Today Vivian Krause published an opinion piece in The Province claiming “a vote for Vision is a vote for U.S. oil interests.” So, you might be wondering: just who is Vivian Krause? We’re so glad you asked…

An essential component of all public relations campaigns is having the right messenger— a credible, impassioned champion of your cause.

While many PR pushes fail to get off the ground, those that really catch on — the ones that gain political attention and result in debates and senate inquiries — almost always have precisely the right poster child.

And in the federal government and oil industry’s plight to discredit environmental groups, the perfect poster child just so happens to be Vivian Krause.

Krause describes herself as an “independent” researcher and a single mom asking “fair questions” about American funding of Canadian environmental groups. She blogged for many years in relative obscurity before becoming the federal Conservatives’ favourite attack dog.

Krause’s moment in the sun came in January 2012 when Joe Oliver, Canada’s then Natural Resources Minister, released his infamous letter decrying “foreign-funded radical” environmentalists for “hijacking” the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline review process.

Krause had primed the pump for the Conservatives to swoop in and achieve their goal — to discredit environmental groups by building a public narrative about them acting nefariously, thereby justifying spending millions of dollars on audits of charities’ political activities.

Never mind that philanthropic dollars cross international borders all the time. Never mind that the Northern Gateway proposal is sponsored by China’s state-owned oil company Sinopec, along with many other foreign oil companies. Never mind that there’s probably no more legitimate participation in a democracy than citizens signing up to speak at public hearings.

No, once you have a vendetta, inconvenient facts don’t matter. And Krause’s vendetta against environmental groups has been in the works for a long time — ever since she worked in public relations for the farmed salmon industry.

The Salmon Farming Industry and the Birth of a Vendetta

It was due to her interest in promoting salmon farming that Krause started rifling through the tax returns of large American foundations supporting wild salmon advocacy in Canada.

It didn’t take long for Vivian Krause to cook up a conspiracy theory involving American foundations working to undermine Canadian interests — and then to expand that theory to any number of conservation issues in Canada, with a special focus on conservation campaigns that were inconvenient for the oil industry.

To Krause, it seemed suspicious that foundations from across the border were giving money to Canadian groups working on Canadian conservation and energy issues. It must be, Krause surmised, that these big foundations are spending their dollars to manipulate Canadian energy and environment politics to further American interests. And, she went further to suggest, these Canadian groups are acting as pawns of these suspicious foundations.

Speaking of suspicious, by early 2013, Krause had admitted that more than 90 per cent of her income for 2012 had come from oil, gas and mining interests. Groups paying Krause speaker’s fees included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Association for Mineral Exploration and the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Vivian Krause's Convenient Aversion to Climate Change Facts

Fast forward to this week when Krause couldn’t resist weighing into the Vancouver election campaign, claiming that: “For Canada, there is no single economic issue that is more important than getting Alberta oil to global markets.”

While oil is no doubt an important part of the Canadian economy, Krause’s statement overlooks two inconvenient facts:

1) According to Statistics Canada, the oilsands account for only two per cent of the national GDP.

2) A study by Simon Fraser University and The Goodman Group Ltd released this week finds Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain jobs promises are overblown and recommends the proposed expansion be rejected as it is neither in the economic nor public interest of B.C. and Metro Vancouver.

The argument that continued oilsands expansion is a positive for the Canadian economy — and more to the point, the Metro Vancouver economy — is far from a slam dunk.

While Krause enjoys spinning another of her clandestine tales in linking Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to U.S. foundations, it’s increasingly clear that it’s all a convenient cover story for her to push her own view that the fossil fuel industry should be allowed to expand.

“Voting for Gregor Robertson means voting to support a U.S.-funded, anti-pipeline campaign that continues the U.S. monopoly on Canadian oil, keeping Canada over a barrel,” Krause writes. “When you go to the poll, don’t vote for Gregor Robertson. Vote for Canada.”

Perhaps Krause missed the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which states that governments need to peak emissions, rapidly phase out fossil fuels and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy pronto? Rapidly expanding the oilsands and building new pipelines to serve that expansion doesn’t actually fit into any plans to have an inhabitable earth — not to mention the terrifying consequences an oil spill could reap on Vancouver.

If Krause’s modus operandi is climate change denial, it would be nice if she just stated that right up front, instead of conveniently ignoring it.

(If you want to know where we’re coming from at DeSmog Canada, mosey on over to our About Us page, where you can find out. Hint: we agree with 97 per cent of scientists about climate change, we’re proud to accept donations from anyone who supports our mission and we’re not going to tell you how to vote because that’s not our thing.)

In a recent op-ed in the Calgary Herald, Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary professor and known climate skeptic called on Alberta Premier Jim Prentice to use Krause as an attack dog against environmental groups.

“[Prentice] knows from his work with Enbridge and B.C. First Nations that the real source of opposition to Northern Gateway are the enviros and the deep-pocketed American foundations that fund them,” Cooper wrote. “So, Jim, hire Vivian Krause, who has done a lot of work on this problem, and use the government megaphone to publicize her analyses of the pernicious sources of enviro funding.”

Which raises the question: did someone hire Krause to weigh in — clumsy as it may be — on the Vancouver election?

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.

This is Part 1 in a four-part series outlining the attack on Canadian charities and the consequences of that attack. Read Part 2, Charities and Self-Censorship: Is Canada Going the Way of the UK?

In testifying before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance to deal with charity provisions in the 2012 Federal Budget, Jamie Ellerton, the Executive Director of Ethical Oil, offered a succinct definition of charity. “If you need to debate whether or not something is charitable,” he told the House, “it is not.”

Ellertonʼs definition of charity, takes 400 years worth of legal debate on the definition of charity, and wraps it up so tightly, makes it so simple, that one would wonder why it ever need be debated at all. If his were the working definition, charitable work would be limited to such tasks as feeding the hungry and planting trees.

Charities would have no say in making change to end hunger or protecting trees that are already standing. They would be mute players, picking up the pieces when government fails to protect the public interest. It is all too clear that the simple definition might be preferred by a government intent on ending conversations – or at least controlling them.

The 2003 Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) policy statement on charities and political activity, CPS-022, was born out of the complexity of the subject matter it deals with. The statement was formulated after years of research, panels and studies to increase both the effectiveness and the accountability of Canadaʼs voluntary sector. It clarified the definition of political activity, and expanded the types of political activities charitable organizations can undertake. The new rules proposed in the 2012 budget once again tightened the restrictions on political activities and gave the Minister of National Revenue new powers to suspend charitable privileges. The government justified these changes in part because of Ethical Oilʼs complaints about various environmental charities engaging in political activity.

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Whatʼs the problem with a charity taking political action? As Ellerton stated in his testimony to the House:

"The main reason why the courts rule out political purposes for charity is, is the result of the requirement that a purpose is only charitable if it generates a public benefit."

If a charitable purpose needs to generate public benefit, what is public benefit, and who decides? In 2012, the Canadaʼs Conservative government looked to its friends at Ethical Oil to decide. If the the Council of Canadians had lodged a complaint against the Fraser Institute on the same basis – would the government have moved to change the regulations on charities and political activities?

What was it about Ethical Oil that launched them into such a privilege position? Perhaps it was the organizationʼs ties to the Conservative Party of Canada – Ellerton, for one, was an aide to Minister Jason Kenney prior to taking the helm at Ethical Oil. Or maybe, the Government was in fact happy to hear from a group of concerned citizens.

The government knows, however, that most Canadians donʼt share Ethical Oilʼs un-critical faith in the oil industry. Recent polling shows that Canadians value environmental sustainability, and would like to see their leaders do more to address problems such as climate change. A poll conducted by Natural Resources Canada expressed Canadian values this way: Foremost, participants saw the Governmentʼs primary role as guarding against negative outcomes or undue environmental or public health impacts of energy sector activity. These relate to activities such as extracting, processing, using and transporting resources. Participants identified actions such as establishing and enforcing regulations and laws and providing oversight.

Public opinion, as Justice Robert Décary stated in the case, Everywomanʼs Healthcare vs. MNR (1988), is a “fragile and volatile concept.” If it were left to the public to decide on the meaning of charity, or whether an act was beneficial to the public, that judgement could well become “a battle between the pollsters.” In his decision, Judge Décary explains that the decision has been one that has been left to the courts, so as to prevent it from becoming a political football. In 2012, the courts were not called to weigh in, and the term public benefit was merely tossed around.

Canadian environmental charities exist for the purpose of promoting the publicʼs interest in a healthy environment. The act of holding the government accountable for environmental protection in the Alberta tar sands, the largest industrial project in human history, is a charitable act. This fact is outlined in CPS-022, and asserted in its preceding document, An Accord Between the Government of Canada and the Voluntary Sector. The Accord states, on page 17:

The independence of voluntary sector organizations includes their right within the law to challenge public policies, programs and legislation and to advocate for change.

In complaining, publicly, about these actions as conducted by Environmental Defense, The David Suzuki Foundation and Tides Canada, Ethical Oil turned the legitimate issue of government accountability into a false debate about the definition of charity. The purpose of these organizations was, and remains, well accepted as a public benefit, but Ethical Oil found a way to make that purpose vulnerable to political attack.

Canadaʼs current government sees its top priority as economic development, and has in the last four years has met more with representatives of the oil and gas industry than members of any other interest group. This government has chosen a strategy of censorship and obfuscation, as opposed to democratic engagement and dialogue.

When it comes to environmental charities, the government has attempted to poison the strong relationship they have with Canadians and create a legal climate which makes acts of environmental protection criminal. Labeling them “foreign radicals” was shocking and absurd, but including them as a potential threat in their Counter Terrorism Strategy? As charity and non-profit lawyer Terrance S. Carter writes in his article, Canadaʼs Counter Terrorism Strategy Targets Environmentalism, it is unclear why environmentalists were singled out or how they are logically connected to white supremacists or other recent examples of domestic terrorism: "Likening environmentalists and animal rights groups to home-grown terrorists and mass murderers raises the question of whether the government is blurring the lines of counter-terrorism in order to target otherwise legitimate opponents and justify questionable surveillance campaigns."

Marco Navarro-Genie, a political scientist from the right-wing think-tank, Frontier Centre, told the Vancouver Sun he was not surprised the government put a halt to some environmental groupʼs “incendiary” influence on the public policy debate.

"There seems to have been a greater deal of sympathy among the public and media for a little bit of the radical edge [of environmentalism]. It seems to be based on the notion that you have to push the envelope to get somewhere. That basically throws out the window any kind of [common sense] conversation about the environment."

Which brings us back to Ethical Oil – the perfect foil in a debate thatʼs been twisted. Healthy democratic debate on any matter of public interest is a good thing. We should welcome the opportunity to discuss the idea of public benefit, and to question the role of charitable organizations in our political landscape – but not as a distraction from other important conversations.

Other countries are debating the meaning of charity as well, and many leaders in Canadaʼs voluntary sector were not satisfied with the 2003 policy changes. They felt the statement hadnʼt done enough to bring Canadian charities freedoms comparable to their counterparts in the US, the UK and elsewhere.

This series will aim to unravel all the complicated threads of what political powers charities have, and what powers charities are barred from, and how the debate over those is playing out elsewhere. We can add to our own conversation, and hopefully find a way forward with a wider perspective.

Image Credit: Jamie Ellerton testifying before the House of Commons Committee.

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.