood industry as strong and sustainable as Alaska’s is the goal of these organizations. And with that come Canadian jobs forever, and stable coastal communities.
She saves a special place in her hell for Tides Canada-funded groups whose interest in marine conservation and a sustainable B.C. coastal economy puts them at odds with the proposed Enbridge pipeline.
“These campaigns are protecting U.S. market and trade interests, all in the name of protecting the environment.” She fails to point out that the majority of Tides Canada’s funding comes from Canadian sources and that the same U.S. funders opposed to Enbridge are pouring even greater resources into the fight against the proposed Keystone pipeline into the U.S.
Tides Canada’s strength is in bringing together diverse interests to forge a new economy that will last well past the current oil boom.
That’s why its U.S. funders partnered with the B.C. and Canadian governments to implement the groundbreaking Great Bear Rainforest agreement.
I’m siding with any approach, funded by anyone, that brings civil voices together to tackle the biggest issue of our time: reorienting our economy to reward activities that preserve, rather than destroy, the natural capital that sustains everything.
Inflaming suspicion by imputing foul motives from those who have different opinions is what’s killing the U.S. right now. That’s what we should be keeping out of Canada, not money pledged by decent people to make the world habitable for our children. •
(See Vivian Krause on New Prosperity, page 23.)
