The Dominion - corruption

Secret Meeting Planned, then Cancelled, between ENGOs and Tar Sands Companies

dru — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 12:50:54 +0000

Invitees included Tzeporah Berman, World Wildlife Fund, ForestEthics

MONTREAL—A secret meeting between top Canadian Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGOs) and tar sands corporations was cancelled after word of the meeting spread beyond the initial invitees, according to two emails leaked to The Dominion.

Billed as a "fireside chat" and an opportunity for "deeper dialogue" in a room at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the invitation was sent by Marlo Raynolds of the Pembina Institute on behalf of himself and Gord Lambert of Suncor. Suncor is the fifth-largest oil company in North America, and the Pembina institute is a high-profile advocate for sustainable energy in Alberta. The invitation was marked "confidential."

Ten representatives each from tar sands operators and high-profile environmental groups were invited to the "informal, beer in hand" gathering. The David Suzuki Foundation, Environmental Defence Canada, Forest Ethics, Pollution Probe and Tides Canada were among the invited environmental groups. Merran Smith of ForestEthics was listed without affiliation, as was Tzeporah Berman, who worked to privatize BC's rivers as director of PowerUp Canada, and who is slated to start work this month as Greenpeace International's Climate Campaigner. Among invited oil companies were Shell, ConocoPhilips, Total and Statoil. Leading tar sands investor Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) was also on the guestlist.

The event would be, the invitation explained, "an opportunity for a few ENGOs and a few companies to share their thoughts on the current state of relations and explore ideas on how a deeper dialogue might occur."

Three days later, Raynolds sent a second email, cancelling the gathering, owing to "the level of tension" between "a subset of companies and a subset of ENGOs." The followup email specified a legal dispute. Sources in Albertan environmental circles suggested pressure to cancel came from threats to expose the meeting publicly.

"I personally believe we all need to find a way to create the space and conditions necessary for deeper and meaningful conversations to find some solutions," wrote Raynolds, explaining the cancellation. "I do hope that in the coming months, we can work to create those conditions."

The invitation to the secret meeting came as several of the invited groups had signed on to an open letter to Enbridge, asking it to cancel the Northern Gateway Pipeline, which would pipe tar sands crude to BC's central coast, to be put on oil tankers. The letter was published as a full page ad in the Globe and Mail.

In 2008, the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Boreal Initiative (financed by the Pew Charitable Trusts; see "Can Pew's Charity be Trusted?," November 2007) released a report proposing "conservation offsets" as a way to mitigate the destruction of biodiversity by tar sands operations.

According to Pembina, conservation offsets "allow resource companies to compensate for the unavoidable impact to biodiversity from their development projects by conserving lands of equal or greater biological value, with the objective of having no net loss in biodiversity."

Pembina acknowledged a contribution of $44,000 from tar sands operator Nexen for the "costs of the document."

Petr Cizek, a land use planner and long-time critic of ENGOs' campaigns because of their lack of transparency and accountability, said it is to be expected that prominent environmental groups will meet in secret with oil companies.

"Is this surprising? No. Is this blatant? Yes," Cizek said.

"The issue isn't negotiation or compromise. I've done lots of both in my time. The issue is whether the negotiations are transparent and the organizations are democratic. Virtually none of these organizations are democratic," he said.

Environmentalists invited to the secret meeting have come under fire by grassroots environmental activists for their secretive, back-room approach to negotiations with corporations in previous campaigns. Tzeporah Berman and Merran Smith both acted as negotiators when ForestEthics and other BC ENGOs accepted a deal that protected 20 per cent of the Great Bear Rainforest.

Some grassroots organizations and First Nations were furious at the deal, which settled for half the minimum protected area outlined in protocol agreements signed by environmental groups and First Nations prior to the negotiations. (The area protected by the Great Bear deal was later increased to 30 per cent after First Nations' land use plans forced reconsideration of some of the concessions.)

Cizek said he is not bothered by the outcome of negotiations, but by the lack of accountability and public oversight.

"My issue isn't the fact that they protected only 30 per cent, or that they protected the wrong 30 per cent. In some cases, maybe that is all that you can achieve. These negotiations can be really ugly. I've been there," he said.

"My issue is that they lied to and betrayed and broke a deal they had with the smaller organizations."

In a 2009 interview published in the report Offsetting Resistance, Valhalla Wilderness Society (one of the smaller organizations Cizek mentioned) Director Anne Sherrod made the connection between the Great Bear Rainforest agreement and the tar sands.

"These are greenwashing deals. I am speaking out about this because there is evidence that the collaborative agreement industry may be moving to the tar sands," said Sherrod.

"I want everyone to know that issues where people are dying of cancer from serious pollution is no place for this kind of thing. Open public process is your best friend in situations like this. Insist on it."

Dru Oja Jay is a member of the Dominion editorial collective. He is co-author, with Macdonald Stainsby, of the report Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River.

Suncor Toad

Calderón's Ambassador to Canada has Blood on his Hands

dawn — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:57:50 +0000

167783.jpg

Francisco Barrio Terrazas, Mexico's new ambassador to Canada, assumed the cushy diplomatic posting on February 26th, 2009. He had previously served as mayor of Ciudad Juarez, known as the Murder Capital of North America, and later as governor of Chihuahua state.

That's right ladies and gents.

Representing the regime of Felipe Calderón in Canada is a man who governed a city where more four hundred women have been killed since 1993. Many of the women killed were sexually assaulted first. Barrio Terrazas refused to call for an investigation until 1998.

"We can't accept that Canada, a model country that's culture is based on the respect of human rights and rule of law, could shelter a person who tolerated the murder and rapes of women and girls," reads a statement concerning Barrio Terrazas' appointment from May our Daughters Come Home, a women's group based in Juarez.

As if that weren't bad enough (because it certainly is), Barrio Terrazas has an equally distinguished past as governor of Chihuahua:

"During the Fox administration, the drug cartels penetrated the federal police and the security apparatus in Mexico in unprecedented levels, when (Barrio Terrazas) was the man in charge of making sure the federal bureaucracy operated without fraud, waste and abuse," Tony Payan from the University of Texas at El Paso told the Canadian Press.

February Economic Armageddon: Recap

Geordie — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:47:23 +0000

The meltdown of the economy is becoming so common and widespread it has been hard to keep track of everything that is going on. Briefly:

In Canada, media empires including
CTV, Torstar, Quebecor and Canwest continue to flounder along with a whole host of other media outlets across the continent.
At the same time, Canadian pension funds, most of the big banks, Nortel, Walmart Canada, GM and a number of agricultural and mining industries are being hit with massive losses.

South of the border, thing are looking a little rough for the folks in the halls of power.

Barack Obama is strutting out the biggest budget in US history which looks to (supposedly) raise taxes on the upper classes, cut Medicare to give more people health care and rip into Pentagon spending, military contractors and agri-business. The US economy meanwhile contracted 6.2% in the last 3 months of 2008.
The "Sage of Omaha", Warren Buffet is sage-no-more having admitted to $11.5 billion in losses.

Credit Crisis and Africa

Geordie — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:14:34 +0000

The Rwandan New Times has an interesting article on how global economic problems are affecting African industry.

The continent’s tourism sector, remittances from abroad and Aid flows will dramatically fall as a result of the global crisis.

“African governments will have to reduce their expenditure because they are not going to get as much aid. Governments should prepare themselves by concentrating on domestic growth to sustain the economies because ultimately even the export market will be affected and there will be reduced sales,” said Betty Maina, Executive Director of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.

Inside the Deal to Save the US Economy

Geordie — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 00:34:47 +0000

A strange and incredible amount of information is flowing from the Guardian about the inner workings of the $700 billion deal between Republicans and Democrats to bail out the US economy.

It's tough to judge what is real and what is fake but there some incredible stuff coming out.

According to one report, a deal had been reached by all parties until a group of hard-right, free-market Republicans met privately with McCain and threw a new "free-market" proposal into the mix.

Their behaviour at the meeting was a study in contrasts, according to press accounts. Obama, granted deference by his fellow Democrats, led off the debate.

Then [Republican minority house leader] Boehner made his move, throwing down a plan that differed wildly from the one under discussion. McCain, asked for his opinion, stayed silent - and that, according to those at the meeting, was taken by his fellow Republicans as a sign of his support for the Republican revolt.

Ironically, a Republican on the Senate banking committee, Richard Shelby, was doing his best to paraphrase the thesis of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine; that in a state of crisis the ideas lying around are the ones which get used:

"They're trying to push this in an emotional state, saying the sky's falling on our heads," he said. "Every time we have rushed to judgment in the past, we have paid for it."

American Investment Industry Vanishes

Geordie — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:11:43 +0000

wall street.jpg

With the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and the subsiqent transformation of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the titans of Americas investment industry has now been wiped off the map.

How bad is it and what does it mean?

A couple of US Congress members who had a nice little chat with the US Fed Chairmen and the US Treasury Secretary had this to say last Friday:

"We’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally. Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words. We have never heard language like this."

But is it all a smoke-screen designed to give the Fed and Treasury complete control over bail-out money? According to economist Paul Krugman:

"Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a "clean" plan. "Clean," in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review "by any court of law or any administrative agency," and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal."

Anti-Capitalists on the Sub-Prime Crisis

Geordie — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 05:05:31 +0000

Many popular anti-capitalists are interviewed in the Guardian regarding their view on the current sub-prime crisis.

Chris Harman - Socialist Workers Party

"The whole system is unwinding; the other day we saw the biggest nationalisation in the history of humanity and that still wasn't enough.

"This could be a big moment for the left. But we really need to stand up and use the "c" word, say this is a crisis of capitalism and that people are suffering."

Sheila Rowbotham - Socialist feminist

"The problem now - unlike in the 1880s, when people discovered the ideas of socialism, and in the 1930s, when it seemed that communism was the solution - is that the left doesn't have a coherent alternative vision."

Hari Kunzru - Novelist

"In New York apparently, 12,000 jobs went, just like that, and Wall Street represents 20% of the city's jobs and something like 90% its tax base. So there's a definite sense here of systemic crisis.

"This will only genuinely become a crisis of capitalism if people generally become aware that much of the growth and prosperity produced by capitalism is a fiction."

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae "Nationalized"

Geordie — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:01:48 +0000

Over $5 trillion in troubled mortgages have been taken over (read: nationalized) by the US government. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (the two largest mortgage providers in the US) have been put into "conservatorship" in order to stop them from collapsing.

This is the biggest government bailout in US history and comes on the heels of Royal Bank chief executive Gordon Nixon saying that the global financial system has been "pushed to the brink".

Can Pew's Charity be Trusted?

dru — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:36:30 +0000

US foundations give millions to Canadian environmental groups

Since major foundations in the US began funding environmental groups in the late 1980s, many grassroots environmental activists have sounded the alarm about the rise of the "Big Greens." Featuring six-figure salaries and foundation funding, critics say the large environmental NGOs coopt grassroots movements and excercise control over what issues are brought up.

Recently, some activists are warning of a similar shift in Canada. In 2006, land-use planner Petr Cizek wrote an article for Canadian Dimension, calling attention to millions of dollars from US foundations being given to Canadian environmental groups.

The money comes from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is endowed by the fortune of Joseph Pew and his heirs, as well as more recent donors. Joseph Pew founded Sun Oil, now Sunoco, a US oil company with revenues of $36 billion in 2006. Under Pew, Sun Oil also founded Suncor, a Canadian counterpart to Sun Oil and currently one of the two largest operations in Alberta's tar sands. Suncor has been independent since 1995.

Sunoco's US refineries process synthetic crude oil from the tar sands. According to a 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer report, a Sunoco-run Ohio refinery processes 100,000 barrels of synthetic crude per day.

The Pew foundation's original mission reflects on "the evils of bureaucracy, the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people, and the values of the free market." Pew money has funded many right-wing Christian groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society, and the American Enterprise Institute.

In the early 1990s, the Pew Trusts began funding environmental groups.

Since 2003, Pew has spent about $41 million on programs on the Canadian boreal forest. Much of this money went environmental and aboriginal groups, and came into Canada via through the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI). CBI is technically a project of Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group operating in the US and Canada, though this relationship is not stated in materials on CBI's web site. CBI has no board of directors, and no official status as an organization other than its affiliation with Ducks Unlimited. Critics point out that there that this leaves no mechanism for holding CBI accountable for how it uses its money.

According to Executive Director Larry Innes, CBI gives out approximately $2 million per year, though the figure varies. The money is disbursed in roughly equal measure to conservation NGOs and aboriginal groups. Suncor, among others, is listed as one of CBI's "industry partners."

Does the money have an effect on the groups' agenda? "Our role is convener and talent scout," says Innes. CBI's aim is to be "in a position to advance conservation objectives." In many cases, CBI sets up meetings between industry, aboriginal groups and conservationists in order to establish common priorities.

Lindsay Telfer, director of the Sierra Club's Prairie Region, which has received CBI funding in the past, says that groups need to be careful with funding sources.

"Is there a risk that some environmental groups are going to go down a more conservative path because they get funding? I don't doubt that," Telfer told the Dominion. "We have to keep our eyes on our mandates and our goals."

"I believe I've lost funding because of our positions on the tar sands, but where I've lost it, I've picked it up in other places," says Telfer. "It's a difficult debate, because in some ways all money is dirty money."

"The question to ask is, 'Are there ties to how that money is being spent?'"

Cizek says his critique of Pew funding "doesn't have to do with whether money is tainted, but whether a funder directly interferes with the agenda of an environmental organization."

"The Pew Charitable Trusts have consistently set up front groups" that act as a drag on the overall demands of environmental groups, Cizek says.

He sees a "pattern of funding from CBI" corresponding to "a pattern of incredible timidity among the mainstream environmental organizations, who don't seem to be able to take a principled stand on anything." Cizek notes that Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF), two major recipients of CBI funding listed as "partners" in CBI's TV ads, have taken a "low-hanging fruit" strategy of lobbying for protection of areas that are of little interest to industry.

Innes says CBI was founded to address a "tremendous opportunity to do development differently in Canada." The opportunity, Innes say, is the culmination of a series of trends in conservation work: the recognition of treaty rights, the willingness of some corporations to embrace "sustainable practices," and the trend among conservationists to protect entire areas instead of chasing biodiversity "hotspots".

"It's one thing to walk in as an environmental group" and speak to policymakers, says Innes, "and another thing to walk in as an environmental group, shoulder to shoulder with First Nations and industry representatives and saying, 'we've got a solution.'"

The CBI is "pretty up-front about wanting to protect at least half of Canada's boreal, and do responsible management where development is going to occur," says Innes.

It's this industry-friendly approach to conservation that many activists object to. The problem with the consensus-building approach, critics say, is that avoiding conflict with corporations means that the fundamental problems with mining or logging that provoked popular resistance in the first place are not addressed.

"In the 1970s and 1980s a vibrant, truly grassroots public land protection movement emerged--first in the West and then nation-wide," writes Felice Pace of Oregon's Ancient Forest Campaign in a 2004 article. "During the 1990s Pew, with support from other foundations, moved decisively to control this movement."

"Pew favors concentrating on 'low hanging fruit,'" writes Pace. "That is, wilderness areas which local congressmen and senators are eager to support because they are not controversial."

In his 1996 book Washington Babylon, US-based author Alex Cockburn noted that "the Pew Trusts' endowment is wisely invested in the very corporations that a vigorous environmental movement would adamantly be opposing."

"In its initial National Forest Campaign, Pew demanded that recipients of grant money agree to focus their attention on government actions; corporate wrongdoers were not to be named. This extreme plan was modified after some recipients balked."

Cockburn writes that just one of the Pew Trusts made $205 million in "investment income" in 1993 from investments in companies like Weyerhaeuser, International Paper, and Atlantic Richfield. Cockburn notes that at the time this was "six times as large as all of Pew's environmental dispensations." Today, however, Pew is reportedly not as heavily invested in resources extraction.

A more recent attempt at cooperation between industry, First Nations and environmentalists in British Columbia has recently drawn the ire of grassroots activists. In 2006, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network and ForestEthics celebrated a major agreement for the preservation of the Great Bear Rainforest. A year later, however, logging companies have ramped up clearcut logging to levels that are "unprecedented in 15 years," in order to gather as much timber as possible before the agreement takes effect in 2009. To make matters worse, "ecosystem-based management" techniques named in the agreement have yet to be defined. Meanwhile, environmental groups agreed to stop the direct action campaign that had previously halted logging, enabling the sped-up clearcutting to continue unimpeded.

“They made the Central Coast an environmental-protest-free zone,” Nuxalk hereditary chief Qwatsinas told the Dominion earlier this year. (See A Clearcut Answer?) “They’ve given away too much. It takes time to get the market campaign, the boycott campaign going again. Think about those strengths that were given up -- the power that they had in making demands, but it’s gone now. What else can they use?”

"We've found organized, institutional environmentalism has failed over the last four years to accomplish anything," forest campaigner Ingmar Lee told the Dominion. "The successes have come from individual grassroots efforts that have basically bypassed the entrenched, bureaucratic, environmental institutions that have been sucking up the enviro-buck and just not getting the kind of accomplishments we need."

Cizek agrees. "In the US," he says, "it has been pointed out that the organizations that are taking a principled stand are the community organizations, the ones whose neighbourhoods are being destroyed." The "Big Greens," says Cizek, often serve to tell local groups that they're asking the impossible, but when proven wrong, take credit for their achievements.

"And they often win the biggest victories."

"Victories," says Cizek, "will not be achieved in Washington, DC, or in Ottawa. They will be achieved on the front lines. The people on the front lines are the ones who are under attack directly. They're not policy wonks trying to figure out what public opinion will tolerate. For them, it's a matter of survival, in many cases it's a matter of life or death."

When discussing the tar sands, Cizek says that the groups receiving CBI funding have been extremely timid. CPAWS, WWF, Pembina, the Sierra Club and others signed a statement calling for a "carbon neutral" tar sands by 2020 through the purchase of "carbon offsets," but said nothing about slowing down or stopping tar sands development itself. A short time later, the Sierra Club called for a moratorium on tar sands development. But it was only after arch-conservative former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed called for a moratorium that CPAWS and Pembina followed suit. WWF Canada has remained silent, though its UK counterpart has recently called for a moratorium.

"To their utter embarassment, the big greens found themselves trailing far behind the curve of public opinion," says Cizek, "and had to scramble to catch up." But the moratorium on new developments, according to Cizek, still does not address the damage that will be done to the water and land by operations that have already been approved.

Groups in Canada that have received money from the Pew Charitable Trusts via the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI), according to CBI director Larry Innes:

Boreal Forest Network
Center for Science in Public Participation
CPAWS
Ducks Unlimited
David Suzuki Foundation
Ecotrust Canada
Fondation de la faune
Forest Ethics
Forest Stewardship Council of Canada
Global Forest Watch
Manitoba Wildlands
Miningwatch
Nature Canada
Nature Conservancy of Canada
Nature Quebec
Northwatch
Ontario Nature
Pembina Institute
Protected Areas Association of Newfoundland & Labrador
Reseau Quebecois Groups des Ecologistes
Saskatchewan Environmental Society
Sierra Legal Defense Fund
Silva Forest Foundation
SNAP
The Sustainability Network
The Wild Foundation
Western Canada Wilderness Committee
Western Newfoundland Model Forest
Wildlands League
Wildlife Conservation Society
World Wildlife Fund
Yukon Conservation Society

Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Bloodvein First Nation
Carrier Sekani Tribal Council
Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources
Dehcho First Nations
Grassy Narrows First Nation
Innu Nation
Kaska Dena Council
Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation
Little Grand Rapids First Nation
Little Red River Cree First Nation
Lutsel’ke Dene First Nation
Moose Cree First Nation
Mistissini Cree First Nation
National Aboriginal Forestry Association
Nishnawbe Aski Nation
Pauingassi First Nation
Poplar River First Nation
Prince Albert Grand Council
Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta
Treaty 8 Tribal Association (BC)
West Moberly First Nation

CPAWS did not respond to an interview request, and a WWF representative declined to be interviewed.

"This is a very high-level political process that's going on," he adds. "This is about cutting closed back-room deals at the very political top, and allowing the environmentalists to achieve some concessions through dealings at the political top to manage their dissent into appropriate channels, so that the industries maintain their right to operate."

Sierra Club's Lindsay Telfer says that too much time is spent denouncing others within environmental and social justice circles. "That's something I've always found frustrating--divisiveness," says Telfer. "I'm more than supportive of other groups that call for more than what the Sierra Club calls for."

Telfer also comes to the defense of those who call for less. "I don't buy into the arguments that CBI is all bad, that Pew is all bad," says Telfer. "I try not to get involved in the infighting." She says she would take money from the CBI in the future if it fits the needs of a particular campaign. "If we're fundraising for a project that has specific goals, I'll take money from people who support those goals," though she adds that the Sierra Club has strict standards concerning who it accepts money from.

Cizek sees a need for a "profound dialogue about the democratic and non-democratic aspects of environmental organizations." Many environmental organizations are private non-profits with few accountability mechanisms. The WWF, for example, has only subscribers, no members. The Pembina Institute, he says, takes money directly from oil companies, to which it sells carbon credits. The Sierra Club is "one of the more democratic of these environmental organizations," he says, and that is "perhaps why they were able to initially take a more principled stand" on projects like the tar sands and the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline.

But he emphasizes that "it's not about quibbling about calling for a moratorium or a shut down," but "what were the processes by which you came to this point, and how might your funders have influenced this decision? What do they actually expect to settle for?"

"Do they actually believe in this insane program of the tar sands becoming carbon neutral by purchasing carbon offsets?," he asks, referring to a statement signed by several groups before Lougheed called for a moratorium.

The CBI's Larry Innes says that the issue of accountability is "an interesting question." His response to it is candid.

"We're accountable to those people who write us a cheque every year," says Innes. "If we don't achieve the kind of goals that they're interested in spending their money on, the funding stops."

For Innes, "a more interesting question is why we need US funding at all. Why is the environmental movement in Canada so small and poorly funded? Where is all the Canadian money? Why aren't Canadian philanthropists (with a few notable exceptions) investing in Canada's environmental and social justice movements?"

Depending on which explanation of foundation funding one finds more convincing, what CBI is accountable for accomplishing and why Canadians aren't providing the same levels of funding to conservationists will have very different answers.

Open Pits

Scars