- Stay Connected
Follow Us
Why does the Pembina Institute need foreign money to fight the oil sands?
The fact that the Pembina Institute relies on foreign money to fund their attacks makes it clear that it doesn't represent Canadians.
December 11, 2011
VANCOUVER, BC, Dec. 11, 2011/ Troy Media/ - Care to guess how much money the Canadian government has spent funding groups to lobby the British government to shut down its 14 coal-fired power plants? If you guessed “not a cent,” you win.
Canadians are no less concerned about carbon emissions than British citizens are, but at least we understand that it’s not our business to go meddling in England’s environmental and industrial policies. It’s our business to focus on what’s happening in Canada and we surely expect our friends abroad to do the same. So why are environmental groups here getting British pounds to fund their anti-oil sands campaigns?
Pembina Institute’s oil sands position clear
The National Post recently revealed that the anti-oil sands Pembina Institute took $60,000 from the British government to produce a report “advocating a shift away from fossil fuel industries like the Alberta oil sands.” The Pembina Institute’s findings are hardly surprising. The Alberta-based group is well known for being “highly critical of oil sands development,” as the Post notes. It has “called for a moratorium on new projects” in the oil sands, devoting an entire section of its website to undermining efforts to expand production of the world’s largest ethical oil reserve. The British High Commission, which arranged the funding, could have discovered the Pembina’s anti-oil sands bias with just a few clicks.
Canada has a very special relationship with our friends in the United Kingdom, and we don’t expect that this strange decision to fund anti-oil sands efforts will change that. Ottawa certainly didn’t start paying for attacks against U.K. industry when BP – a creation of the British government – caused one of the worst environmental catastrophes in North America, with last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the U.S. Gulf. And the Brits must know that, by comparison, Canadian oil companies have an outstandingly clean environmental record.
It’s almost certain that Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron wasn’t aware, at least till now, that his taxpayers have been footing the bill for activists working to harm Canadian industry. It was left to Nathan Skolski, a spokesman for the British High Commission, to defend the funding. It is, he said, “vital” that his government “persuade other countries to reduce their emissions” because Britain’s “prosperity and security” are threatened by climate change, according to the Post story.
But Canada is responsible for 1.80 per cent of global CO2 emissions; Britain emits 1.73 per cent. We’re hardly much more cause for concern than Skolski’s own countrymen – who, by the way, live in an economy that relies in part on 1.5 million barrels a day of British oil production and a significant coal mining sector, and are increasingly investing in their own forms of unconventional fossil fuel exploration.
Meantime, what Skolski may not realize is that groups like Pembina are threatening Canada’s prosperity and security with their drive to shutter oil sands expansion. Just the other day, the Alberta government approved a new oil sands project at Joslyn, Alta. worth up to $9 billion in investment that will produce 874 million barrels of ethical, Canadian oil over its lifespan. If all that were to disappear, as the Pembina wants, it would seriously damage Canada’s economic potential.
Anti-oil sands groups don’t speak for Canadians
Unfortunately, this Pembina report is just the latest example of how groups that pretend to be stakeholders in Canada’s environment and industry are actually using foreign money to advance their cause. Huge American trusts, such as the Pew Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (which, ironically, rely on fortunes made possible by the oil industry) have been using their multi-billion-dollar endowments to bankroll an army of environmental groups dedicated to fighting the oil sands. As Vancouver researcher Vivian Krause has discovered by poring through U.S. tax records, just the top 20 American grants to anti-oil sands groups alone were worth more than $115 million. The Canadian Boreal Initiative on its own got $60 million from American funders to fight Canadian oil.
Thankfully, the Conservative government has recently expressed its concern over this large, and growing, foreign influence and, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently said, ensure that “the best interests of Canada are protected” against interference in our domestic policy discussions from foreign-funded groups. That’s encouraging to hear. Anti-oil sands groups, like Pembina, try claiming that they represent Canadians with their anti-oil sands campaigns. The fact that they rely on foreign money to fund their attacks makes it clear that they don’t.
Kathryn Marshall is a columnist for 24 Hours Vancouver and a blogger and a commentator on politics and current affairs. She is the spokesperson for EthicalOil.org, a grassroots advocacy organization that encourages people, businesses and governments to choose Ethical Oil from Canada, its oil sands and other liberal democracies.
This column is FREE to use on your websites or in your publications. However, EthicalOil.org and Troy Media, with link to their sites, MUST be credited.
Rebuttal from Pembina Institute to EthicalOil.org commentary
Related posts:
The real issue is, whose money and whose agenda is behind the purchased studies trying to influence Canadians? Is it a Syrian or Iranian trust fund? How about a hedge fund with investments in the carbon market? Is science for sale to the highest bidder? Are these valid reasons that Canadians should support Big Green? Hardly.
To say Canada is no more of a concern than Britain is hardly true. The Canadian population is about half that of Britain's (34 million people versus 62 million) yet, as the article notes, our emissions are even higher than theirs. We are spewing out about twice as much CO2 per capita as they are - which does make us a bigger concern than them. If everyone emitted CO2 at the same rate as the average Canadian, total global output would be incredibly high. Certainly, all countries must work to bring down emissions, but even though Canada counts for only a small portion of the world total, we are some of the worst polluters on the planet on a per capita basis (even Americans don't emit as much on average as we do). Relative to our size, we are a big contributor to the problem.
At 1.8 per cent of the world's CO2 emmissions, Canada is NOT a big contributor. It is a small contributor. In fact, the only reason that Canada's CO2 emmissions are as high as they are is because we are creating energy resources for other countries. Please check your facts. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Actually, of the 190+ countries in the world, Canada is about the eighth-largest emitter (and that's not per capita; it's the absolute national total of CO2 emissions). So yes, Canada emits only about 2 per cent of the world total, but almost every other country on the planet emits less than that. If the world banded together against just the top 10 worst carbon polluters on the planet, we would be on the list of 'bad guys'. So we are a bigger contributer to the problem, in absolute terms, than almost every other nation. It is true that the largest emitters are China (putting out about a whopping 23 per cent of all emissions), the United States (18 per cent), India (5.7 percent), and Russia (5.6 per cent). There is no denying all of them should be working to dramatically cut back their output. But the average Russian uses about half the amount of energy as the average Canadian, the average person in China less than a third that of a Canadian, and the average Indian only about one tenth (according to the International Energy Agency). I can't help but think that if we tell all those countries to reduce their emissions when we consume so much more than them per capita, that they will dismiss us as hypocrites. I think they'll ask, why must we go through all the effort of reducing our emissions while Canadians can just sit back and consume so, so much more than them? They will probably see it as wholly unfair, and ignore our demand. And then nothing will get done. Finally, you argue that our emissions are high because we create energy resources for other countries. It is true that this does have an effect. Still though, Saudi Arabia is responsible for about 12 per cent of global oil production (compared to Canada's approximately 5 per cent), while only being responsible for 1.45 per cent of world emissions. To give another example, Norway has become incredibly wealthy thanks to its oil production, but still only produces 0.17 per cent of total global emissions. So it seems to me that either we are putting out more emissions than them in other areas besides energy production (going against your argument), in which case we should be looking at how we can cut back on our individual pollution footprints; or our energy industry is far dirtier than those of other nations, which is pretty much the exact argument made by environmentalists. Either way, Canada doesn't seem to look very good when it comes to helping reduce carbon emissions. I'm young, and definitely trying not to waste my mind, so if you have any further thoughts on this matter I would love to hear them. I'm still learning and am always open to new ideas - as well as having my own positions challenged.
Facebook
Twitter
StumbleUpon
Digg
Delicious
Kathryn Marshall has largely missed the point, which is that Canadian oil is going to foreign countries and it is not surprising they have something to say about it.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like