Licia Corbella: Vivian Krause shows Canada is a useful idiot to U.S. interests with Bill C-48

The independent researcher has stacks of documents to prove it

If you ever doubted whether Canada’s government is acting like a useful idiot for U.S. interests, the passage Friday of Bills C-48 and C-69 in the Senate provided ample proof. Independent researcher Vivian Krause has stacks of documents to prove it.

But first, in Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney went appropriately nuclear over this.

“The passage of these two bills not only undermines Canada’s economy, but also the Canadian federation,” Kenney said. He’ll undoubtedly be criticized for saying this by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other members of the Laurentian elite. But this isn’t so much a threat as a warning.

“Their passage brings us closer to moving forward with a referendum on a constitutional amendment to eliminate equalization from the Canadian Constitution. If Albertans cannot develop our resources within the federation, then we should not be expected to pay the bill in the federation,” he said.

And it’s a very, very hefty bill. According to Statistics Canada figures, Alberta is the largest net contributor to confederation, by far.

In 2011, $17.88 billion of Albertan’s tax contributions remained in Ottawa; in 2012 it was $19.23 billion; in 2013, $23.51 billion; in 2014, $27.05 billion; in 2015, $25.36 billion; in 2016, $21.81 billion, and in 2017 — still in the grips of a devastating economic slowdown — Alberta contributed $21.80 billion to confederation.

As Kenney pointed out, Bill C-48 is a “prejudicial attack” on Alberta, banning from Canada’s northwest coast “only one product — bitumen — produced in only one province, Alberta.”

The Senate’s standing committee on transport recommended that this flawed legislation be scrapped altogether. It very nearly was, passing by a vote of 49-46. That close call makes it no less devastating to Alberta.

What’s most interesting about these bills is both are completely in line with the aims of foreign-funded NGOs whose stated aim was to “landlock the tar sands.”

Krause — the Vancouver-based researcher, who over the last 10 years has been following the money trail behind environmental activism in Canada — backs up every claim with tax filings and other documents.

She has traced $600 million that has flowed into Canada from U.S. foundations to restrict the development and export of oil and natural gas from Canada and provided the senate committee with an 80-page document that showed each of those grants that specifically refers to a tanker ban in B.C.’s waters.

As she stated in her compelling testimony on May 7 before the senate committee that spent thousands of hours studying Bill C-48, Krause found more than 50 grants that specifically mentioned a tanker ban or tanker traffic.

When Trudeau announced on Nov. 26, 2016, that he would approve the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion but kill Northern Gateway pipeline — which had been approved by the National Energy Board after years of gruelling regulatory hoop jumping by Enbridge and was passed by the Harper government — he also promised a tanker ban.

The reason Trudeau gave for scrapping Northern Gateway and bringing in a tanker ban was because the tanker traffic that would have carried Alberta bitumen to Asia went through an area known as the Great Bear Rainforest.

Krause says that as far back as 1999, the creation of the Great Bear Rainforest has been significantly funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation — the family that ironically founded the U.S. oil industry and made billions doing so. More recently, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation granted $267 million to Canadian environmental groups.

“The top recipient of these funds, Tides Canada, the central proponent of the Great Bear Rainforest, has received $83 million,” Krause told the Senate committee.

Originally, the proposed Kermode bear (which is a white black bear) or Great Bear protected area was just a small part of the B.C. coast. “But now,” Krause said, “environmental and First Nations groups say that along the entire B.C. coast, from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the southern border of Alaska, there can be no tankers anywhere.”

So why are these U.S. foundations doing this?

“Something is being protected here at great expense and cost, but obviously not the bear,” concluded Krause. “What is being protected is the American monopoly on access to exports of Canadian oil. The Great Bear Rainforest has become the great trade barrier, keeping our country out of global energy markets.”

She went on to explain how nearly all of the main organizations that campaigned in favour of Bill C-48 are funded by an initiative called the Tar Sands Campaign — something Krause singlehandedly exposed — as an international effort to sabotage the Canadian oil and gas industry by keeping Canada out of global markets and landlocking Canadian oil to keep the Canadian oil prices low.

“The wording used in some of the grants and other documents is revealing. For example, a grant for $97,000 to West Coast Environmental Law states that the purpose of the funds was: “. . . to constrain development of Alberta’s tar sands by establishing a legislative ban on crude oil tankers on British Columbia’s north coast.”

As Krause told the committee, “Note that the funds are not to bring about a ban in order to protect the coast, but rather to get a legislative tanker ban as a way to thwart the Canadian oil industry.”

Is it any wonder the senate committee urged the senate on the whole to vote against this disastrous, discriminatory bill that turns our federal government into America’s useful idiot?

“Another document, a proposal submitted to a U.S. funder, states that its intended outcome was ‘public pressure directed at the Canadian government encouraging a legislated ban on oil tankers in B.C. inshore waters.’ That proposal goes on to say in the very next sentence, ‘Simply put, if tankers are banned, no pipeline will ever be built.’”

Krause, who chooses her words carefully, then said: “For years, politicians have ignored, tolerated and acquiesced to this falsely premised activism. It is time that this comes to an end. It is time that this committee brings this scam to an end by rejecting Bill C-48. The Kermode bear merits protection, but there’s no point in putting off limits the entire B.C. coast in order to protect a bear that doesn’t live there.”

Only fools would do that. Cue Trudeau.

Licia Corbella is a Postmedia opinion columnist.

lcorbella@postmedia.com

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