Federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair, conflating economy with environment, has repeatedly claimed that Alberta’s oil sands are decimating manufacturing jobs in the east by keeping our dollar high.
Mulcair’s comments are disconnected from economic reality. Oil sands dollars spread across Canada’s manufacturing sector. They buy manufactured products from across Canada directly employing 1 in 4 Canadians; indirectly, 1 in 9.
Ironically a trail of funding links Mulcair’s party and policies directly to foreign funds killing Canadian jobs, and manipulating politics and the economy for profit’s sake.
Mulcair is an important cog in a giant anti oil sands wheel turned by Tides Canada – the Canadian branch of the Tides Foundation, a multi-million dollar American grants facilitator. Researcher Vivian Krause has linked the Tides anti-oil sands campaign funding to 36 eco-activist NGOs, many closely allied with the NDP.
Mulcair’s March 2012 case against Alberta’s oil sands in Policy Options is largely based on Andrew Nikiforuk’s work Tar Sands, co-published by the Tides-surrogate Suzuki Foundation.
Tides Canada plays politics openly, funding Vancouver Mayor and BC provincial NDP Gregor Robinson for some $400,000 dollars. As described by Joel Solomon of Tides-associated Renewal Partners, they aim at “…creating conditions where [progressive] things could take hold. Nearly 20 years of moving in a purposeful direction.”
Thus Tides may be issuing tax receipts for money influencing our political processes and demonizing our resource industry to generate market demand for Tides-related off-shore green-tech investors; all based on the house of carbon cards of faulty climate science.
The TIDES Canada web-site shows their cascading financial, social and environmental policy impact. Funding and influence trickles down through big names like Pembina Institute to AdBusters with their anti-corporate hatred, to ‘Small Change’ like the “Prevent oil sands fever” campaign in Saskatchewan (co-funded by the anti-oil sands LUSH Cosmetics).
This past March, Pembina Institute was in Washington proclaiming that a fat carbon tax was required on oil sands emissions to manage climate change.
The 2010 NDP report on the environment was based largely on the testimony of Tides-funded Pembina Institute’s Simon Dyer. NDP MP Linda Duncan authored the report and relied heavily on David Schindler’s papers, whose research was also funded by TIDES. The NDP’s Quebec sweep in the last federal election has strengthened the symbiotic relationship.
The many integrated layers of Tides-funded ‘science,’ policy, political party and grass-roots groups make it easy to create an environment of public disaffection with conventional energy.
Tides Canada is linked to the Carbon War Room through investment firms Renewal Partners and Play BIG.
Carbon War Room is a big international player lead by Jigar Shah and Sir Richard Branson. They see the ‘climate crisis’ as an excellent opportunity to ‘create climate wealth’ through investing in alternative, renewable energy firms. The Carbon War Room, is dedicated to “a world where over $1trillion invested in climate change solutions is an annual occurrence” ($1 trillion was spent globally in the past decade on carbon reduction initiatives).
According to Shah, “climate change … is the largest wealth creation opportunity of our lifetime.”
There’s only one catch. To drive this investment powerhouse and ensure investment returns, the myth of an impending climate catastrophe due to rising Green House Gases, specifically CO2, must be maintained.
So the oil sands are singularly targeted on the basis of GHG output. Carbon War Room investors (many in the EU) can rapidly make returns on investments only if conventional sources of supply are publically demonized, and conventional supply pushed into inefficiency through heavy cap-and-trade taxes.
Once fossil fuels are drenched with fear of death due to global warming, the Carbon War Room’s stable of renewable energy firms become very desirable.
Governments and the public discover too late that that these alternative technologies are not market ready. But as Spain found out, having bought Jigar Shah’s solar power plants in 2008, by then it is too late. Meanwhile, the unsuspecting public sacrifices affordable, reliable conventional energy while it pays with jobs and crushing carbon taxes for Carbon War Room ‘climate wealth.’
The Carbon War Room is connected to TIDES Canada, and TIDES and the NDP are linked historically. Mulcair fits between them as a promoter of the fallacious hypothesis of CO2-caused global warming.
Mulcair’s anti-oil sands comments may be bizarre, but they’re not random. Clearly, oil sands energy represents a threat to investors in Carbon War Room seeking greater expansion (CWR investments grew by 30 percent in the stumbling economy of 2009-2010).
Whether Mulcair is a pawn or a conscious player in this global deception, I do not know. But if we are under attack by the Carbon War Room, you have to wonder who the leader is?
