If revenge is indeed a dish that's best served cold, the President of Cool just served up a four-star pièce de résistance for Stephen Harper.

Tuesday's announcement of Obama's planned veto of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline should not have been surprising, yet when the blow came it carried a shocking intensity.

And how did things go so badly that Canada doesn't have the heft or goodwill in Washington to add a single pipeline to a nation benoodled with them? The answer lies in the delusional hubris of Stephen Harper.

No close watcher of the president should be surprised. In myriad ways, the prime minister's personal ambition shredded our nation's single most important relationship and drew us into the toxic swamp of Washington's poisonous politics.

It's been going on for years.

In early 2008, during the heat of the U.S. primary season, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) leaked a highly confidential communication by the Obama campaign to the benefit of the Republican Party. While no culprit was ever found, speculation fell on the Canadian embassy in Washington, and the 27-year-old son of a Republican congressman who'd been installed there at the behest of the PMO and Stockwell Day.

Unfortunately for Harper, the young candidate Obama overcame the Republican trap laid for him, displaying a masterful command of politics and the art of rope-a-dope. Wiser heads might have been chastened by that experience, and taken heed of the new president's admonition that "elections have consequences," and wiser heads might have considered the damage done to Canada when our PMO's confidentiality isn't trusted.

But wiser heads would not have been so intoxicated by a vision of Canada as a 21st-century energy superpower.

Harper's unbending ambition set him on collision course with a president intent to act on climate change. For anyone watching closely, all the signals were there that Obama would turn to the environment as a major pillar of his legacy.

So it was a foolish miscalculation for Harper to turn Canada and the oilsands into an international symbol of climate obstinacy. But that's a fight he picked. Not content to simply promote the Canadian energy industry and accommodate international pressure for action on the climate, Harper raised the stakes by muzzling scientists and launching an an all-out vendetta on prominent conservation groups.

And while the PM maintained a rigid stance on climate change policy abroad, his proxies at home unleashed a campaign to single out and vilify some of America's and the world's most illustrious scientific research foundations, governed by people like Bush's White House director of science and technology policy, the provost of Harvard, Stanford dean of law and the like.

There probably isn't a more effective way to become an international pariah than the path chosen by Stephen Harper.

But that's only part of the story. In the autumn of 2012, with America in full campaign mode, it was Benjamin Netanyahu's turn to "blatantly interfere" in the election on behalf of Republican candidate Mitt Romney's financier Sheldon Adelson, which he did by single-handedly making war with Iran an election issue.

The U.S. Republicans are certainly refining their game of luring foreign allies into meddling in American elections against their own interests. The 2012 Netanyahu war maneuver was a major step up on the 2008 Harper PMO leak.

In September 2013, Harper travelled to New York to pointedly skip (again) the opening session of the UN General Assembly, but make a high-profile appearance to lecture Obama in his backyard that Canada "would not take no for an answer" on Keystone. What does that even mean?

Yet just months later, in early January 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Israel on a delicate mission to restart talks with the Palestinians. Because the State Department also has management of the Keystone file, John Kerry was important to Canada. But no sooner had Kerry left Israel than Netanyahu caused an uproar by unilaterally approving annexation of another settlement block in Palestinian lands.

By sheer coincidence, Harper arrived on Kerry's heels to serenade Netanyahu with a Beatles song, pick up an honorary degree, and rise in the Knesset to equate criticism of Israel's policies with anti-Semitism.

Translation: the White House can stuff it.

It's nothing short of bizarre that Harper publicly dissed the U.S. cabinet minister in charge of the Keystone file at the same time he's hounding the U.S. for a favourable outcome. That's not diplomacy – it's not even manners. And something's very unsettling about both leaders' connections with the Republican party and their peculiar tag-team with each other. If Barack Obama views Harper with suspicion, it's for good reason.

All this drama made a shambles of Canada's primary international relationship, which will always be with the White House.

Yet when Obama's new ambassador to Ottawa, Bruce Heyman, was "welcomed" at his first major public appearance, he was bluntly confronted over Keystone. Meanwhile, Harper blanketed Washington with a $24-million ad campaign to persuade Americans that we deserve the Keystone pipeline because we're such good allies, while giving speeches about the craziness of acting on climate change.

In reality, Canadian interests, our industry, and our environment would all be so much further ahead today had Harper adopted a responsible approach to climate change and a coherent strategy to win support from the White House.

That $24 million was all for naught. There was really only one man on the planet that Stephen Harper ever had to persuade to vote yes on Keystone. But pride goeth before destruction, as they say.

Rope-a-dope indeed.

Image Credit: U.S. Embassy

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

B.C.'s Christy Clark government is proposing to overhaul the Societies Act, and they've distributed a snoozer of a White Paper to let you know all about it.

If you've dozed off already, WAKE UP, because there's a massive zinger quietly planted deep inside. You can do something about it — more on that at the end of this post. But unmentioned in any preamble or executive summary, Section 99 allows any person (including corporations) to take any registered society to court that they believe is acting contrary to the public interest — whatever that is.

Here it is:

Complaints by public

99 (1) A person whom the court considers to be an appropriate person to make an
application under this section may apply to the court for an order under this
section on the grounds that a society

(b) is carrying on activities that are detrimental to the public interest.

In other words, environmental non-profit groups better watch their step because they're in the cross-hairs. Premier Clark is handing the legal hammer to Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, ExxonMobil, Koch, Encana, Chevron, Sinopec, Suncor and the entire B.C. LNG sector to tie non-profits up in court for years.

Section 99 looks like Clark's close advisor Gwyn Morgan drafted it up during half-time at last year's Grey Cup. Not a single competent lawyer within the Ministry of Justice could say with a straight face that it's constitutional. The clear intent is to silence and intimidate Canadian conservation and environmental non-profits with the threat of litigation. And if mere threat doesn't work, this legislation enables the corporate sector to bludgeon them into lawsuit bankruptcy.

This proposal is one of the most ill-conceived and draconian initiatives to see the light of day in a modern democracy, and reveals the extent of Clark's captivity by the oil and gas lobby. (And one more reason B.C. political leaders should be prevented from funding their election campaigns at the Petroleum Club in Calgary).

But as policy, it's also breathtakingly stupid. As if B.C. doesn't already have the mother of all court backlogs to cope with, the Clark government now proposes to fill up the system with disgruntled parents taking out their beefs in court against a minor hockey association or local elementary school parent advisory council. It will be open season on abortion clinics, LGBTQ organizations and mosques. Don't think for a minute that won't happen.

The real backdrop, of course, is that the Harper government has been on a tear against environmentalists for years, muzzling our scientists and attempting to discredit Canadian environmental NGOs.

The government has spent millions in fruitless CRA revenge audits hunting for a wholly imaginary conspiracy involving Canadian environmental organizations and U.S. scientific and charitable foundations. This vendetta has cost both the charitable sector and public purse untold funds in accounting and legal fees, over nothing.

Agree or disagree with the environmental movement, its members are entitled, as are all of us, to contribute vigorously to public debate over resource development. No one in a free and democratic society should be silenced or censored by fear of government-sanctioned reprisal. But that is precisely the purpose of this legislation.

Christy Clark would do well to remember that Canada is a free nation — our constitution says so. British Columbians, including non-profits, are free to do what we want, express ourselves freely and associate with whomever we choose to, unless it's for an unlawful purpose.

If government wants to limit that freedom it must abide by the Charter of Rights, not force citizens to meet a vague test like "public interest," which doesn't mean the same thing to any two people in the province. That would be the same Charter of Rights that Justice Susan Griffin pounded the B.C. government with during the teachers' dispute.

This White Paper is open to comments by the public until the end of day Wednesday Oct. 15. E-mail yours to the Financial and Corporate Sector Policy Branch here: fcsp@gov.bc.ca

Photo: Chris Yakimov.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In recent years, Canadians have heard a lot about those extremist American conservation foundations. They’ve been called radicals, money-launderers and even compared to Al Qaeda in Canada’s Senate.

More recently, an oil-related group, British Columbians for Prosperity (which bears remarkable similarity to the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity), alleges that these foundations are carrying out a really complicated American conspiracy to, er, hurt Canada by, um, not letting any of its oil go to foreign markets.

So I looked into some of these allegations and discovered some shocking truths about the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation that Canadians really need to know.

1. They Freaking Love Science!

Gordon Moore is a Silicon Valley legend. He helped develop the earliest semi-conductors and co-founded Intel. He’s so famous they named Moore’s Law after him and he chairs the board of trustees of Cal-Tech, one of the world’s leading science and research institutes. The Moore Foundation board of trustees includes the sitting president of Stanford University, a former president of the U.S. National Academy of Science and a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

With over $5 billion in assets, Moore is among the world’s most illustrious scientific foundations, renowned for both its research and practical solutions.

2. Their $200 million donation will help create hundreds of science and technology jobs in Canada — mostly in B.C.! 

The Moore Foundation is partnering with ACURA (Associated Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy), the National Research Council and U.S. institutions to build the Thirty Meter Telescope, the largest and most powerful optical telescope in history.

The Thirty Meter Telescope is estimated to generate 800 high-tech Canadian jobs. Credit: Courtesy TMT Observatory Corporation.

The telescope’s major components will be designed and fabricated right here in Port Coquitlam by Dynamic Structures using technology developed at the University of Victoria. Built at a cost of $1.2 billion, the Thirty Meter Telescope will be 12 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope will eventually be assembled in Hawaii under Canadian guidance.

The Thirty Meter Telescope is like the new Canadarm and is estimated to generate 800 high-tech Canadian jobs — most of them right here in B.C. Although the Moore Foundation has already committed $200 million, the Canadian government is dragging its heels on investment.

3. They’re spending millions on a West Coast earthquake early warning system

The Moore Foundation is funding an early earthquake alert system with Cal-Tech, the U.S. Geological Survey, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, which could give first responders, transportation networks and citizens a precious few seconds, or even as much as a few minutes, warning. Once developed, this prototype could save lives right here in B.C.

4. They’ve helped create hundreds of sustainable jobs in the fishing and tourism industry on B.C.’s North Coast.

Moore Foundation partnered with the Government of Canada, the B.C. government and other U.S. funders to create a $120-million fund that provided startup capital for sustainable B.C. businesses in the Great Bear Rainforest region. Businesses like Prince Rupert’s Coastal Shellfish Company and Port Simpson’s Coast Tsimshian Seafood sprang from the agreement, creating hundreds of jobs. An eco-tourism venture, the Spirit Bear Lodge in Klemtu, was cited by National Geographic as a Best Trip for 2013.

Tens of millions of dollars still remain in the Great Bear Rainforest economic development fund, ready to drive tourism, business growth and employment on the North Coast.

5. They committed $300 million to protect 150 million hectares in the Amazon Rainforest.  

That’s right. $300 million to bring one-third of the forest cover of the Amazon under sustainable management. ’Nuff said.

6. They’re all wet

On the environment front, the Moore Foundation is all about ocean health and marine habitat. They help develop optimal practices for necessary activities like shipping, transportation and fisheries. They’re tracking Fukushima’s radioactive dispersal across the Pacific, and help sustain healthy wild salmon ecosystems in Alaska, British Columbia and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula — the three remaining regions where great migrations of salmon still return every year.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

In all, Moore Foundation gifts to Canadian organizations or associated with Canadian government partnerships will total over $250 million, generate almost 2,000 Canadian jobs over the next decade (including hundreds of quality First Nation jobs) and build a legacy of sustainable and responsible resource management.

And for that, the Canadian government has pretty much called them the Taliban, because many of their beneficiary organizations independently oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil pipeline.

But it’s wholly disingenuous, if not outright deceptive, to suggest the Moore Foundation funded or influenced that opposition. Ivan Thompson, program officer for the Moore Foundation says, “The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has neither taken a position on the Northern Gateway Pipeline nor funded any organizations to oppose the project.” 

How this U.S. foundation funding works

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