Environmental groups boost for the Liberals, not to save the planet but to turn back time
Environmentalist groups seem to boost for the Liberal Party regardless of the poor Liberal record on the environment. Some people are starting to wonder exactly why that is. If they read my blog, they would know. But I don't mind explaining it again. It has nothing to do with the environment, of course. It has everything to do with money, and more accurately, going back to a time when money was dolled out with no strings attached.
Finally, environmentalists are being called out as being political partisans, willing to sell out the environment and their own intellectual honesty in order to see the Liberals return to power:
Canada's high-profile environmentalists have set themselves up as the Earth's lobbyists but some critics accuse them of concealing less lofty sympathies.
Insiders from three federal parties told The Canadian Press they have concerns that some of the activists judging climate-change action have become too cosy with the Liberals.
They say the Liberals had a poor record on acting to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while in power for 13 years but faced much less criticism than the current Tory government.
As one internal Conservative memo recently noted: "These environmentalists need to be exposed for their hidden agenda - support the Liberal party at all costs."
Environmentalists seem all too willing to label the Liberals as Canada's environment party despite the fact that the Liberals achieved nothing on the Kyoto file. The last environment minister, who accomplished nothing on the environment, was none other than the current leader Stephane Dion.
When it was pointed out during a Liberal Party leadership debate that he accomplished nothing, all he could do was mewl pathetically about the difficulty of setting priorities.
And Stephane Dion is an environmental hero?
Stephane Dion is irrelevant and can be ignored. His environmental policy is uttterly unrelated to why environmentalists are so eager to get the Liberals re-elected, which also explains why his record is so conveniently ignored.
The real reason is money.
While Stephane Dion was environment minister in 2005-2006, these environmental groups received vast amounts of money through grants and transfers:
Consider these numbers. They are the funds received by environmental groups in 2005-2006, while Stephane Dion was environment minister:
- Pembina Institute: $403,240
- Sage Foundation: $107,000
- Climate Action Network: $1,783,769
The Pembina Institutes essentially subcontracts itself as the Liberal Party environment office:
The Pembina Institute denied any partisanship, saying they had merely provided analysis to the Liberals as they would to any party that asked. [The Institute's Matthew Bramley] noted that [Environment Minister John Baird] himself had asked the institute for briefing notes on his latest plan, though declined to engage in the kind of broad policy discussions Pembina was accustomed to under the Liberals.
"We released an in-depth careful analysis of the government's most recent proposals on greenhouse gases at the end of May, and the only response we've had from Minister Baird is an apparent attempt to attack our reputation instead of dealing with the substantive issues we raised," Bramley said.
But a Liberal insider who spoke on condition of anonymity said Bramley was intimately involved the [Liberal Party's] Carbon Budget, and even helped draft questions for Liberal MPs to ask of various witnesses during committee hearings.
"Nothing went into the plan without Matthew Bramley's prior approval," said the Liberal.
The Sage Institute was deeply involved in making sure the Liberals looked like they knew what they were doing, and making that point to the press, pretending to be an independent and unbaised opinion:
One of the main targets of criticism has been Louise Comeau of the Sage Centre and Climate for Change.
Comeau is a widely consulted environmentalist who has been on the beat for 20 years, a fixture at such high-profile events as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the meetings that formed the Kyoto Protocol in Japan in 1997.
She also provided advice, while at a previous job at the Sierra Club of Canada, to the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.
But Comeau had the closest relationship with the Liberals under Paul Martin. That began around 2000 when Martin unveiled funds for green municipal projects, and Comeau was working at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Comeau acknowledges she was consulted on the Liberal Kyoto plan called Project Green in 2005, but insists she was not involved in the actual writing of the document. One former government official saw it differently, saying Comeau was deeply involved in the formulation of the Liberal plan. Comeau also commented on the plan in the media as an environmentalist.
That same year, Comeau and Martin's former policy adviser Brian Guest formed a think-tank called the Canadian Centre for Policy Ingenuity, of which Climate for Change is a direct offshoot. Guest left the organization to help Stephane Dion's Liberal leadership campaign last year.
What these environmentalists are doing is helping the Liberals with their green camouflage. We know that senior Liberals like John Duffy and Nicole Foster Woollatt are, or have been recently, lobbyists for major polluters and greenhouse gas emitting industries.
The environmentalists turn a blind eye, allowing the Liberals to enrich themselves with this lobbying. As long as it is only a conservative like me putting this information out, no one will take it too seriously. A "respected" environmentalist would have to make noise, but none will do it, so the Liberals can pretend to be green and still make money being very ungreen.
This works as long as environmentalists continue to insist publicly that the Liberals are green.
But I still haven't explained why. In fact, I've written about this before. It's not just because of the money. The Conservatives could double the grants, and it wouldn't blunt the attacks environmentalist organizations aim at them. The problem for environmentalists is that the Conservatives have passed the Accountability Act. It will subject the millions that the environmentalists have been receiving to possible audits, as well as requiring the potential recipients to justify why they ought to receive the money in the first place.
To have that Act repealed and to return to the days when millions would flow to their organizations with no strings is of paramount importance. If that means portraying do-nothing Liberals who lobby for major polluters as the one-and-only choice for Canadians who worry about the environment, then so be it.
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Comments
The Canadian environmental groups must be held accountable for their years of silence during the Chretien-Martin-Dion government, while our GHGs exceeded our Kyoto targets by 35% and not a peep out of them or the Liberal MSM.
The whole thing stinks of payoffs that were used to buy out the environmental groups on the take of government funding.
Posted by: Sophie at July 8, 2007 10:04 PM
"The Conservatives could double the grants, and it wouldn't blunt the attacks environmentalist organizations aim at them."
Sure the could, but THEY DIDN'T did they, in fact they SLASHED, so you point is beyond useless. You chastize the Liberals for funding good research, done by experts in the field.
You can spin this issue all you want, but the fact of the matter is the Conservatives immediately came to office and started cutting programs, despite the fact they had little real justification, other than they disdain for the environment. These aren't "environmentalists", they're called "experts", respected internationally.
What the Cons have done on the environmental file is the equivalent of ignoring constitutional lawyers on Senate reform. You are running with Baird's tortured logic, and I would point out, that while disappointed that anyone in the "liberal media", lol, would give this crap credence, the article ends with the true motivations- Tory dodge and weave, abdicating responsibility.
My rebuttal. The only partisans in this debate are people like yourself looking for excuses to justify you government's utter failure. Cheers.
Posted by: Steve V at July 8, 2007 10:14 PM
I don't believe it - you've actually fallen for the CPC spin machine again.
LOL, LOL
Posted by: Sara at July 9, 2007 08:28 AM
Steve V & Sara...
Conservatives have a tendency (as a mindset, if not always in practice) of trying to reduce waste in Government spending, instead of rewarding it. What EXACTLY were the successes that these groups had during the Liberal reign of error that had ANY positive effect on Canadian governmental policy?
...
Can somebody shut up the crickets? I can't hear the answer...
Posted by: the_whiteotter at July 9, 2007 08:56 AM
Two Liberals come on here and absolutely ignore the issues raised in the article. Why isn't that a surprise?
What I found striking about the article is that it showed two environmentalists outright lying to the press about their associations with the Liberal party. They both explicitly denied their involvement, only to be contradicted by actual Liberal insiders — who, as I write on my own blog, don't seem to have any problems stabbing their Stephane Dion in the back in the process.
Is it money? Yes. Is it the Accountability Act? Sure. Although the latter won't be rescinded any time soon, so support for the Liberals on this front probably doesn't really matter.
Steve J, in the end, it's also about ideology. The environmentalists still see the Liberals as the best way to stop Harper, so they support the Liberals. I think it's as simple as that.
They hate Harper and what he stands for, so they'll bend over backwards supporting ideological friends.
As much as the right is constantly accused of doing this, it's the left that actually does it.
To them, ideology trumps all.
It's why, for example, public servants in the foreign affairs bureaucracy feel perfectly comfortable creating their own foreign policy, and why Toronto Star writers like James Travers feel perfectly comfortable defending them.
It's their agenda. It's their ideology. And it must be protected at all costs.
Democracy? Truth?
Who cares about all that. When you're dealing with the pseudo-religion of political liberalism, none of that matters. Power, and keeping it away from the other guys, is what counts. I think the environmentalists and the civil service are perfect examples of putting that method of operation into practise.
Posted by: Dennis (Second Thoughts) at July 9, 2007 09:05 AM
Steve V. ... in your "rebuttal" you are correct in that the Conservatives cut funding to environmental groups who you claim were doing good research. Harper doesn't believe in global warming, and he doesn't want to restrict Canada's 2.1% miniscule contribution to global GHGs, since the US, China, India are not restricted.
What is disconcerting is that the Liberals knowingly allowed GHGs to rise 35% above our Kyoto targets, and your precious liberalized environmental groups did squat to hold Chretien-Martin-Dion's feet to the fire. Why should they, they were doing good research while Canada's GHGs skyrocketed. Please tell us why this happened? Why were the environmental groups and the liberalized MSM so lax in their reporting on Canada's GHGs increases?
I'll tell you what I think happened. The Liberals intentionally wanted to boost Canada's GHGs because they knew the only way to meet the Kyoto targets would be to (a) shut down the oil sands, coal-fired power stations, ban SUVs, or, (b) purchase Billions of dollars worth of Kyoto Carbon Credits from countries like China, Russia, India.
I suspect the Liberals were going to go to plan (b), since then environment minister Dion's 2004 Project Green plan had allocated $5 Billion for Kyoto Carbon Credits, which would have only covered a small portion of our GHG excess. It's interesting to note that the Liberal eminence grise, PowerCorp-CITIC were heavily involved in building high sulphur coal fired power stations in China, while Paul Martin's CSL were building two specialized coal carrying vessels in China to transport that high sulphur coal around the Sea of China and into the inland rivers to fuel those same power stations. This is all uncommon knowledge but available on the internet if you search it out. You connect the dots.
The environmental groups were in the Liberal's pocket due to the generous government funding, and that is undisputable. These groups were fully aware of Canada's GHGs increases and our Kyoto targets, which their good research would have determined easily. Now these environmental groups are attacking Harper because he stated that Canada would not purchase international carbon credits with Canadian taxpayer's money to mitigate the Liberal's intentional 35% intentional GHG excess over Kyoto.
These environmental groups are in my view complicit in the coverup of the Liberal's delinquency in meeting our Kyoto commitments in a timely manner. They are as corrupt as the Liberals.
Posted by: Anony at July 9, 2007 12:06 PM
My wife took an environmental course in university last fall the prof asks the class what did the liberals do for the environment in their 12 yrs in power.
Seems he fell for the cpc spin machine toomaybe exon pays profs at Manitoba universities.
Or, he's telling the truth.
He said "nothing at all," none of the liberals posting here have refuted that.
Some people expressed shock, none of the people here who want to help fund liberals have offered much that Chretien Et al actually did.
smokescreens might work on the MSM's, but...
Two Liberals come on here and absolutely ignore the issues raised in the article.
In other news the earth did a revolution yesterday.
Why isn't that a surprise?
Because they have only dingoes kidneys and bluster, because the facts are after all a bit embarassing.
Posted by: DrWright at July 9, 2007 03:03 PM
The Liberals are in one frantic scramble like rats on a sinking ship. Expect to hear more lies as they play the defensive, hopelessly.
Hey, even some of the fading "stars" of the weekend
Gore crap extravaganza know what's up.
Al is in for a rough ride and soon.
Was it an "Inconvenient Truth" or a Convenient Lie and big money making scheme? Let's follow the money.
Somewhere buried in all this filthy ruse is the granddaddy of Kyoto, Mo Strong, still AT IT.
Posted by: Libby at July 9, 2007 06:00 PM
Hello All,
Just to correct one inaccurate statement made by Steve -- the Accountability Act contains no measures that do anything to change the likelihood that government grants to any person or organization will be audited.
This is just one of many things that the Accountability Act does not do. In fact, it weakens ethics rules for the Prime Minister, Cabinet ministers, their staff, Cabinet appointees and senior government officials, and also contains only 30 of the 52 measures that the Conservatives promised to include in the Accountability Act.
And no, the opposition parties did not prevent the Conservatives from including the 22 measures they promised, but failed, to include in the Accountability Act. In fact, the Liberal-controlled Senate proposed amending the Act to add 6 of the Conservatives' 22 promised measures, but the Conservatives rejected the proposed amendments.
So while the Accountability Act is the most comprehensive government accountability law passed in the history of Canada, it is also 60 percent of what was promised, and Stephen Harper, John Baird and other Cabinet ministers lied to get into power and have gone on to lie several times about what is, and what is not, in the Accountability Act.
For details go to:
http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/RelsJun1307.html
Bye for now,
Duff Conacher, Coordinator
Democracy Watch
Posted by: Duff Conacher at July 10, 2007 12:17 PM
Too bad the Conservatives are such liars there Duff. The Liberals never lie of course, well, maybe sometimes, but only when the truth doesn't suit the agenda, then it's necessary to lie to all us schmucks and rubes.
The Petit Gar from Shawinigan got elected to a majority simply by saying he'd scrap the GST and didn't. He compounded the lie by saying he didn't say it even though he was clipped on TV saying it.
Another big example of a lying politician is Dalty McGuinty. Premier of Ontario, he broke about every election promise he made. Oh, but wait a minute, he's a Liberal. See the pattern?
The Conservatives have a way to go to catch up, sure hope they don't even try.
Posted by: Libby at July 10, 2007 08:29 PM
 
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