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Kenney's public inquiry has gone down in flames. What did we learn?
131 Plays3 years ago
Sandy Garossino, columnist with the National Observer, joins us to break down the lies, damn lies and statistics in the Allan Inquiry's final report.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
The Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. A new pod on the network that I want to highlight is the inaugural episode of Take Back the Fight from the indefatigable Nora Loretto.
Nora Loretto's Book and Podcast
00:00:11
Speaker
She explains how she conceived of the book of the same name and how Harsha Walia's definition of feminism helped ground her analysis. Become a supporter of Harbinger and get exclusive supporter-only content at harbingermedianetwork.com. Now on to the show.
The Allen Inquiry with Sandy Girasino
00:00:38
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiscochi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty 6 territory on the banks of the Cassis-Cassau-Wandissippi, or the North Saskatchewan River. Joining us today is Sandy Girasino, a columnist with the National Observer, and someone who has written and researched and really kind of covered the topic of today's podcast.
00:01:03
Speaker
better than most, and really has done some incredible work on it. The topic of today's podcast is, of course, what else but the utterly shambolic and now completed public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns, sometimes known more colloquially as the Allen inquiry. Sandy, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me on, Doctor. How are you doing?
00:01:27
Speaker
I am doing okay. Uh, seeing this report, uh, go down in flames after a two year process that was a ribbon with scandals and incompetence is very satisfying. Uh, personally speaking, just because in April of 2019, Jason Kenney was threatening to personally go after me and my organization. So, so yeah, I'm feeling good.
Inquiry's Findings and Failures
00:01:51
Speaker
I would say so. Well, I would think so. And in a way, it's kind of anticlimactic, isn't it? Because there's nothing that we didn't really know or not very much anyway that we didn't know that was in there.
00:02:05
Speaker
Yes, there are no huge revelations that were contained in the 650 plus page final report. And really this sad, disordered and competently run sham of a public inquiry is finally over. And yes, it really is with a whimper and not with a bang. What were your big takeaways? I know you wrote a column for the national observer on this. What was your big takeaway?
00:02:34
Speaker
Well, there are two big takeaways. I was interested to see the New York Times report reporting on this today, and they caught a detail that had slipped my quick review of the report.
00:02:49
Speaker
which is that in the period 2003 to 2019, Canadian environmental groups raised over $8 billion. And in that period, a maximum of about $59 million, and maybe or probably less, went into funding
00:03:12
Speaker
um, the tar sands campaign, which was the only identifiably so-called anti oil, um, anti Alberta. Yes. Anti Albert. Well, this is where the things get fuzzy because Alan doesn't restrict his definitions quite so clearly, but only that amount went into the, went into directly, um, pipe, direct pipeline and oil and gas extraction.
Funding and Inquiry's Purpose
00:03:41
Speaker
So that's less than 1% of all the money that was raised by Canadian environmental groups. And this includes Canadian funds that were raised domestically. So I mean, that should have just been the end of it. Like, why are we going any further? You know, where's this giant conspiracy that like, this is all over. The other point that I
00:04:06
Speaker
I felt is you know Albertans are three and a half million dollars poorer and pretty much the piece that I did in what October 2019 almost over two years ago now covered all this territory using pretty much all the same publicly accessible information that
00:04:27
Speaker
that the Allen Inquiry accessed. And I did it for free, and my numbers were pretty much the same. But I had more information. But finally, the biggest point is private citizens were subjected to an inquiry in which the legislation permits the Inquiry Commissioner to subpoena witnesses
00:04:53
Speaker
to compel them to produce documents. Private citizens who were doing nothing wrong. It's admitted right from the get-go. There was nothing wrong, nothing improper, nothing illegal in any way, certainly not criminal. The only thing that was wrong was that Jason Kenney and the UCP
00:05:17
Speaker
didn't like what the environmentalists, what some of the environmental community were doing. And on that basis alone, subjected them to an inquiry where they could be hauled before a commissioner in order to produce their emails, their communications, their private text messages, all of these
00:05:40
Speaker
All kinds of documentation could have been compelled had Steve Allen decided to go that route. And I think that that should send a chill down the spine of every Albertan and every Canadian because that was unquestionably an absolute abuse of power.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yes, I mean, abusive power is the term you use in your piece. And you make a pretty convincing case that it was, even though Allen didn't ultimately end up using the powers of a provincial judge to compel testimony and documents and evidence, he could have, and by all rights, accorded to him.
00:06:19
Speaker
He could have held the Pembit Institute by its ankles or even Progress Alberto and me by my ankles and shaken loose whatever bit of information he would have wanted out of my organization if they had so desired. Despite the fact that, again, we never did anything wrong, illegal. There was no finding of misconduct or wrongdoing or misinformation or anything, right?
Political Motives and Outcomes
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, you were exercising your rights of freedom of association and freedom of expression that you are guaranteed in Canada. And that was absolutely being contested. And I don't have any doubt at all that had Kenny
00:07:00
Speaker
But that's what Kenny wanted. I feel like that, to me, it was very clear from all the language, everything that Jason Kenny's had to say going into this, was that this was what he expected and intended this inquiry to do. It was no surprise to me that he seemed unable to get a retired judge or a senior lawyer who had trial experience to conduct this inquiry because
00:07:23
Speaker
It was clearly an inquisition and clearly improper in every way. It was improper in its terms of reference. It was an impossible fix that Steve Allen found himself in. I think he probably got into much deeper waters than he realized early on.
00:07:41
Speaker
And to a certain extent, you know, I've been rather hard on him. Others maybe have been harder on him. But I mean, it's pretty clear that he dug in his heels and he was not going to do what was expected of him, which was to do exactly that, which is to haul private citizens and dissidents and activists into that commission and get them to fork over documents.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yes, if it had been someone more in the vein of, say, Terrence Corcoran from the Financial Post, yes, that was definitely what Kenny was looking for. He didn't end up getting it because ultimately by making it a public inquiry is bound by all sorts of rules and administrative law that I don't think Kenny or Alan had any clue what they were getting into really when they did it.
00:08:33
Speaker
But in the hands of a clever person, definitely could have done far more harm than it ended up doing. But ultimately, it was a sham that said nothing new that everyone already knew about. It was a waste of time, money, and resources. It was pure propaganda from the beginning.
00:08:52
Speaker
But what struck out to me about the report, reading it yesterday, was Steve Hallen having an existential crisis about the report itself, about 90% of the way through the thing. This is on page 597 or something of a 650 page some report. And here's the quote. Let me know what you think about this.
00:09:18
Speaker
I agree that on its own, the label anti Alberta or anti Albertan is not helpful or constructive. It does not reflect the objectives or work of this inquiry. Well, the title of the inquiry is the inquiry into anti Alberta energy campaigns.
00:09:40
Speaker
This is why I say I feel like, and as you know, I had some communications with Mr. Allen early on.
00:09:52
Speaker
we had discussed this and we discussed the terms of reference and his discomfort was was there right from the get go and i don't know how it was that he actually got signed on to something that he.
00:10:10
Speaker
Well, it was repugnant right from the beginning and he knew it. And I don't know whether it was because he was trying to be a loyal soldier or because he thought that the facts that were going to be revealed were going to be much more damning than they were and that this was going to be an easier job for him.
00:10:33
Speaker
I don't know what went wrong. But no, he knew early that he was in trouble and it never got better. It only got worse. Yes. I mean, it was riven with with scandal after scandal, embarrassment after embarrassment. But I mean, to even justify its own existence, he has to create a definition of what the word anti Alberta means that has no relationship to the English language.
00:11:00
Speaker
has to completely disregard what the word anti means. And, and, but, but we all know what the, um, house committee on un-American activities was. Don't wait. I mean, this is the, we're talking about the McCarthy era, this duplicated in every way. It had all the flashing red lights that, uh, that, and, and clearly from all the language that Jason Kenney used in, in, um,
00:11:29
Speaker
commencing this commission and launching it was that this is exactly what he intended to do. So I don't know really what more there is to say about this, except that it was so badly framed.
00:11:45
Speaker
And actually, incompetently framed, because I would think if I'm Jason Kenny, I want to give enough cover, you know, so that my commission can appear to have better credentials, better bona fides, better indications of good faith, so that then I can stick the ship in, if you know what I mean. And he couldn't even do that.
00:12:12
Speaker
No, it was so uncomfortably run that it wasn't even able to effectively harass his political opponents, which is why it was created in the first place. I'm glad you brought up Jason Kennedy because yes, this was his baby. He campaigned in 2018 and 2019 on this fight back strategy. It was the reliable applause line of every stump speech that he was going to stand on his behind legs and fight for Alberta.
00:12:37
Speaker
And key to this, it was really like there was a bunch of planks, but really the three big ones all now lie in shambles, right? Like his lawsuit against the federal government's carbon tax loss, the public inquiry, an embarrassment that Kenny wouldn't even show up to the press conference for and defend. He had to put his own energy minister out on an island to defend it. And then, and then hilariously enough, the war room, which
00:13:05
Speaker
which Steve Allen himself takes a few pages out of a 657 page report to level a pretty like clear eyed and entirely accurate criticisms of the war room, which is very funny. Well, it's the Civil War Room.
00:13:25
Speaker
Or the uncivil war room now. Yeah, it's like, oh, I hate to see our kids fight, right? Yeah, the war room and the inquiry. But I did not expect Steve Allen in the inquiry to say, there were several missteps from the outset that damaged its reputation, from which it has not been able to recover its governance. And accordingly, its credibility is seriously compromised by having three provincial cabinet ministers comprising its board of directors. And finally, the real coup de grace.
00:13:55
Speaker
There may be a need for a vehicle such as this, referring to the war room, assuming proper governance and accountability is established to develop a communications marketing strategy for the industry and or the province. But it may well be that the reputation of this entity has been damaged beyond repair.
00:14:15
Speaker
I mean, you're in Alberta, so you have a better sense of how this is being received by the public. To a certain extent, we're in a kind of bubble. We've been following this closely for a long time. Either you or people that you know have been implicated in this commission.
00:14:37
Speaker
For me, it's a lot of people that I have used as sources or that I have spoken to in a lot of detail, but we're really inside a bubble. How do you think that Albertans are receiving this?
Media Reactions and Misleading Narratives
00:14:48
Speaker
Well, I think anything associated with Jason Kenney right now is just toxic, right? And he's just an incredibly unpopular person in charge of an incredibly unpopular government. And there's a reason why he didn't appear and defend this thing because there's this stink of death and defeat on him. But this report will ultimately serve its political purpose, despite the fact that the media and kind of like society
00:15:17
Speaker
broadly speaking, is laughing this thing out of the room. It's still going to do a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting when it comes to the base, when it comes to what some people call the extractive right, which is a group of folks who are involved in a political project that is based around right-wing politics and oil and gas.
00:15:41
Speaker
And, you know, it was interesting to see the propaganda spread, right? You know, the big top line numbers from Allen were kind of immediately dismissed by most media, but there was one outlet that decided to run with it. And it would surprise you to learn that post media and the national post had to change a headline. Of course. Of the story that they ran, the immediate file that they ran on the on the Allen inquiry. So
00:16:09
Speaker
The initial headline that they wrote, the national piece file on this was, foreign donors gave 1.3 billion to Canadian environmentalists to quote, hurt, unquote, Alberta's energy sector report. That, I mean, a lot of people call that out as false and we are going to get into the numbers. And that headline was eventually changed to
00:16:31
Speaker
foreign donors opened wallets to hurt, quote, to quote, hurt, unquote, Alberta energy sector report. But that isn't before Sonia Savage and a whole bunch of UCP folks, you know, retweeted and blur, blasted out the inaccurate Nash national post headline before they changed it. Right.
00:16:52
Speaker
I'm surprised that they changed it, to be honest, because when has their reporting on this issue ever hewn close to the truth? They've just always gone for hyperbole, exaggeration, or outright misrepresentation of the facts. I was actually surprised that they changed it. There was never any kind of note on the story that the headline was changed. It was just changed.
00:17:18
Speaker
I mean, Kevin Leiben and kind of like the political major domo over there, I think had his fingerprints kind of all over the story, but maybe the reporter pushed back. I don't know. It would be, I would love to be a fly on the wall or just to be able to read those emails about, yeah, the thought process around changing that headline. But again, not only did, you know, UCP cabinet ministers and staff reach with the headline, the UCP themselves took that 1.28 billion number and pushed it out there as if it was a real number.
00:17:48
Speaker
And let's take a minute to just kind of like dive in into what Alan's inquiry actually said. I mean, they had two years, they had $3.5 million, they had a whole bunch of fancy lawyers and accountants do the same work that you did, right? It's two years ago. I'm just shocked at where this money went.
00:18:09
Speaker
Yes, yes. It is incredible when you think about it. But their big top line number, $1.28 billion for Canadian-based environmental initiatives. That's a big number. That sounds really scary. But when you actually figure out what Canadian-based environmental initiatives mean and the foreign funding that they're receiving, it turns out that a third of that $1.28 billion goes to one organization.
00:18:38
Speaker
one organization that the Allen Inquiry had to redact out of its own report, and that's Ducks Unlimited Canada. Yeah. But so much of it went into major conservation projects. Yes, which is Ducks Unlimited Canada's game, right? They're a conservation group. Yeah.
00:18:59
Speaker
And so this huge bucket of money, this $1.28 billion, vast majority of it is for, you know, incredibly uncontroversial and unsexy conservation work, but which gets lumped into this big giant evil bucket of money. But then the Allen and you actually read the report and you get down to the, to the actual bits.
00:19:21
Speaker
And the Allen Inquirer was only able to find $54 million between 2003 and 2019 that was earmarked for opposition to Alberta resource development. Can you put those numbers in perspective for us, Sandy?
00:19:37
Speaker
Well, you know, I tracked a lot of this. Now, the years that I was looking at were slightly different. When I went into this, I was looking at 2009 to 2019 and I found about $40 million. So I'm not surprised that it's
00:19:57
Speaker
that he came up with a 54 million but he also there was a little bit of a range because he couldn't verify anything because he didn't talk to anybody and he didn't actually get to the horse's mouth on any any of these grants it was really it really was um a google search um i mean and and this gets back to the genesis and the beginning of the tar sands campaign because that's almost all of this 54 million dollars was the
00:20:26
Speaker
was the tar sands campaign or organizations that went on to form the tar sands campaign. And really the key issue that I think still is unanswered, but should be answered and is known to all the participants was, you know, it's kind of the chicken and the egg question, which came first, the foreign funding or the tar sands campaign?
Grassroots vs. Foreign Funding
00:20:49
Speaker
Did the tar sands campaign and the organizations that formed it, did they create the tar sands campaign and then go out looking for money? Hint, hint, yes. Or did the foreign funders generate the tar sands campaign and then look for Canadian grassroots organizations to follow their instructions?
00:21:11
Speaker
and do this anti-Alberta activism? Answer, no. We never got that far. But I think that was actually the key question, is what was the real driver here? And all of this has depended
00:21:29
Speaker
we haven't talked yet about Vivian Crouse, but all of this has depended on the kind of framing that Vivian Crouse consistently makes in all of her coverage of this, which is that the funders are driving this, the funders are creating the narrative, the funders, the foreigners are telling Canadian dupes what to do. And anybody who's remotely familiar with the individuals, the genesis, the personalities behind this, the organizations that got involved in it,
00:21:59
Speaker
It's perfectly obvious. In fact, it's right there in the infamous PowerPoint presentation, the keynote document, which was supposedly came out of the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and this supposed New York conference room meeting where supposedly the tar sands campaign
00:22:24
Speaker
was hatched and created by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. In fact, if you look at the document itself, it names the Pembina Institute as being pretty much the founding organization behind it.
00:22:40
Speaker
It's right there in the document. But this has been for over a decade, this has been flamed out as the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation started this. In fact, what we all, what anybody who has any knowledge of this field knows is that this, that the tar sands campaign
00:23:04
Speaker
And Sephora Berman was part of it. The Pemina people at the time were part of it. There were other organizations that got involved in it and they created it. And then they went looking for the dollars to fund it. And they found those dollars in international global foundations that fund grassroots citizens movements worldwide.
00:23:33
Speaker
That's what has again, all entirely legal, you know, people exercising their rights, uh, to freedom of association and freedom of expression. But, but, but Sonia Savage has one, one message. And if there was one big takeaway I took from Sonia Savage's press conference.
00:23:54
Speaker
it was Albertans have a right to be mad. And that was the final sentence. That's how she closed it off. She was answering a question from the New York Times guy.
00:24:07
Speaker
And that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of what this inquiry was all about. It's all about my feelings are more important than your facts. And my feelings were hurt when you said all those mean things about the tar sands. And we didn't like that one little bit.
00:24:31
Speaker
And they're not the oil sands, Duncan. But the whole thing about feelings, about the people should be outraged or feelings should be hurt. I mean, you didn't make, you didn't produce a document that really offered up like a good reason for why people should be angry. If nothing wrong or bad or illegal occurred, what is there to be so mad about?
00:25:01
Speaker
If anything, the document should make them all ashamed of what they did and how easily they got hosed. And it's not just by, you know, I've mentioned Vivian Crouse, but it's more than that. It's the National Post pounding this drum relentlessly, but it is not just
00:25:23
Speaker
It's the people in positions of power. This goes back to the Stephen Harper government. This goes back to Joe Oliver's infamous letter, open letter, calling environmentalists, you know, these radicals, these foreign-funded radicals, the language that has been used for over a decade about activists looking to stop the expansion of oil and gas
Environmental Activism Impact
00:25:53
Speaker
out of Canada oil and gas extraction in Canada and
00:26:00
Speaker
What's so concerning here is that this whole thing got whipped up by these people. They are the authors of this. They own this. They created it. No wonder Albertans are angry. They made them angry. They whipped them up into a frenzy. And then they were supposed to produce the verdict that was going to show how terrible all of these activists were.
00:26:25
Speaker
who, by the way, never stopped any of the expansion of oil and gas in Alberta. Oil sands extraction has increased at the second highest rate of any oil producing area in the world, second only to the Permian Basin in the United States.
00:26:43
Speaker
This frenzy got whipped up entirely by these people and now they're trying to justify themselves when they've got a report that completely undercuts everything that they've had to say.
00:26:57
Speaker
Those foreign-funded radicals at Ducks Unlimited are at it again, Sandy. It's also just worth pointing out quickly that the new CEO of Ducks Unlimited Canada is a person named Larry Comire, who is Jason Kenney's former principal secretary and interim chief of staff, which, to be fair, a couple of journalists have pointed out this fact. We dug this up.
00:27:20
Speaker
Later, the only reason we know that it was Ducks Unlimited that received $429 million wasn't deliberately through the inquiry. They tried to redact out the names of a bunch of conservation organizations, but they did so in a way that wasn't effective, like didn't work. You could just copy and paste the table out and put it into a new document and you could find out what was in there.
00:27:43
Speaker
Well, there's also this small matter, Duncan, that I was telling everybody it was Ducks Unlimited because I've tracked all these dollars and I knew it was Ducks Unlimited. Yeah, they're a huge clearinghouse for money. This is publicly available information. If anybody who has the ability now to log on to the website that both Steve Allen and I used to track this, it was all right there. Anybody could find it.
00:28:10
Speaker
but you have to have a membership on this site. Anyway. Well, it's not too high of a financial barrier for Steve Allen considering he's getting paid nearly $300,000 a year and he had a $3.5 million budget. Sorry. Nobody will pay me. Where's my money? I can't even build an inquiry like certain other people that shall remain nameless.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yes, and your point about the drum beat and how this was a deliberate political project of those on the right, I think that's worth exploring as well, right? This was a key part of the mythos of Jason Kenney that he built up around himself, that he was going to strive in, save the economy,
00:28:55
Speaker
you know, punish his political opponents, ride to the rescue of the Alberta economy and the Alberta people, and ergo, you should elect me. This was his story, right? And now it lies in shambles. And post-media was with him there the whole way, specifically Terrence Corcoran, who was found, essentially, Vivian Krauss blogging on the internet.
00:29:24
Speaker
and turned her into what she became, which was the kind of progenitor of this theory that has now been essentially discredited by the government that took it up so seriously. And it's more than that. In fact, this is actually something that deserves real
00:29:42
Speaker
examination sometime, someday, because it's more than that. I mean, I go back to the Duffy diaries, remember Mike Duffy, and he actually maintained diaries that ended up being entered into exhibit when he was when he was charged in that bribery case. And the diaries show that he was called by Ezra LaVant about Vivian Krauss
00:30:04
Speaker
in January of 2012, just two or three days before Joe Oliver issued his letter, a letter which smeared environmentalists. That was published by Terrence Corcoran in the Financial Post, and Terrence Corcoran took credit for that and said that this was because of Vivian Krauss's research.
00:30:34
Speaker
Mike Duffy's diaries show multiple meetings and conversations and phone calls involving SIPA, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, CAH. Rest in peace that organization's now gone. Yes, rest in peace that organization's now gone. But multiple conversations showing that, in fact, there was a coordinated, demonstrating a coordinated attempt
00:31:05
Speaker
by the Stephen Harper government to smear and vilify environmentalists.
Political Campaign Against Environmentalists
00:31:11
Speaker
And then what happened? And this is actually really important. The CRA audits were launched. Those had an incredibly silencing and intimidating effect on everybody in the nonprofit world.
00:31:24
Speaker
But not only that, there were RCMP and CSIS investigations that were launched. Many people that I spoke to as part of my research talked about the fact that they either knew or strongly suspected that they were being investigated by the police.
00:31:41
Speaker
The government in power turned what are supposed to be independent instruments. The CRA is supposed to be independent. The RCMP and CSIS are supposed to be independent. You're not supposed to, as prime minister, be able to order an investigation on your
00:31:59
Speaker
political enemies for expressing their opinions. This totally is straight out of the Trump world of lock them up, get rid of them, silence them, intimidate them, shut them down. It costs millions of dollars for a lot of those organizations to defend themselves from the CRA audits. There's never been an accounting
00:32:21
Speaker
for how dangerous this was to individuals. And I think people who are not part of the environmental community, and I'm not really part of the environmental community, I've always come at this from a civil liberties and political freedom from a charter perspective. And I'm actually, I'm concerned that people who were not part of the environmental community never really got very upset
00:32:51
Speaker
Or upset enough about about the dangers to civil liberties that this? vilification and this campaign this orchestrated campaign against environmentalists took But at least we've all lived to see The whole thing come down in flames and it's and I think it's over It it certainly seems
00:33:17
Speaker
as if it's over. I mean, I think it's all over but the kind of media analysis and how it's going to be viewed. And I think that's a good way to end this podcast out is with two separate pieces. One, which I found very funny to read, was Terrence Corcoran's piece.
00:33:35
Speaker
in the financial post. Again, the man responsible for bringing Vivian Krauss to essentially the public spotlight. And unsurprisingly, he thinks the report was great, though he has shifted the goalposts a little bit. The headline, report on environmental groups targeting Alberta oil exposes disastrous charitable system.
00:33:54
Speaker
So he kind of, because there's no finding of wrongdoing, there's no finding of misinformation. It's all about hurt feelings. He ends up focusing on the charitable system and how the charitable system must be reformed.
00:34:10
Speaker
And you know what? Sure. I mean, I'm sure there's stuff that could be done to improve disclosure of how charities work. I don't imagine that the inquiry's recommendations are actually going to come to anything given who's in charge right now. But there is a line from the piece that I want to bring up, which is very funny. Quote, The report is also a major vindication of the pioneering research conducted by Vivian Krauss.
00:34:39
Speaker
Snore.
00:34:52
Speaker
Well, that's a very convenient check for him to say. The point is beside the point. They are innocent, but that wasn't the point. The fact that they did nothing wrong isn't the point. The point is my feelings were hurt and we didn't like it. And so, yeah, we did all that shit and we harmed civil society in a real way. And now it's kind of coming back to bite us in the ass.
00:35:15
Speaker
Um, I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not going to get into the details of Corcoran's piece because it is just like him essentially being a whiny baby. But anyways, the other piece that's, that's worth, uh, talking about is the, uh, it came out today as from the New York times from Ian Austin at the New York times headline, Alberta took on environmental groups, but only proved they did nothing wrong. And, uh, have you had a chance to read this yet, Sandy? I have, I have. It's a good piece.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yes, very, very, very reasonable. It's not even that long, really. It's kind of just a summation. Is there anything you want to pull out of it? Only what I mentioned earlier, which is that putting together the two key numbers, which is in the period that the inquiry studied, 2003 to 2019, Canadian environmental groups raised
00:36:12
Speaker
$8.1 billion and of that about $54 million maybe went to pipeline and oil and gas opposition from foreign funders. And again, as I say, that's less than 1%.
00:36:33
Speaker
And this is just, this has such a non-issue. This has been, these people should all be embarrassed to have blown something out of proportion so much but entirely for their own political benefit. Let's be very clear as to who the beneficiaries were of all of this controversy. And people got hurt. You know, I wrote a piece earlier in the summer about
00:37:01
Speaker
Sephora Berman being grabbed and spit on in, I believe, the Edmonton Airport. Other people who, just ordinary citizens in small communities in British Columbia who were physically attacked, stalked, who saw people stalking them outside their offices. Other people whose lives, whose personal lives really suffered and who had to be afraid for themselves and for their children, for their families.
00:37:31
Speaker
This was all caused by these people, and they did it deliberately, and they did it for their own benefit. I think this is a terrible outrage. It's not just about the abuse of power, although that's really crucial.
Political Opportunism and Rights
00:37:44
Speaker
It's about the naked political opportunism, the carelessness with which these people treated other people's safety, their own lives and families, and how dangerous that was.
00:37:57
Speaker
they were willing to light civil society on fire for a tiny political benefit. And the New York Times piece is really a contrast to Terrence Corcoran's piece, right? Quote, instead of giving Kenny the firepower he sought to diminish the influence of environmental groups, the inquiry's findings offered little support of Kenny's argument, which is a very polite way of saying, yeah, there's nothing there.
00:38:25
Speaker
And here's the disaster for Jason Kenney is that people do read the New York Times and they don't read the National Post unless they're already inside the tent. The National Post isn't going to persuade anybody of anything, but Sonia Savage could go and take out her billboard in Times Square and good luck with that after a report like this in the New York Times.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yes, a billboard in Times Square is not worth very much compared to an article in the New York Times, just from a pure earned media perspective. It was very satisfying to see this thing fall on its face, to see Savage squirm up on the podium. Again, I was personally targeted. There was a report that came out citing Vivian Krause's work that deliberately referenced me and very particularly referenced me and my organization.
Personal Vindication
00:39:17
Speaker
And that we were up to no good, that what we were doing was evidence of some grand dark conspiracy. And the government looked into it. They hired one of their own people to look into it. And not only was Progress Alberta not named, the inquiry blows up all the most overheated rhetoric that came out of Kenney and his allies in regards to the whole foreign funded environmentalist program.
00:39:45
Speaker
It's very satisfying is all I'm saying. Well, you should be happy, good on you. And there were a lot of people who waited a long time for the satisfaction of being vindicated by this report. And I'm glad for you that you're among them.
00:40:03
Speaker
Thanks. Thanks, Sandy. So I think, I think that's it for the pod. Uh, is there, uh, what's the best way for people to kind of follow along with, uh, your work and, uh, you know, we'll link to your thing in the show notes, but what's the best way for people to kind of keep track of, uh, what you're up to on the internet? Well, people can read, there are a number of pieces that I've written on this subject over the number of years that people can read on the national observer. And I think that they are, I think they're posting and linking those. Um, there are several of them over the years.
00:40:33
Speaker
And then, of course, me on Twitter, at Garrosino on Twitter. Yes. And thanks again for coming on, Sandy. It's great to have you on again. And it's great to have you on in such kind of like, not happy times, but it's good to see something like this go down in flames. It's very satisfying.
00:40:54
Speaker
Um, and, uh, folks, if you like this podcast, you want to keep hearing more podcasts like this. There's a very simple thing you can do. You can join the 500 or so other folks who help keep this independent media project going. Uh, the link is in the show notes, but you can also go to the progress report.ca slash patrons. You put in your credit card, five, 10, $15 a month, whatever you can afford.
00:41:13
Speaker
We really appreciate it. Also, if you have any notes, thoughts, or comments that you think I need to hear, I am very easy to reach. I am on Twitter far too much at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at, at, uh, Duncan K at progress, Alberta.ca. Thanks to Jim Story for editing this podcast. Thanks to Jamie Kremens for chase producing. Thanks to cosmic family communist for our theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.