The Doc the Koch Brothers Don't Want You to See

One year ago, Global News pulled "The Koch Connection" by acclaimed Canadian TV producer and investigative journalist Bruce Livesey just days before it went to air. 

Promo material about the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, including an interview with an Alberta cattle rancher an Alberta Fort McKay First Nations negotiator in talks with Koch Oil Sands Operating, was also scrubbed off their site. 

Livesey told his story on Canadaland and was subsequently fired - along with, if memory serves, some members of his production crew.

Now The Real News Network is teaming up with Livesey to get his doc finished and to market. The film exposes how :

"the Kochs’ are waging relentless campaigns to deny climate change and using their wealth to get conservatives elected to office to approve the Keystone XL pipeline and further their corporate interests."

Founded by filmmaker Paul Jay - producer at Fifth Estate and Frontline, creator of the brilliant CBC debate program CounterSpin with host Avi Lewis, and founding chair of Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival -  The Real News Network airs alternative in-depth Canadian content, sans the usual corporate spin. 

Kudos to them for picking up the Canadian slack, and if you want to see this doc made, show it some support here. 

For more from Bruce Livesey, see his work as lead investigative reporter at the National Observer.
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*correction in 2nd sentence*
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Manning Centre for Building American Majority

Last month in Ottawa, PM Stephen Harper and House Leader Peter Van Loan quietly met with Scott Walker, the anti-SSM anti-abortion anti-union Wisconsin governor whose imminent 2016 Republican presidential candidacy is already teetering atop a pile of Koch Bros. dark money. 

When Glen McGregor reported on the meeting yesterday, PMO spokesey Stephen Lecce came out of his little spokesbox and said "These are not the droids you are looking for," and went back inside again. 

Harper and Walker have so much in common to talk about -  union-busting and voter suppression legislation, campaigning on transparency and creating jobs and being completely crap at both, support for tough-on-crime legislation, opposition to gun registration and minimum wage increases and clean energy jobs policies, budget crises due to corporate tax cuts, unfortunate appointments of people who become felons in office ... and the Koch-affiliated American Majority creating a "national farm team of conservative leaders" and "training them in guerilla internet tactics."

Wait. What? American Majority political training group is in Canada?

Why yes it is. On July 4 the Manning Centre for Building Democracy and American Majority sponsored a social media webinar from guns and jesus gal Aubrey Blankenship, communications director of American Majority, to "help you become a better voice for conservatism online."




I don't know what Aubrey's training session on how "to become a better Conservative online" entailed so instead here is one from American Majority's Austin James teaching Tea Party members to spam Amazon profiles of liberal books with negative comments and bad reviews. 



You can still catch another American Majority webinar at the Manning Centre on Aug 10 when Political Communications Expert Jess Nicholson will teach "Crafting Your Message—The art of getting to the heart".

Ok sure, I hear you thinking, but the Manning Centre sponsors tea party trainers all the time so who cares what dumbass shenanigans American Majority touts at the Manning Centre this year?

Well, because as of 2015, American Majority's Wisconsin chapter had trained 128 successful candidates for state or local office for Governor Scott Walker. 
128.  In just one state.

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Harperism : From Harper and Hayek to Koch and Coyne

Neo-liberalism : trickle-down, deregulating, deunionizing, globalizing free market privatization of government.

When Stephen Harper was studying under the "Calgary school" in the 80's, he became so enamored with the neo-liberalism of Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek - guru to Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago boys, the IMF, and the WTO - it formed the basis of his 1991 political economics thesis. 

Why, wondered Harper at the time, did the conservative revolution of Thatcher and Reagan bypass Canada and what could be done about it?

Happily, the Mont Pelerin Society - founded by Hayek and Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, and featuring Charles Koch CEO of Koch Industries as a board member - was there to help, founding and funding a plethora of free market think tanks in Canada via the corporate-funded neo-liberal prototype, the Institute of Economic Affairs in London UK. 

The Charles Koch Foundation on their Fraser Institute grant funding page :

"Since its inception twenty-five years ago at a series of conferences hosted by Milton Friedman and Michael Walker [executive director of the Fraser Institute from its inception in 1974], the Economic Freedom of the World Index has been used as a reliable measure of economic freedom in countries around the world."

As Donald Gutstein explains in Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada, this transformation was achieved through what Hayek called *professional second-hand dealers* - "newspaper columnists and editorial writers who parrot reports by neoliberal think tanks such as the Fraser Institute, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Frontier Centre for Public Policy, Montreal Economic Institute, and Atlantic Institute for Market Studies."

As it happens, the heads of all those think tanks he mentions :

• Michael Walker, founding Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute; 
• Brian Lee Crowley, founding President of Atlantic Institute for Market Studies [Atlantica!!!], and Managing Director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute;
• Peter Holle, President of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy;
• Michel Kelly Gagnon, CEO of the Montreal Economic Institute

are themselves all members of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Funding to link think tanks, politicians, and journalists comes from corporations and U.S. donors, but also Canadian billionaires like Peter Munk of Barrick Gold and his Aurea Foundation.
DeSmogBlog : 

The Aurea Foundation was founded by Peter Munk, the head of Barrick Gold, and is a major funder of a small but influential network of free-market think tanks in Canada, including: The Fraser Institute, the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, the Frontier Center for Public Policy, the Montreal Economic Institute and the MacDonald Laurier Institute.

Gosh, same bunch again.

National Post columnist/CBC political analyst/Manning Centre for Democracy advisor Andrew Coyne is a director at Aurea Foundation, along with former National Post editor Ken Whyte and, up until he became Stephen Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright.  

Hayek devotee, former advisor at the federal Department of Finance in 2007-8, and Coyne's friend, Brian Lee Crowley of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute is also particularly ubiquitous in promedia. Crowley has written regular columns for the Ottawa Citizen and G&M (where he spent two years on the editorial board) expounding on subjects dear to Harper : why all of Canada benefits from the tarsands, why we need more foreign investment, the benefits of two-tier healthcare and tankers off the westcoast, and why inequality is no biggie because poverty is a matter of character.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hosted a private fund-raising dinner for Macdonald-Laurier Institute, advising invited corporate executives that he was giving MLI his personal backing and "I hope you will consider doing the same."

Charlie Smith at the Georgia Straight interviewed Gutstein two days ago :

"Gutstein makes the case that neoliberalism is far more sinister than simply having a desire for smaller government. A central tenet of his new book is that Harper is undermining democracy by marshalling the power of government to create and enforce markets where they’ve never existed before.

“He’s gradually moving the country from one that’s based on democracy to one that’s based on the market, which means that the decisions are not made by our duly elected representatives through the laws that they pass and the regulations that they enact,” Gutstein says."

Coyne responded : 

You can buy Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada directly from Lorimer Publishing. 

Book launch with expert panel on issues raised by the book and hosted by the author - Wednesday October 8, 5:30 to 7:30pm at SFU Harbour Centre 

OK, if you must have a sneak peak, here's a few pages on former Liberal leadership hopeful Martha Hall Findlay at the Calgary School of Public Policy advising Harper how he could successfully dump supply management without losing any votes in order to ease Canada's entry into the investor rights deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP. 
The "second-hand dealers" went absolutely apeshit for that one.
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Edited @ 11:15 for clarity

Monday update : Well this will help to cloister the second hand dealers....

The Tyee : Postmedia could soon own almost every English newspaper in Canada. What could possibly go wrong?

Tyee also has an excerpt from Gutstein's book up today : Meet the people who made possible Stephen Harper's reign.

which in turn leads to this from Andrew Mitrovica :  The Hill media war chorus clears its throat … politely
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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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Things that go better with Koch

We don't hear much about the Koch brothers' tarsands dealings in Canada so when a headline in the Washington Post reads : 
The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers ,

it's still notable even after follow-up spats as to whether Koch was only the biggest lease holder in northern Alberta or the biggest US lease holder or perhaps only the second or third biggest overall and whether they actually stand to gain on the Keystone XL pipeline given they haven't reserved any space on it. 

  

For their part, Koch Industries has repeatedly denied any interest in K-XL one way or the other - despite their Application  to the National Energy Board for K-XL Intervenor Status for their Alberta subsidiary, Flint Hills : 

"(Flint Hills) is among Canada's largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters, coordinating supply for its refinery in Pine Bend, Minnesota. Consequently, Flint Hills has a direct and substantial interest in the application."

The words "direct and substantial interest" here, say the Kochs, merely refer to "curiosity" and presumably not to having a direct and substantial interest in eventually getting their crude to the Koch refineries on the Texas coast at the other end of the pipeline from Flint Hills.

The National Energy Board passed K-XL in March 2010. 
Meanwhile at the same time south of the border, the Koch brothers were brazenly hoovering up members of NEB's US counterpart, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, through their conservative political advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity, which succeeded in signing up 600 lawmakers and candidates to their "No Climate Tax Pledge" in 2010.
Of the 12 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2011, 9 signed the pledge.

The only other Koch-related news we received regarding Canada, aside from Ezra Levant's  "wonderful summer internship" as a Koch fellow 20 years ago, was that Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party and President of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, is also a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Fraser Institute.

Then earlier this month, the Manning Centre held one of their Networking Conferences in Ottawa featuring Adam Guillette, a Koch-connected speaker, on "Recapturing Popular Culture and the Arts" by "framing the debate in narratives".  
Guillette is director of development and outreach at Moving Picture Institute, which boasts  Charles Koch's wife Elizabeth as a founding director and board member and seeks to fund and promote young right wing film makers.
Guillette's MPI bio states he was a "founder of the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity" which pours money into defeating Democrats, where "he served as state director and head of donor relations".

Press Progress snagged 2 minutes of his Manning Centre speech on how to reframe fracking and charter schools as underdogs instead - shades of Frank Luntz! - plus further notes from it at the link. 

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Two minutes not enough?
Here Guillette addresses Tea Party Orlando as Florida State Director for Americans for Prosperity "doing grassroots training all around the country" as part of the "Global Warming Hot Air Tour against Global Warming Alarmism" :

Global warming legislation will raise taxes by $1.2-trillion, lose millions of jobs, and even if it works it will only result in a reduction of one tenth of one degree celsius by the year 2100. 

The phrases freedom, liberty, and free market also come up a lot.

Well done, Manning Centre.
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Steve frets about foreign influence on Enbridge pipeline

G&M : 'Foreign money' could gum up pipeline approval, Harper warns

"Stephen Harper is warning about the possibility that hearings into Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline will be "hijacked" by foreign interests. The Prime Minister is threatening to prevent foreign environmental interests from delaying the approval of a pipeline that would take bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the West Coast for shipment to Asian markets."

Ok then, let's have a look at some of those 'foreign interests' which have applied for intervenor status at the Enbridge hearings due to start in two days, courtesy of the National Energy Board's  Regulatory Document Index:

Enbridge Northern Gateway Project Joint Review Process 

Registration for Intervenor Status

• DAEWOOD INTERNATIONAL AMERICA CORP,  Anaheim, California 

• BP CANADA, subsidiary of BP (formerly British Petroleum) of Gulf Oil disaster fame

• TOTAL E&P, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TOTAL SA, France 

• EXXON MOBIL OIL,  Fairfax, Virginia 

• FLINT HILLS RESOURCES LTD, a Koch Industries subsidiary   

• SINOCANADA PETROLEUM, Sinopec, China

Bloomberg, Jan 4, 2012: 

"Ten companies have contributed $10 million each to help Enbridge finance the regulatory approval process, Enbridge spokesman Paul Stanway said in October.  

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. also known as Sinopec, was previously the only company that had publicly stated its participation."

G&M : Oil giants back Gateway pipe :

"Gateway’s financial backers include Chinese state-owned energy company Sinopec. Market sources have said they believe China National Petroleum Corp. also holds an interest in Gateway. Sinochem Group, another Chinese energy firm, is also believed to support Gateway."

According to StatsCan in October last year, much of our tarsands is already "hijacked by foreign interests".

StatsCan : Total assets, operating revenues and operating profits under foreign control

Oil and gas extraction and support activities - 2009 

• Assets - 35.9% under foreign control
• Operating revenues - 51.1% under foreign control 
• Operating profits : 41.3% under foreign control

"American-controlled enterprises continued to dominate the shares of assets, revenues and profits under foreign-control. These enterprises increased their share of both revenues and profits to 59.1% and 58.3% respectively." 

"In the oil and gas extraction industry, foreign-controlled enterprises increased their share of revenues to 51.1%. This occurred as revenues declined nearly twice as fast in 2009 for domestic enterprises as they did for foreign enterprises."

I thought this was kinda cute from Ethical Oil's Kathryn Marshall though :

Canadians have much at stake in the construction of the pipeline and “must take a stand against foreigners and their lobbying groups interfering in our decision.”

Okey dokey then. Really looking forward to her defence of China as a foreign 'ethical oil' majority financial backer of the pipeline.

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Updates via Dave : There's nothing ethical about it :

• The Real Story : Unethical oil and its friends and 

• Northern Insights : "Ethical Oil" - an argument that makes no sense

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TransCanada : an "American company"

Hey, did you think TransCanada, the company intending to extend the Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to the Free Tariff  Zone refineries in Texas, was a Canadian company? 
Me too. Must be something about the name. And the fact that articles about TransCanada always refer to it as "Alberta-based".

However TransCanada's own K-XL Know the Facts webpage begs to differ. Debunking the "Myth" that  TransCanada is a foreign company operating in the US :

"Like many American companies with operations in Canada, we are incorporated and registered in both Canada and the United States. We currently have 1,631 talented employees in 33 U.S. states. Our U.S. operations are headquartered in Houston and will be responsible for the U.S. construction of Keystone XL."

Huh. 

Now as we already know via Inside Climate News, Koch exports 25% of all tarsands crude to the US.

In 2009, Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, an Alberta-based subsidiary of Koch Industries, applied for—and won—"intervenor status" in the National Energy Board hearings that led to Canada's 2010 approval of its 327-mile portion of the pipeline. 

The company's Flint Hills subsidiary already has an oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the Keystone XL. It sends about 250,000 barrels of diluted bitumen a day to a heavy oil refinery it owns near St. Paul, Minn., making that refinery "among the top processors of Canadian crude in the United States," the company website says.

Yesterday that same National Energy Board, Canada's presumed energy regulator, rejected the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union's request to hold a new hearing into K-XL. 
CEP, which opposes K-XL on the reasonable grounds it would rather see tarsands refineries built in Canada, maintained "the project had violated its permit by not starting construction by a March 2011 deadline". However, according to the NEB, TransCanada's 'earth moving' activities in Canada apparently counts as a start. 

Meanwhile, south of the border, three environmental groups filed a lawsuit against TransCanada earlier this month for mowing a 110 ft wide swath clear across the state of Nebraska prior to receiving the official US go ahead for K-XL to begin. TransCanada responded that mowing grasslands and moving endangered beetles out of the way of the proposed pipeline doesn't count as a start.

So far, no matter which side of the border you're on, things really do go better for Koch. 
And for TransCanada, an "American company".

Update : From Harvard Business School : a short history of TransCanada Pipelines

TransCanada's "Know the Facts" webpage - June 2012 http://web.archive.org/web/20121109020149/http://www.transcanada.com/docs/Key_Projects/know_the_facts_kxl.pdf

 
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