Dances With Oil

If Stephen Harper were a character in a Hollywood epic movie about the western Canadian frontier, and went to live with the First Nations people, I can’t help but think his alternate name would be Dances With Oil. He sure doesn’t dance with the one he brings to the ball. He wants to give the appearance of listening, but he won’t because he sees First Nations as his “adversaries”.

DFAIT hilariously has labeled First Nations as “adversaries” in their struggle to promote Tar Sand oil, and ship our brains out to the USA and China. The PMO calls environmentalists “enemies of the state”.

-A sample of Harper’s “enemies of the state”

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has labelled aboriginal groups and environmentalists as “adversaries,” while describing the National Energy Board, an independent federal regulator of industry, as an “ally” in its public relations strategy to polish the image of Alberta’s oilsands, a newly released internal document has revealed.

The document outlines key goals for the government’s diplomats in promoting the industry, which is considered to be the fastest-growing source of global-warming-causing emissions in the country, and in lobbying against foreign climate change policies.

Rich U.S. groups that funded environmentalists also gave to Canadian government

Tax returns show the Canadian government has also been the beneficiary of millions of dollars in largesse from some of the wealthiest private organizations in the United States.

And some of that money came from the same U.S. groups that helped fund Canadian environmentalists.

The grants to the federal government come to light as Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and the pro-oilsands website EthicalOil.org take Canadian environmental groups to task for accepting money from big American foundations to finance their campaigns against the oilsands.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver accused “environmental and other radical groups” of trying to use money from “foreign special-interest groups” to hijack hearings on a pipeline that would bring Alberta oilsands bitumen to a port on the British Columbia coast.

But the Canadian government seems to have no qualms accepting grant money from private U.S. foundations — including some of the same organizations that gave to Canadian environmental groups.

For example, U.S. tax records show the California-based William and Flora Hewlett Foundation gave $750,000 to the David Suzuki Foundation and a whopping $40 million to the International Development Research Centre, a federal Crown corporation.