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#elxn43 reacts--and the Kenney Conspiracy
64 Plays5 years ago
The $30 million war room. A $2.5 million public inquiry. And untold amounts of hate and fear whipped up by Jason Kenney. All based on a lie. Climate activists have not sabotaged Alberta’s economy or landlocked Alberta’s oil - in fact Alberta barely rates as a blip on the worldwide global climate activism stage. And it took Sandy Garossino to debunk it. We have her on to discuss her National Observer story and to discuss #elxn43 results.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:13
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording here today in Amiskwichi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, here in Treaty 6 territory. Today, we are extremely lucky to have Sandy Garasino on the podcast. You might remember her from her appearances on Canada Land, but she's also a writer, a former trial lawyer, and a Canadian political commentator. Sandy, welcome so much to the show. Well, thanks for having me on.
Federal Election Results Analysis
00:00:40
Speaker
So the reason I reached out to you originally is your absolutely fantastic story in the National Observer headline, a database dismantling of Jason Kenney's foreign funding conspiracy theory. But a little something recently happened, and we would be remiss to not actually discuss the federal election that is currently breaking everyone's brains right now. So are you in? Are you interested? You want to talk federal election reacts?
00:01:05
Speaker
Let's talk federal, let's dismantle the federal election. I mean, it is an extremely strange and ambiguous result to me. You know, I'm 36 years old, like I don't, I kind of remember Stephen Harper's minority governments, but this liberal minority government is new to me.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I still am struggling with how to kind of process it and how I feel about it. Because ultimately, I'm just not a fan of the liberals or Justin Trudeau. I think, fundamentally, there's very little ideological difference at the end of the day between them and the Conservatives. And so I'm frustrated with the result. And the NDP did worse than last time, but strangely enough, they might have more power. They might have more power. Yeah.
00:01:51
Speaker
This is the thing that I think that people have become far too, gone down the rabbit hole of vote percentage.
Strategic Power in Elections
00:02:07
Speaker
That's not how to analyze this election. The way to analyze this election, in my opinion, is to look at where are the seats of power. And right now, the seats of power are with the Liberal Party,
00:02:20
Speaker
and the NDP, and the Conservatives can complain all that they want about their additional 1% of the general election. It's not winning the popular vote. No one won the popular vote. The Conservatives got a slightly higher number than the Liberals did, but
00:02:43
Speaker
they have self-gerrymandered themselves so badly into the prairie provinces that they have essentially become a regional party.
Impact of Passive Progressive Voters
00:02:54
Speaker
The vote is so concentrated in the prairie provinces that they don't really represent the rest of the country and the country overall
00:03:06
Speaker
went in many different directions and only one party had a strong showing in most of those regions and that was the Liberal Party and the NDP did, I'm not as concerned about the NDP losing seats because their power is so much greater and so much greater than it would have been had there been a conservative minority.
00:03:34
Speaker
I still think that one of the fundamental dynamics of Canadian politics is at play here, and that is that there is this huge kind of amorphous blob of what I would call passive progressive voters. They don't have any huge loyalty to any one party, and that progressiveness, I'm putting that in scare quotes, I don't think extends much beyond an anything but conservative approach.
00:03:57
Speaker
And until the NDP are able to kind of break this kind of passive progressive amorphous blob into either their camp or the Conservatives' camp, I think we are going, this is kind of where we are going to be at, kind of in the near- Where we always have been at. No, this is
00:04:20
Speaker
When I was younger and I was much more left than I am now, I followed the same path and my kids are now, of course, way more progressive than I am now. And they always say, oh, the young people are coming, the young people are coming. The same way as I said to my parents, the young people are coming, the young people are coming.
Generational Political Shifts
00:04:41
Speaker
But what happens to young people is that they get older. And times do change how you perceive things. And one of the things that happens when you get older
00:04:49
Speaker
you get bashed over the head by things like conservative governments here and there and you start to be more afraid and always the very progressive voices are saying don't be afraid don't be afraid go out there and that's exactly how this Harper government got elected that's how Donald Trump got elected and you know I just I'm sorry to say that I am in the camp of
00:05:14
Speaker
hedging bets, and I don't agree that the Liberal Party is basically the Conservative
Personal Tidbits: Grimes' Mother?
00:05:20
Speaker
Party. The Liberal Party has, that's what this whole thing was brought on, the carbon top. I mean, I think there's a fundamental kind of psychological compromise at the heart of the Liberal Party, but you brought up something that actually, I brought up with some folks that I was going to talk to you in an interview on the podcast on Monday, and they were like, oh yeah, do you know that that's Grimes' mom? And honestly, I did not know. You are actually Grimes' mom, right? Well, that is true, yes.
00:05:44
Speaker
OK, well, there we go. Confirmed. I'd heard it. You hear people mention to you it on the street or whatever and over having a beer or a coffee or whatever. But there you go. OK. Confirmed. Progress Alberta has confirmed. Sandy Garasino Grimes' mom.
Racism and Electoral Flaws
00:05:59
Speaker
I mean, one of the other things that pisses me off about this election is that, I mean, it's, again, one of those strange, ambiguous things, right?
00:06:07
Speaker
Canadians showed that they will take a bold stance against overt Nazi-style fascism and racism. The PPC got no seats. They were shut out, even in Maxine Bernier's own seat. But that they were all too happy to kind of embrace the casual, systemic, and ultimately much more subtle racism that we saw from the Liberal Party, from Justin Trudeau, even during the campaign, not just digging up the blackface stuff, which
00:06:33
Speaker
whatever, but the child welfare stuff, right? The fighting, the fact that they need to be paying out families who have had their children kind of like drastically underfunded by a systemically unfair child welfare system, right? Well, let's hope that there's a check on that too. I mean, that's certainly one of the areas that I, you know, technically as a trial lawyer, I understand why you file your papers because you want to
00:07:00
Speaker
you want to keep that process option in place. There's a level of cruelty in this particular situation that is extremely troubling. And let's face it, just plain wrong. But I don't think that this is something that the federal government or that the Liberal Party is going to be able to continue in this same way. I'm actually really heartened to see that I
00:07:29
Speaker
maybe we will get somewhere on the indigenous rights issues. And we have unbelievably an independent indigenous, powerful indigenous MP elected.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we'll definitely get to Jody Wilson-Rabel. That's a very interesting story. I mean, you say you're not concerned. I mean, I'm still concerned with how broken Canada's electoral system is, right? When the Liberals can pick up 33% of the votes, but 46% of the seats, you know, when the bloc can get 7.7% of the popular vote, but 32 seats, while the Greens get maybe a percentage and a half, one and a half percentage points less and pick up three seats, like it just seems fundamentally broken to me.
00:08:11
Speaker
It does, it does. I'm not defending that. And, you know,
NDP's Parliamentary Influence
00:08:16
Speaker
that's again, one of the ways that this is this is this is the huge advance that the NDP made is
00:08:23
Speaker
that they have the opportunity now to force some changes there. Well, that's okay. Well, let's get into that because I am interested in the possible things that could be on the table for, I mean, we can game out all sorts of scenarios, whether it's a confidence and supply agreement, or whether it's just like a bill by bill thing or a budget related thing. But like, put yourself in the in the boots of the NDP here. What are your top three things that are on the table when you're negotiating with the liberals for their support for maintaining the confidence of the House?
00:08:54
Speaker
That's a really good question. You're in way better position than I am to answer that. I would think... I mean, you just mentioned one, right? You just mentioned electoral reform. I imagine that would be... Electoral reform, indigenous, and I think housing affordability. I think affordability is...
00:09:16
Speaker
It's going to be a major, but I also think action on climate. I think that the public wants to see action on climate more, even than the Liberals have done, which has been consistently underrated by virtually everybody except the experts who did not get that much of a voice in this campaign.
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, I can tell you're in Vancouver on housing affordability, because it's not so much of an issue in Edmonton. But again, this is just a thought exercise. We put a lot of NDP MPs in the House of Commons, so in British Columbia. And housing affordability is a big issue here, so I would expect to see.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. And again, this is just a thought experiment, but I mean, I think you got to put electoral reform on the table, right? Like the system is just so broken. I think the liberals ultimately half will say no to any electoral reform because it is just clearly not in their interests. Whoever wins always doesn't want the electoral reform that they sought when they weren't winning.
00:10:16
Speaker
But I think you can put real actual pharma care on the table, and I think the way you can pay for that pharma care, or even dental care, is with a wealth tax, right? And I think that was the one thing that the federal NDP brought to this election, is their super tax on the wealthy.
00:10:34
Speaker
And that is just a fundamental alteration of the way taxation works and the way power works in this country. And that if you do actually want to build out a society and a state that is able to provide medicine for free to everyone, that is able to provide dental care to everyone, it is going to take rich people paying more in taxes. And then I also think that, yeah, like the Green New Deal and the idea, if you are going to do real action on climate change, and I think we saw this here in Alberta, it's
Debating Wealth Taxation
00:11:02
Speaker
going to take cash.
00:11:03
Speaker
And if you if you really do want to implement, you know, Green New Deal style reforms, you need cash on hand to be able to pay people to put to work. And that you can't just kind of fiddle around on the edges like the Alberta NDP did, you actually need to engage in a bit of class warfare. And you also have to do the number crunching. And I personally do not have
00:11:30
Speaker
In principle, I don't have an objection to the wealth tax, but it depends on how it's done. And I think it's maybe not as promising in terms of the expected revenues. I would personally look to see higher income taxes on the wealthy. But I haven't gone in and done the number crunching. I'm concerned about effect on GDP
00:12:00
Speaker
economic impact. But generally speaking, I don't think that there's any question that the... to reduce this on wealthy has not been good in either the United States or Canada. And I think that's a trend that should be reversed.
Critique of Alberta Separatism
00:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think the other question that is kind of bubbling up out of this election is, this makes me cringe so much, but wegzit, albegzit, whatever you want to call it, Western separatism, you immediately saw shitheads like Brett Wilson and Danielle Smith start stoking the fires of Western separatism as someone who is not in Alberta and not surrounded by these people. I'm curious as to your take.
00:12:49
Speaker
Well, I grew up in Alberta. So I have, I know where this all comes from. I heard it my entire teenage years, all the years that I was growing up. It was always this kind of talk. And then of course we had Western Manning and Western Canada concept. This has been going on for 30 years, 40 years,
00:13:11
Speaker
50 years or more. So this, there is nothing terribly new about this. And you know, I think the thing that is remarkable here is again, always look at where is the power and what has shocked Alberta
00:13:30
Speaker
after having had a Stephen Harper majority government where the seat of power was in Alberta, the prime minister's riding was in Alberta, the major cabinet ministers were in Alberta, and Alberta was an economic engine at that time. It is a shadow of its former self. It is out of power and out of influence, and it's in shock. I think an awful lot of this kind of talk
00:14:01
Speaker
is the shock of powerlessness. They can't believe it. Well, welcome to being a progressive in Alberta. Welcome to the world. I remember the years that parties that I was not keen on were in power and you just have to, that's how we live. You just grin and bear it, but that apparently is too much for Alberta, but they are
00:14:27
Speaker
I think they're in for a shock themselves if they think that the federal conservatives in Ontario, where all those voters are, how many times did we hear vote rich Ontario? If they think that Ontario has time for this, they've got another thing coming because Ontario conservatives are going to be like slamming the, they had better slam the door on this or it's the end for them.
00:14:57
Speaker
Yeah, you're not wrong there. And I mean, the other kind of fundamental question at the heart of this Alberta separatism talk, and one that I hope you can kind of use your platform and expand on this when you talk to the broader world about this subject, is treaties 6, 7 and 8. I know you live in B.C. and the vast majority of B.C. isn't covered by treaties, but Alberta is.
Treaties vs. Separatism
00:15:20
Speaker
And those treaties were signed with the crown.
00:15:22
Speaker
And any talk of separating Alberta from Canada has to deal with a fundamental question that the land that they are on is they're allowed to be on that land by dint of those treaties. And that what actually happens if they do separate is an extremely complicated thorny legal question that has no easy resolution. Doug, do you think anybody has given thought one to the practicalities of this?
00:15:52
Speaker
I got a clue. They're just mad and they're just bad. That's all that is happening. And they're shocked at the lack of power because they're used to power. But they haven't thought about treaties. They haven't thought. I mean, this is the same thing that was going on
00:16:11
Speaker
in Quebec over the treaties with the indigenous nations in Quebec. That was a very, very live question, but they were much further down the road. But try this. Quebec has a population that's almost twice as much or more than Alberta's, and Quebec has access to tidewater. Alberta is landlocked.
00:16:37
Speaker
How on earth, I mean, the whole idea, who is running that insane asylum? There is Jason Kenney running over to New York and Ohio to try and scare up more investment capital to please, please foreign investors, please come to Alberta and invest your foreign dollars in Alberta. Meanwhile, we're going to
00:17:02
Speaker
Meanwhile, maybe we're going to separate from Canada. Meanwhile, we're going to throw our entire country and region into economic chaos, right? Maybe we're not going to have any jurisdiction over pipelines. Maybe we're going to have to pay extra taxes for any oil that's going to pass through foreign pipelines in British Columbia. Maybe we won't have any jurisdiction over anything and we're stuck there in the middle of North America.
00:17:30
Speaker
And by the way for anybody who imagines in their wildest dreams that Alberta is because I know that they're thinking this because I grew up in Alberta So I know how people are thinking. Oh, we'll just go and join the United States get in line behind Washington DC and Puerto Rico which both have been waiting for statehood you haven't got a prayer and
00:17:54
Speaker
You're going to be alone in the middle of North America, in the middle of a continent with no access to major markets, no access to tidewater. Beyond all those questions too, the separation movement such as it is in Alberta is just soft as fuck. It's a bunch of dudes with boats and ATVs and snow machines and RVs. Do we really think that they're going to be out in the streets? They're people with microphones. That's what they are. Yeah, exactly.
00:18:25
Speaker
Let's just cut off all talk of Western separation there, because I think it fundamentally is dumb
Green Party's Electoral Challenges
00:18:30
Speaker
and stupid. The media is definitely going to fill in all the space that we are going to leave on the cutting room floor here. One of the things that I think is also worth mentioning about in this federal election is the Greens.
00:18:43
Speaker
I think the Greens had, I think at three seats is probably on the low end of what they were expecting. And I think their failure to turn enthusiasm around the climate strike and climate change activism in general into electoral results kind of shows the failure at the heart of that party and that particular political project.
00:19:10
Speaker
Well, I have a lot of sympathy for the Greens because that's basically one person's been carrying that party on her shoulders and trying to run a national party by herself while she's being an MP representing her constituents. And they just don't have the critical mass that it takes to execute a national election campaign, especially when you don't have proportional representation.
00:19:39
Speaker
And if there's any party that really got snubbed here, it's the greens. Yeah, they're the biggest losers when it comes to first pass. They're the biggest losers on this.
00:19:53
Speaker
The Greens had massive tailwinds coming into this election, and they were just unable to turn it into real electoral gains. The idea of electoral reform, I think, is really important to the Greens, as well as they're the ones who end up coming out the worst of it. You were mentioning Elizabeth May. You have a great regard for her, but you think maybe it's time for her to pack it in?
00:20:17
Speaker
Well, I would never tell somebody to pack it in. Certainly not somebody who has lifted a national party on her shoulders for so long. But I do think that perhaps her best as a national leader are behind her and somebody else needs to come in. But I think that she probably thinks that herself. It's almost no secret that she's been shopping
00:20:46
Speaker
leadership of the party. I think it's been a very heavy, heavy burden for her. But, you know, it's such an interesting question, isn't it, that how could there be such a flood of popular public opinion that did not translate into
Jody Wilson-Raybould's Success
00:21:04
Speaker
votes? And I do think
00:21:06
Speaker
I'm sorry to say, because I'm sure your listeners don't want to hear this, but my feeling is that the fear of the conservatives pushed a lot of votes into the liberal column.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, you're probably not wrong. Okay, so I think the final way I want to close this out is what were the individual riding results that caught your eye? Who do you want to talk about? I know J.D. Russell Maybold was mentioned up. I definitely have some folks that either won or lost that I want to bring up, so why don't you go first?
00:21:38
Speaker
Well, I mean, I wasn't, there were only a few writings that I was really looking at, then they were mainly here in Vancouver. So I would probably defer to you Duncan on that one. I do look at the Jody Wilson Ray Bowl result, and that was really intriguing to me. And I'm terribly encouraged that an Indigenous horn, this is my writing, by the way, in Vancouver.
00:22:01
Speaker
And I'm terribly encouraged that an Indigenous woman without the flag of a major national party was able to take on all commerce and win. And it's not like this was a walk, you know,
00:22:19
Speaker
It was a three-way race. It was a real nail biter down to the end. It was a nail biter. It was hard fought. Andrew Scheer was in the riding on the last day of the campaign and clearly they wanted to see if they could take it too. I guess their internal polls told them that there was some possibility there. So I think that that's a real victory and I think that's sensational actually to tell you the truth. I think it's marvelous that there's an indigenous independent MP in the House of Commons who
00:22:49
Speaker
does not have to vote a party line or submit to a party whip. I think that's a good thing. Yeah, she's a real interesting figure, I mean, for a variety of reasons, but one of which, I mean, how does she leverage her presence in the house to the kind of utmost? And a theory that I've been, or an idea that I've been kind of plugging around the internet is having her as the speaker of the house might actually be the kind of most highest leverage use of her talents. I mean, I know she's a lawyer by training.
00:23:16
Speaker
And she could win that position without the help of the liberals due to the minority nature of parliament. Because it's hard to see how an independent- Why would you give up your platform? Any time that Jody Wilson-Raybould wants to call a press conference,
00:23:36
Speaker
and have something to say on any issue of importance. She's going to have that audience and she's going to have that platform. As a speaker, she has to give up all of that. She can't do any actual policy change when it comes to being just a one independent, right? But that's not, nobody can do policy change as a single MP. Not one person in that house, entire House of Commons, but she can influence
00:24:06
Speaker
public perception. She can influence media. I am a huge believer in the power of the outsider, especially the lone outsider, especially in a David and Goliath kind of setting. And that's where she is. She loses everything as speaker. I saw you, I think I saw you
00:24:29
Speaker
You're tweeting about this, or maybe mentioning it to me, Duncan, and I'm just, I couldn't disagree with you more. I couldn't, she becomes a figurehead. How influential was Andrew Scheer when he was the speaker? Name a speaker who had importance in Canadian Parliament. I mean, in the context of a minority government, or minority parliament, or hung parliament, the speaker becomes more important. But it is a process, I mean, it is a really nerdy thing. Name a speaker who's had impact.
00:24:56
Speaker
Mean yeah, you're right. I guess you're not wrong there. It is a pretty nerdy thing to kind of get into the details
00:25:03
Speaker
But I mean, one of the things that I mean, I'll give a happy one first. One person I was extremely happy to see when was Matthew Green and Hamilton Center for the NDP. So the fellow with fantastic politics ran an incredible campaign. I would encourage he's I would encourage you to look into him. His his social media game is on point and he's just a fantastic human.
Class Politics for NDP
00:25:24
Speaker
I also have to say I was extremely sad that Sven Robinson was unable to win his seat in Burnaby, North Seymour.
00:25:30
Speaker
you know it was a close race but ultimately ultimately know the liberal incumbent one uh terry beach okay yes that's right and um and that's that's an interesting case because that's that's the terminus of the trans mountain pipeline right and and it's funny the the liberals bought
00:25:48
Speaker
you know, Trans Mountain and they really didn't face any electoral consequences when it came to, um, you know, Vancouver, British Columbia at all. So, I mean, I think that's, that's an interesting kind of individual riding to look at. And, um, I mean, again, I am also extremely pleased that Max Bernier, um, got trounced in, in Quebec. We were all, we were all cheering, we were all cheering for that, weren't we? Every, I think everybody in the country was, uh, except for Max Bernier and the,
00:26:18
Speaker
however many people who voted for him were probably mostly his family member. He didn't lose by that much but he definitely fucking lost and that is an unequivocal good thing. When you consider how long his family has held that seat, losing at all is a huge humiliation.
00:26:41
Speaker
Yeah, I know. And I just have some final thoughts rattling around in my brain around the result of this election and how the left can actually make the things it wants to happen become reality. This is just electoral politics and bourgeois-y electoralism. I already have people who are going to be yelling at me about talking about politics so much.
00:27:02
Speaker
If the NDP want to be more than just the kind of plucky left-wing sidekick to liberals, I think we've got to see far more of what we saw little glimmers of in this campaign, right, which was class politics, kind of naming the bad guys, making them afraid. Ultimately, I'm of the opinion that polarization is a good thing and that this huge amorphous blob of like ABC progressive voters means that we won't actually move forward on the things that we want to move forward on. And the liberals are so kind of
00:27:29
Speaker
compromised from the very beginning. The entire existence of the Liberals is a compromise. I think this is ultimately possible because I ultimately do want to see kind of a fairer, more humane, more democratic Canada, and I don't think we're getting it until the NDP can start doing the things that I'm talking about here.
00:27:44
Speaker
And to end this segment with a bit of positivity. I'm going to leap in there. I'm just going to throw cold water. I'm just I'm sorry. I've been hearing this. I'm over 60 years old. I've been hearing this my entire life one day, one day, one day. And the fact is that the broad like
00:28:05
Speaker
Have you run for election anywhere? God, no, no, no. OK, well, I have. Let me tell you something about voters. They don't care. You know, this is something about these pundits on national television last night talking about how incredibly polarized Canada is. And only 65 percent of Canadians voted. If you went and polled the average person at the poll, like I've
00:28:34
Speaker
I am having run for election just in the civic environment in Vancouver. I cannot begin to tell you and everybody who's run for election will tell you the same thing.
00:28:47
Speaker
The average voter has tuned out 90% of this, 95% of this. Well, I think the vast amount of political discourse we have doesn't- People like you and I and people, the pundits on television and the people running the parties, we are the junkies. We are the people who are thinking that everybody is thinking like we are. No, they're not. No, they're not.
00:29:13
Speaker
I'm going to push back on that, too. I think the vast amount of political discourse doesn't give anybody a reason to give a shit. When we're looking at a liberal minority government, literally the squishiest, most ambiguous result you could get out of this election, of course, what did the liberals run on? What did the conservatives run on? Targeted tax cuts? Liberals ran on more of the same.
00:29:36
Speaker
Liberals have an economy that's coming along. They've got low unemployment, high GDP. They've got really good numbers internationally and they've got a carbon tax and a climate plan. It may not be enough. We need to do more. We'll have to do more. There's no doubt about it. But it's not like the country where
00:30:02
Speaker
Canada is internationally regarded as one of the best countries in the world. I mean, this is not the disaster that's going to create a revolution. It's not going to happen. I'm sorry to say that to you.
00:30:13
Speaker
You don't have to apologize, but ultimately it's really easy for you to say that, you know, like, um, from your class position and where you live and the things you privilege in the places people are comfortable. Like, I think that the, the, the generational divide is shocking and it is going to come back and it is going to, it's that it's going to have an impact. There's no, there's no doubt about it.
00:30:39
Speaker
OK, well, I do want to get into your really good article on the Kennedy conspiracy.
Introducing Garasino's Article
00:30:43
Speaker
So I think we're going to end our election reacts there. But I do want to end it with a bit of positivity. And here is a bit of tape from Jugmeat's concession speech on election night. I, for one, welcome the kind of class politics actually showing its head in this in Canadian politics for the first time in a long time. And play it, Jim.
00:31:00
Speaker
And we're also gonna make sure, we're gonna make sure we're gonna do something that no one else is ready to say, but we're proud to say and we're gonna say it again and again, because we're gonna get it done. We're gonna make sure that the super wealthy start paying their fair share.
00:31:44
Speaker
We're on it. That's exactly what we're gonna do.
00:32:08
Speaker
Okay, the real reason though, Sandy, that I wanted to bring you on was this article that you recently wrote for the National Observer. Folks on who are listening to this podcast, really, I mean, you don't have to go take a break right now to go read it. We are gonna talk about it extensively in the next few minutes, but definitely after this show, go read it in full. We'll have it in the show notes, like it, share it, send it to your grandma who talks about foreign-funded radicals. It is a fantastic piece of journalism.
00:32:35
Speaker
Um, the headline is a database dismantling of Jason Kenney's foreign funding conspiracy theory. And, um, you know, I've set this up as this great piece. Think, why don't you, why don't you set up the premise of the article for the people who haven't read it yet, Sandy.
Dissecting Foreign Funding Conspiracies
00:32:50
Speaker
Well, fundamentally, we have been watching this narrative develop for a number of years here. And I don't come out of the environmental world. I come out of a world where I'm very concerned about the ability of non-governmental organizations to advocate freely in the public realm on important matters of public interest.
00:33:17
Speaker
I hate seeing any attempt to muzzle such organizations because there's a huge amount of expertise. So that's where I come from, is that I'm always concerned about issues around
00:33:32
Speaker
we have to get control over these NGOs. So I've been watching this issue for a very long time. I've been watching this narrative unfold and what I did, so I really started to dig into this starting last January. Well, just even spell it out for our readers, like what it is and what is the conspiracy theory.
00:33:55
Speaker
Well, the conspiracy theory is that a cabal of foreign foundations, principally American environmental foundations, have singled out and attacked Alberta. And Alberta is the whipping boy and the punching bag of these foreign foundations which have unloaded specifically on the oil sands
00:34:24
Speaker
And the suggestion, the innuendo, it's never clearly, clearly spelled out, but the innuendo is very clear that the purpose is not really to ameliorate, to mitigate climate change, it is to advance American energy interests. Yeah, or to sabotage Alberta economic interests, right? And to sabotage, so what it's really playing on is that this economic disaster that has fallen Alberta,
00:34:54
Speaker
is really the result of a campaign by a malicious cabal of foreign foundations, deliberately set out to achieve that end.
00:35:07
Speaker
And this idea is really at the core of Jason Kenney's war room, you know, $30 million that's been allocated to God knows what, we actually have no transparency on what that $30 million is gonna be spent on the war room, or this $2.5 million public inquiry. It's all kind of based on the idea that this cabal of American, mostly American foundations is somehow singling out Alberta and spending gobs of money targeting the oil sands and pipelines, right?
00:35:35
Speaker
That's right. So the essence of this theory, which stands by a researcher that's well-known in Alberta by the name of Vivian Krause, but it's really been adopted holus bolus by Jason Kinney. And that's the point that it became of concern to me is when it looked like it was about to be and then became official Alberta government policy.
Debunking Funding Myths
00:36:00
Speaker
So, but the tracking of this money has exposed something like $40 million over the last decade that's been granted to a variety of pipeline opponents, some of them indigenous First Nations, some of them environmental groups, probably dozens and dozens of groups are involved in pipeline opposition and with
00:36:24
Speaker
with their stated purpose and I don't think that there's any doubt that this is their real purpose on the environmental side to keep fossil fuels in the ground and on the indigenous side to assert their sovereignty rights over their own territories and pipelines running through them or not running through them. But so I wanted to have a look at well how much are these foundations
00:36:51
Speaker
What has been missing from the analysis all these years has been any kind of comparison. Because how do you know if $40 million is a lot of money? It sounds like a lot of money, but it's actually really a minute amount of money. It averages out to $4 million a year, and actually it's declined substantially since Rachel Notley
00:37:16
Speaker
introduced her climate leadership plan, it really petered out down to a trickle. So it's now about $2 million a year. Well, $2 million would barely buy you, wouldn't even buy you six months time of a single CEO in the top hundred
00:37:32
Speaker
top paid CEOs in Calgary. It's such a negligible amount of money. I can't believe that anybody is taking it seriously. The one thing about your work too that I think is worth bringing up is that you actually went out and
00:37:48
Speaker
went through the receipts, right? Maybe opponents to this conspiracy theory had kind of dug in to the rhetoric or the ideology behind it, but you actually went and dug through billions and billions of dollars of spending by foundations in Canada on climate change around the world.
00:38:06
Speaker
And I think that you deserve a pat on the back for actually, again, going out and doing this work that the media is very happy to give this conspiracy theory a platform and they have conversely shown extreme antipathy towards your work on this file. Well, shall we say post-media has
00:38:28
Speaker
The foreign-owned post media which has been on this crusade against foreign funding of Canadian environmentalists. So I went and I looked at, well, what is the total amount that is spent on climate change and climate initiatives around the world and what percentage is coming into the tar sands and what percentage comes into Canada? Well, Canada gets
00:38:55
Speaker
about 1% of all international foundation spending on climate around the world. Overwhelmingly, the majority is spent in the United States. So it's about $5 billion in the last 10 years that's been spent on climate change by
00:39:16
Speaker
roughly around 1800 foundations, environmental and social foundations and Canada's only got about 51 million dollars of that and about 40 million dollars has come into
00:39:33
Speaker
the tar sands campaign, the opposition to the pipeline. So this is like 1%. We're just nowhere near being on the radar screen. And then I looked at the foundations themselves that have been doing the lion's share of the funding and the three largest foundations involved
00:39:51
Speaker
are the Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation out of Switzerland. And we've all heard about the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, but they're a very small player, but they are in the trio of the top three. But the Hewlett Foundation has spent, it isn't strictly an environmental foundation. It funds a huge number of other kinds of projects. Climate is only a small part of its portfolio.
00:40:20
Speaker
And Canada and the tar sands campaign has only received 0.25 of 1% of its budget. All told of all the major funders, it's about 0.3 of 1% of
00:40:38
Speaker
all of their funding. So it's like it's ludicrous. I'm astonished that why didn't anybody look at this? This is all available. All of this information is available. If you want to be saying that these foundations are aiming this gusher of cash and they're totally focused. This is their biggest project. This is the only thing they care about is sabotaging Alberta and sabotaging the oil sands. Wouldn't you look at their total spending?
00:41:06
Speaker
And why wouldn't, why has nobody done this? And why, how can we be 10 years into this controversy and no journalists have actually gone and looked at the budgets, but you're all there, they're all in the open. Well, the myth about this too is that, I mean, Alberta gets to think it's special, right? And Alberta gets to think that environmentalists are only targeting us. And it's like, use fucking Google. Like environmental groups have targeted
00:41:35
Speaker
numerous projects all over the United States. Coal has been the subject of an extremely well-funded campaign in the United States. You can't just go off the west coast of the United States, or it's almost impossible. They haven't allowed any expansion of coal facilities off the west coast of the United States for years. We're doing that in British Columbia. The state of New York has a fracking ban, for Christ's sake. The state of New York that has gobs and gobs of natural gas underneath it. They have a fracking ban.
00:42:05
Speaker
And ExxonMobil is, by the way, suing the Rockefeller brothers. They're both suing each other. And the states are suing ExxonMobil. And ExxonMobil is saying that it's the victim of a Rockefeller sabotage conspiracy campaign. Everyone's the subject of a Rockefeller conspiracy campaign. In the United States. Everybody, the Rockefellers are, they're after everybody. But one thing that is true is that the Rockefellers are
00:42:34
Speaker
very, very, as a family and in their foundations, they are very concerned about climate change. There's no question about it. They have really focused on climate and interestingly enough, the fossil fuel industry and their political sidekicks have got a hate on to beat all against Rockefellers.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a funny thing, right? This conspiracy theory builds on the conspiracy theory work of such luminaries as Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. And the idea that the Rockefeller Brothers or the Tides Foundation or the Hewlett-Packard Foundation or these big American foundations are these evil puppet masters responsible for everything that the right wing doesn't like.
00:43:24
Speaker
has literally been the view of these like conspiracy mongers like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck for a decade now.
00:43:32
Speaker
And the reason why Kenny actually might be a little more persuadable when it comes to these conspiracy theories about American foundations is that he himself has trafficked in these conspiracy theories about American foundations. Early on in his political career, when he was much more overt about his anti-abortion activism, he loved talking about the Rockefellers and the Pews and the foundations.
00:43:58
Speaker
and the decidly work that they were doing, bringing condoms and birth control and access to abortion to the rest of the world. I've got a clip here where he talks explicitly about this, but let me set it up a bit.
Kenney's Consistent Conspiracy Views
00:44:09
Speaker
This clip is from, it's about an hour and 15 minute long clip. You may have seen this earlier on in the year when the Alberta election campaign was happening. This is the same video
00:44:18
Speaker
This is the same video where Jason Kenney brags about stopping gay men from seeing their dying partners in hospital in San Francisco. But he's speaking with a Catholic homeschooling conference. This is in the late 90s, early 2000s. And for a bit of context, he's talking about, when he's talking about they or these institutions, he's talking about groups like Planned Parenthood. And Sandy, why don't you just open up that clip and listen to it now? It's in your email.
00:44:44
Speaker
Oh, the one that, okay, let me just pull this up. Yeah, take your time because I do want your reaction to it. I didn't want you to listen to beforehand because it is so wild. I didn't listen to it ahead of time. Let's see, Duncan. It's Kenny, the conspiracy theorist clip.mp3 is the name of the file. So go ahead and listen to that and then I'll get your reactions. Just a second. Okay, here it is just a sec. Kenny clip. Okay, I'm going to listen to this.
00:45:13
Speaker
If you look at the kind of money that's behind these institutions, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the biggest foundations in the world. Folks, we're talking about foundations which collectively represent hundreds of billions of dollars, and I'm talking real dollars, US dollars, who are behind this, who are financing this. They're generally run out of the United States, some out of Germany, most of the United States.
00:45:44
Speaker
And they are, almost all of these foundations are the progeny, if you will, of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. And I'm a former WASP myself, so.
00:46:00
Speaker
who I think have a kind of perverse notion of Nablus Oblige towards the people in the developing world. And as I suggested before, so on the one hand you've got this kind of deep philosophical radical atomistic
00:46:17
Speaker
libertine worldview driving this and on the other hand you have this sort of perverse noblesse oblige this this sort of condescending patronizing attitude towards let me say it frankly those brown people in the rest of the world most of whom they these enlightened few in in northern and mostly american wealthy society elites see as
00:46:46
Speaker
as being uneducated, basically savages who are slaves to their Islamic or Catholic faiths. And they think that they're committing an act of charity to go into these countries and to remove the moral codes and to replace them with condoms and birth control pills and abortion clinics.
00:47:16
Speaker
Wow. Wow. Interesting. Think about that comment about condoms and in that year. And I'm talking about Africa and groups that were trying to get condoms and safe sex materials to populations in Africa. And that's, I guess,
00:47:45
Speaker
I guess that's a terrible thing that they tried to do that and educate girls and get contraception to girls. I mean, I didn't expect to be floored. I'm actually really floored, but it sheds huge light on his vendetta.
00:48:13
Speaker
He's deeply, deeply personal. And he's wrong. These foundations are not hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. The Hewlett Foundation is worth about $12 billion US, I believe. It's the biggest one that's involved in the Parsons campaign. And of course, it left four years ago. Just the misinformation is just astonishing. Just astonishing.
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this does show, you know, Jason Kenney is happy to traffic in these conspiracies about American, shadowy American foundations controlling all of the things that are bad for the world. In this case, in this speech, you know, he's talking about, you know, groups that have the temerity to fund, you know, condoms and birth control and access to abortions. And, you know, 18 years later, it's groups that have the temerity to fund, you know, groups doing climate activism.
00:49:09
Speaker
That's really, that's, what a fine, boy, I wish I had listened to that earlier. Does that ever shed light on the mindset? And look, I don't for a second doubt that Jason Kenney believes this. But it's just, it's whether anybody else should.
00:49:32
Speaker
Well, I mean, not everyone is there. And whether he should be using the tools of the state to pursue this vendetta and the taxpayers' money. Yeah, exactly. I don't give a shit if Joe Schmoe believes X conspiracy theory about the Rockefeller Foundation, but I mean, Jason Kenney has the power of the state at his disposal and he's using it.
00:49:53
Speaker
And he's using it to his own political ends. I mean, this is where Kenny ultimately travels with people like Glenn Beck and Alec Jones. And much like Jason Kenny, these two folks have made their living kind of slanging these conspiracy theories to boomers who have had their brains like addled by cable television and Facebook.
Clarifying Tides Foundation's Role
00:50:14
Speaker
Like Glenn Beck loves talking about tides and all the evil shit that they supposedly do.
00:50:18
Speaker
And here's a clip. This comes from a Media Matters YouTube clip that we're going to put in the show notes. But here's another clip that you should have a listen to, Sam. This audience know whose Tides is. Tides Foundation is with Soros. It all ties to the Tides Center. They are also involved in some of the nastiest of the nasty. I mean, did you notice some of the names involved here, especially the Tides Foundation? Tides Foundation, gee.
00:50:43
Speaker
We know them because they bailed out Acorn. The Tides Foundation is a major source of revenue for some of the most extreme groups on the left. There are people and forces behind some of these things and it is a completely dishonorable debate. George Soros' people at the Tides Foundation come up with a million dollars just to make that problem go away. Infiltrating gain control of big businesses. What do you think the Tides Foundation is?
00:51:08
Speaker
They're being taught capitalism is evil. Videos like this one are being played in classrooms made by the George Soros-funded Tides Foundation. What do you think the Tides Foundation was? They infiltrated. He states in this book, the purpose is to create mass organizations to seize power. Wow, that almost sounds like the Tides Foundation.
00:51:28
Speaker
If I had an idea that I cloaked and made it a Trojan horse, I'd be a nut job or a conspiracy theorist. But when they have a Trojan horse, no, no, no, they're not called that. They're called members of the Tides Foundation. Okay, okay, okay. I think we get the point.
00:51:46
Speaker
let me talk about tides for a bit because I do talk I do cover it in my piece and there's been such incredible disinformation and this is very what Glenn back there is saying is very very typical and people have got a complete misconception about what tides is and how it works. Did you know
00:52:09
Speaker
Well, you do because you were at the piece. Tides did not donate a dime to the tar sands campaign, not a red cent. But it made millions of dollars in grants. So how does this happen? The fact is that
00:52:29
Speaker
In the international foundation world, 90% of all grants, and we're talking in terms of all grants, all subject areas, health, international aid, et cetera, we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars, 90%
00:52:44
Speaker
of those grants are administered through something called a donor advised fund or some other form of intermediary. So there are institutions, financial institutions that specialize in managing donor advised funds and these
00:53:04
Speaker
What I mean, this is a special term of art, and what it means is that if I'm a large foundation, let's say I'm the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and I wanna partner with the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation on an international aid program, and we're all gonna put money into a pot, and that money is going to get delivered out to multiple organizations, maybe, let's say education of girls, and we're gonna fund
00:53:35
Speaker
50 programs collectively between the three of our foundations. We will deposit that money in another institution. It could be tides, which has administered funds for the Ford Foundation and for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It could be any one of a number of other financial institutions that manage these funds. And those funds get deposited. And then when grants are to be given out, essentially,
00:54:04
Speaker
on the instructions of the donors, they pass out of that financial institution and into the hands of the recipient organization. And this is why you see Tides, Tides' name come up so frequently in particular with relation to progressive social causes and environmental causes, because that's the area that it works in. And those are the projects that
00:54:30
Speaker
It passes funds through. But as I say in my piece, if your employer writes you your paycheck on their RBC account, does that mean that you're RBC funded? Did RBC pay you?
00:54:48
Speaker
I mean, the money came from RBC, but RBC didn't pay you. And it's the same with these ties. The misunderstanding around this is one of the most destructive and unfair
00:55:03
Speaker
analyses that is out there. TIDES has always been in relation to the Tarsens campaign and generally environmental funding in Canada. It has administered funds and grants by other foundations and passed them on upon the instruction of the foundations and their advisors, usually with the recipient organizations.
00:55:30
Speaker
I mean, you need a boogeyman, right? I mean, my favorite little nugget about Tides is that Tides is a key funder of the international railroad for queer refugees. This is an organization that actually gets brought up all the time by Jason Kenney when he wishes to deflect accusations of being anti-LGBTQ2 or just generally harboring anti-queer and trans bias based on any number of things he may have done, perhaps rolling back protections for queer kids in GSAs in Alberta.
00:56:00
Speaker
Strangely enough, it never comes up that Tides is, in fact, a major funder of this group that he loves to throw out there as a bit of deflection when talking about his own record on queer and trans rights. Tides is just an extremely convenient punching bag. Fundamentally, I think capitalism requires enemies. I talk about this all the time.
00:56:24
Speaker
It is a feature, not a bug, of capitalism that instead of addressing the problems and the contradictions within capitalism that make shitty things happen to regular people, we don't do that. And the people in power don't do that. And instead, they focus the ire of regular folks on these extremely convenient scapegoats. And that's why we have this $30 million war rooms, why we have this $2.5 million public inquiry.
00:56:52
Speaker
It is what happens in societies like ours. And it's just telling that Jason Kenney didn't start from scratch with a conspiracy theory, right? When people like Glenn Beck have already softened the ground for you, why bother starting a new one? Well, I'm going to part ways with you about this being capitalism. I think this is the case in virtually every
00:57:21
Speaker
human endeavor, human organization. I think this is human nature that when we face obstacles or run into trouble, there's an enemy that has caused all of this. But I think you're right. I mean, I think that's the dynamic that's going on here. Yeah.
Harm of Conspiracy Theories
00:57:44
Speaker
Important to talk about this, not only to debunk the kind of lies at the heart of this conspiracy, but that real harm can happen to folks and groups and the discourse and society because when you traffic in these conspiracy theories, right? People's reputations have been absolutely shattered by this narrative, by the publicity around it, by the endless drumbeat of what I would
00:58:11
Speaker
phrase described as just it's just at best misinformation and at worst disinformation.
00:58:20
Speaker
It's, you know, lives have been really affected. You look at some of the activists who, when they want to travel to Alberta, that actually there's a question, should they have police protection? This is what we've got to. On the basis of totally inflammatory, and I would describe Kenny's approach to this as being hysterical.
00:58:48
Speaker
Frankly, it's dangerous.
Live Event Announcement
00:58:50
Speaker
Thank you for actually segwaying into something that I'm going to mention almost right away here, which is that we are doing a live taping of the Progress Report podcast with Zipporah Berman November 4th in Calgary. Actually, we'll put the details of that in the show notes. If you are listening in Calgary,
00:59:05
Speaker
And you do want to talk to Jason Kenney's most hated environmentalist. We are going to be speaking with Sephora. And I imagine we will be talking a lot about the article that you wrote, Sandy. So it does give us a nice base to start. But I think that is the end of the show. Thank you so much for taking your time to speak with us.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:59:21
Speaker
Now is the time to plug your pluggables. Do you have anything people need to know about or social media accounts that people should follow so that you can go out and increase your clout?
00:59:31
Speaker
Well, people can follow me on at Garicino and you can spell that out.
00:59:37
Speaker
It can be in your show notes at Garosino on Twitter. And just follow me. Read my piece on the National Observer. And, you know, subscribe to Independent Journalism, everybody. That's my big message. And I'd love it if people subscribe to the National Observer, but there are lots of other independent and Canadian-owned and Canadian-run platforms out there
01:00:06
Speaker
desperately need your support. Yeah. One of those outlets is, in fact, the progress report. So go ahead and smash that. Go ahead and support the progress report. That one too. Yeah. Go ahead and smash that like button. If you like this podcast, please share it on your social networks or put it on a cassette tape and share it with your friend. I don't care. Leaving reviews is actually really helpful either on
01:00:31
Speaker
Apple podcasts or on your podcatcher of choice or literally just scratch it on a wall in chalk I don't again Any way to get the word out word of mouth is the most effective way If you do like this podcast and you want to support what we do. God bless you. You're amazing You can go to the progress report dot CA slash patrons
01:00:49
Speaker
Put in your credit card there and contribute a small amount every month. We would really appreciate it. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, comments, things you think I need to know about or hear about, I'm on Twitter, at Duncan Kinney, and you can reach me by email, at DuncanK, at Progress, Alberta.ca. Thanks so much to Cosmic Family Communist for the amazing theme, and thank you for listening. Goodbye.