Another *grassroots* industry-funded Con tank

Canadian Cynic wonders how the astroturf/fundraiser actiontank Conservative Voice, according to their own website, can manage to juggle :

"Conservative Voice believes that Canada needs an organized, non-profit voice financed by industry to ensure that the Canadian political landscape remains in balance"

with :

"Funded and supported by citizens who cherish individual freedom, free markets, and smaller government." 

Good question. They also declare :

"Conservative Voice is independent of all political parties."

The sole director for Conservative Voice listed at Industry Canada is Dan Hilton, who was personally hired on by Irving Gerstein as Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada in January 2009, a position Hilton held til October 2013. 
The Conservative Voice website was registered five months later in March 2014 and Hilton is still thumping up business for them.

(You'll perhaps recall Conservative Fund head Irving Gerstein told Hilton about Nigel Wright's $90K personal cheque to Duffy long before the rest of us heard about it.)

Political analyst Alise Mills, who divides her analyzing time between Ezra Levant's Rebel Media and CBC's Power and Politics, was named National Executive Director at Conservative Voice this past July by "Dan Hilton, Founder and Chair". 
Alise Mills' previously plumped for the astroturf pipelines booster site British Columbians for Prosperity, and apparently will continue to do so in her new gig at ConVoice : 

"On Monday November 9th, our Executive Director, Alise Mills, stands up for Canadian jobs, ethical oil and notes the hypocrisy of cancelling Keystone XL."

I'm not sure what Industry Canada means when it lists Conservative Voice as a "Non-Soliciting" Corporation, but ConVoice held a big fundraiser at the Marriott in Ottawa a couple of weeks ago on December 9 with guest speaker Tony Clement and Rebel Media's Brian Lilley.

Last year, Conservative Voice explained their fundraising objective : 

" ... the real battle takes place between elections."

“We need your corporate support now to build a campaign for the Conservative Voice .... This seed money should be considered a lobbying/activism expense as we promote your conservative corporate agenda. We are seeking funds to finance a national mail and telephone campaign to small and medium sized business owners to build our war chest ahead of the next election so that we can start to push our message in early 2015.”

Corps will get their tax receipt outside the writ period which imposes spending caps on PACs.

Their Mission Statement :

"To raise support and awareness for conservative ideals; and to keep Canada on the right track of Conservative principles and policies while keeping Canada’s political landscape balanced."

Big C in Conservative. Alrighty then.

Monday update : via Greg Fingus : How the Koch network rivals the GOP, overtaking political parties and candidates, infusing money and talent, and answerable to no one. 

This, Greg notes, underscores our need up here for counterbalancing citizens' movements  working across party lines. 
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TransCanada astroturfers

TransCanada has dumped its US pr firm Edelman 10 days after the Greenpeace leak of documents outlining their joint dodgy strategy to use third party front groups to aggressively attack opponents of the Energy East pipeline, and to do and say what “TransCanada can’t" :

"TransCanada immediately denied it had implemented those tactics, which were widely criticized."

The leaked docs - some adorned with the TransCanada logo - date back to May and include various tactics for targeting opponents like Council of Canadians using forty Edelman employees and nine TransCanada staffers.

TransCanada referred to the "controversy" as "a distraction" and said they would like a do over now please : "We are therefore starting a fresh conversation."

"In the current environment, we can't have the respectful conversation that we want to have with Canadians and Quebecers about Energy East," TransCanada spokesman Tim Duboyce said Wednesday in a release. h/t CBC

Quite. 

About Edelman's astroturfing, which they describe as "third party support" and "an echo chamber of aligned voices"...

Edelman's pointman for TransCanada "Grassroots Advocacy Vision" astroturf is Mike Krempasky from their DC office. As documented by Greenpeace, Mr.Krempasky - Tea Party promoter and co-founder of RedState.com - previously had a pretty good run using fake grassroots paid bloggers in their folksy Wal-Marting Across America campaign before one was outed as working for the US Treasury and another a staffer at Washington Post.

Greenpeace astroturf backgrounder :

"Krempasky’s Energy East “Pressure” team includes Brian McNeill ... director of opposition research for Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. McNeill made national news when it was revealed that he was one of three Edelman employees who were authoring all of the blogs ..." 

on yet another Wal-Mart fluffer campaign. Meanwhile ...

"Edelman was paid $51.9 million to run the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) public relations campaign, which has involved Edelman managing multiple websites and online advertising efforts asking officials to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, support tax deductions for the oil industry and expand access for drilling on public lands.
Central to this strategy is the pro-oil group “Energy Citizens”, which was unveiled as an API-sponsored astroturf group by Greenpeace USA. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers recently launched its own version of Energy Citizens in Canada."

So despite CEO Richard Edelman statement in August in response to separate allegations regarding their work with climate change deniers that :

"We do not work with astroturf groups"

let's have a quick look at Energy Citizens Canada, launched by CAPP, and presumed sister site to the US Energy Citizens, launched by the American Petroleum Institute in 2009.

So far the Canadian version seems to be mostly about harvesting emails of future possible tarsands flufferbots.
As encouragement, the Spotlight on Energy Citizens page profiles Energy Citizens Brittany Allison and Hardave Birk.

Brittany Allison was "a Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa" and a "Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria", prior to her work as Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks LP, "working to gain federal approval for a coal expansion project".


Currently Ms Allison is Manager of the astroturf tarsands site, British Columbians for Prosperity. 

btw Is CBC Power and Politics regular Alise Mills still the "Media Relations Director" for BC4P?
Will she still write columns for 24 Hours, just bought out by PostMedia, with the bi-line :
"Alise Mills is a political commentator who speaks for British Columbians for Prosperity. Visit moneytrail.ca."

The only other Citizen Spotlight candidate so far is former president of University of Calgary Students Union, Hardave Birk, whose's bio notes he is legislative assistant to Senator Doug Black.

While in no way a reflection upon Mr. Birk, this seems as good a time as any to remind ourselves that prior to becoming Senator Black, Doug Black was president of industry lobby group Energy Policy Institute of Canada, or EPIC, where he worked with vice-chairs Bruce Carson, Gerry Protti and Daniel Gagnier on a national energy program representing their 38 energy member organizations, including TransCanada and CAPP.

Two years ago EPIC put out a presser taking credit for how they have shaped current Con policy on property rights, pipelines, public participation, and First Nations :

"Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver announced legislative changes that would put EPIC's recommendations into federal law. Regulatory changes within omnibus Bill C-38 reflect recommendations of EPIC surrounding regulatory streamlining." 

"You are the secret sauce," Doug Black once wrote to Bruce Carson, whose trial on illegal lobbying and influence peddling will not begin till September next year.

More Insider Tarsands Astroturf.  We are awash in the stuff.

Update : Energy Citizens Canada has just added another "Featured Citizen" to their Spotlight : Alishia Klein, Communications Coordinator at Canadian Natural Resources Limited.

Upperdate : Astroturf  Illustrated!

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Insider tarsands astroturf - Power of Canada

A month ago, former MP and Liberal leadership contender Martha Hall Findlay had a piece in the G&M : Northern Gateway : You don't build a nation by saying 'No" in which she echoed Tarsands Minister Joe Oliver in invoking pipelines as "nation-building" projects similar to building the "national railway and the St. Lawrence Seaway". 

Nation-building is apparently no longer about bringing people together in economic resilience but now consists of petrocorps getting their toxic unrefined bitumen to China as quickly and easily as possible. 

What you may not have known because the G&M failed to mention it is that MHF was writing as a member of an insiders corporate PR group spun off from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce called Partnership for Resource Trade and its website Power of Canada [powerofcanada.ca].  

If you want to hear even more about the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Saint Lawrence Seaway as precursors of nation-building pipelines and how the resource sector is the "front lines of environmentalism" - these are your go-to guys.

Power of Canada Advisory Council Members include Perrin Beatty, David Emerson, John Manley, Kevin Lynch, Ted Menzies, MHF of course, and reps from CAPP, TransCanada, Enbridge, Rio Tinto, Teck, Suncor, TransAlta, CD Howe, BMO, Asia-Pacific Foundation, Mining Association of Canada, Port Metro Vancouver, etc. etc.
  
While you're there you can sign up to pledge your support and add your sig to a petition to MPs : "I believe in the Power of Canada".

As the Canadian Chamber of Commerce put it in a letter to their local branches :

"Through the Partnership for Resource Trade, we want to recruit and empower local champions ... and add your voices and passion to the public debate. In coming days we will provide more tools that can help you and your members become involved in the dialogue.  I encourage you to visit the web site powerofcanada.ca."

Here's two local champions who took the pledge and signed up at Power of Canada :
Cody Battershill, Calgary, AB
Wyatt Webster, Surrey, BC

As I've mentioned before, Wyatt Webster co-wrote a pro-pipeline op ed in the Vancouver Sun with Christopher Wilson in June where they advised readers to check out their own grassroots website, Canada Action - "Support Northern Gateway", which in turn also signs up supporters - including Bruce Lounds of the pro-pipeline astroturf group British Columbians for Prosperity.

Sample Canada Action supporter comment :
"The Northern Gateway pipeline is a nation building project, every bit as important as building the St Lawrence Seaway"
  
Here Canada Action is seen staging, in Cody Battershill aka codyincalgary's words, an "Awesome Pro-Resource, Pro-Pipeline" counter-protest at the "No Enbridge" rally in Vancouver in May - with massive professional-looking banners and a special surprise visit from tarsands advocate Ezra Levant. 

Wilson and Webster state in their Vancouver Sun op ed : "Are we financially supported by a company, an association or a charitable foundation? No."

The first comment under the article is from Cody Battershill aka codyincalgary : 

"Why is Canada the only top oil reserve country targeted with such sophisticated, well financed and coordinated opposition?"

Sigh. We're obviously going to have to massively redefine "grassroots" and "astroturf" before this is over.


h/t Waterbaby for Power of Canada link.
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Girls night with Kathryn Marshall and BC4P

This past February, Kathryn Marshall, former spokesy for Ethical Oil, and Brittany Allison, Interim Executive Director of British Columbians For Prosperity, had a "girls night" at a West Vancouver restaurant. 




You'll recall Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall, formerly of the Koch-funded Fraser Institute :

"Successfully recruited major prospects for donations and sponsorships and built and maintained relationships between the Fraser Institute and donors. May 2008 – July 2009 "

... and her hapless tv stints raving against "foreign special interests and their deep pockets" that secretly funded opposition to the tarsands' efforts to get its ethical bitumen to Chinese markets. 

"I'm just a student with a website," insisted Kathryn - wife of Hamish Marshall, former manager of strategic planning in Stephen Harper’s PMO, whose company Go Newclear Productions, created and hosted websites for Ethical Oil and Con MPs Joe Oliver, Pierre Poilievre and Jason Kenney.

She took over the job from former American Enterprise Institute intern Alykhan Velshi, who left Jason Kenney's employ in 2011 to head up the website based on Ezra Levant's book of the same name and returned to Harper's office afterwards as planning director. 
After her came Jamie Ellerton, executive assistant - first to Jason Kenney til September 2010 and then to teabaggin' Tim Hudak .

Ethical Oil's specialty was attack ads. 
Recently, climate change skeptic Ezra Levant, who interned with Koch 20 years ago, has pondered in the pages of the Edmonton Sun whether environmentalist groups in Canada are funded by Putin.

For all their concern about foreign funding, neither Velshi nor Marshall ever answered repeated media questions about whether Enbridge or any other Canadian corporate interest was backing Ethical Oil.  Ironically, at the timeEnbridge's chair and 5 out of 12 directors were American.


Kathryn's 'girls night' buddy, Brittany Allison, also maintains a focus on shadowy foreign funding from her perch at BC4P moneytrail.ca : 

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL AND EXPLORE THE U.S. FOUNDATION FUNDING HYPOCRISY THAT'S IMPACTING CANADA'S SOVEREIGNTY

"Wealthy American Foundations pump millions of dollars into campaigns to halt Canadian oil sands production and pipelines."

According to BC4P, that would be the Foundations Rockefeller, Pew, and Tides, among 70 odd others.

BC4P Interim Policy Director Brittany Allison was previously :

"Policy Researcher in the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa and Research Officer in the B.C. Legislature in Victoria"

prior to being Public Affairs Advisor for Fraser Surrey Docks coal expansion project.

Like Ethical Oil, BC4P director and frequent CBC commentator Alise Mills also declines to reveal their sources of funding.

Foreign funding researcher Vivian Krause, who you would expect to be a natural political soul sister to these two, stated in a Kootenay Co-op radio interview in April that in addition to her objection to BC4P's flawed arguments - [transcript in comment #8 ] :

"I'm not involved with that group at all. They asked me to be involved but they wouldn't disclose their own funding sources so I wasn't willing to work with them."

Like Ethical Oil before them, BC4P has likely come to the end of its robocalling astroturfing usefulness, only to be replaced by yet another *grassroots org* of undisclosed funding - - like this one :

Canada Action Plan

"Full Value for Canadian Resources - Support Northern Gateway"

Just two guys with a grassroots website ...

... and an op ed in the CAPP/Postmedia partnership world of the Vancouver Sun a month ago :
Pipeline fear factor is inappropriate

... and a *surprise* visit from Ezra Levant at the "No Enbridge!" Sunset Beach protest in Vancouver where their Canada Action counter-protest banners were big enough to block the view of the ocean.

... and an endorsement on their Support the Northern Gateway Pipeline pledge from Bruce Lounds of BC4P.

Two days ago, Olivia Ward had a piece in The Star : Billionaire Koch brothers are big oil players in Alberta as the largest foreign landholder. 

"During an ill-fated run for vice-president in 1980, David Koch campaigned on a platform that promoted destruction of the social welfare system, repeal of taxation and an end to public education, children’s services, government medical care, minimum wage laws and environmental regulation.
But through the Kochs’ persistence and lavish funding, their libertarian ideas are now part of the Republican Party’s agenda, and they have helped to change the face of America.

Founding or funding groups like the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute and the State Policy Network — which acts as a seed bank for dozens of others — the Kochs gradually inched across the political landscape.

In Canada, Koch’s presence in the oil sands has set environmentalists’ teeth on edge as the brothers back U.S. climate skeptics, tout fossil fuels and oppose the Obama administration’s environmental agenda."

The Kochtopus with its unfettered free market oil-friendly political tentacles winding 

"into the mainstream through the tea party and "dark money" political coalitions that allow donors to shield their identity while funding attack ads "

In the same article, Ward interviews Kenneth Green, the Fraser Institute's Energy and Natural Resources director. Although she doesn't mention it, Green spent 3 years with the Fraser Institute and then seven with the Koch and Exxon-funded American Enterprise Institute before cycling back to the Fraser Institute again last year. In 2007 while with AEI, Green offered $10,000 each to any scientists willing to refute the IPCC's climate change report. 

Ward :

"Fraser Institute president Niels Veldhuis says that although Koch contributed $115,000 to the Fraser Institute in the past year, “it is for our Economic Freedom of the World project”

You know, the next time you two girls get together to talk 'foreign special interests and their deep pockets', you might want to have a look into that. 

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Alise Mills works for British Columbians for Prosperity

Pipelines booster British Columbians for International Prosperity or BC4P, whose website DeSmogBlog noted 4 days ago "bears remarkable similarity to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity", is "an independent group of concerned citizens looking to promote practical resource development" yadda yadda. They dropped the "International" from their brand name back in February :

They are not for "International Prosperity" any longer apparently. This is possibly due to their new campaign moneytrail.ca, which in turn bears a remarkable similarity to 
Ethical Oil's "Foreign Special Interests and Their Deep Pocket Puppets" campaign 
(and it would of course be entirely churlish of me to bring Koch up again by mentioning Ethical Oil founder Ezra Levant's internship with Koch here).

BC4P : FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL AND EXPLORE THE US FOUNDATION FUNDING HYPOCRISY THAT'S IMPACTING CANADIAN SOVEREIGNTY  

 "Wealthy American Foundations pump millions of dollars into campaigns to halt Canadian oil sands production and pipelines. The war on pipelines in BC is not about spirit bears and it's not about rain forests or climate change."

Not about spirit bears and rain forests. Got it.

Now when BC4IP/BC4P shot one of their pro-pipeline videos near my house last year, I assumed their "independent concerned citizens" consisted entirely of former ConocoPhillips and BP exec Bruce Lounds, Management Consulting in Heavy Oil / Tar Sands Sector, of North Vancouver and his website hosted in Chicago, Illinois:

But according to this Feb 25 article in 24 Hours by frequent CBC/CTV/SunNews panellist and commentator Alise Mills (excerpted): 

US has motive to block Canadian oil :

"The war on pipelines in BC is not about spirit bears and rain forests. 

It is about America's economy.   

American foundations have spent millions to halt Canadian pipelines and oil production.We need to build pipelines so that we become sovereign architects of our own future. "

And a Dec 2013 BC4P press release applauding the Joint Review Panel's approval of the Northern Gateway Pipeline was signed : Alise Mills, Media Relations Director.

Mills was on CBC's Power and Politics again this evening.

Honestly, CBC, I really think it's about time you mention she works for tarsands astroturfer BC4P at some point.

May 1 Update : Vancouver Observer follows up : 

Pro-oil 'citizens group' flip flops on its robo-calling of BC voters.

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