Kevin

Perhaps you ought to disclose your up coming gig as a Social Change Institute Conference Host at Hollyhock and how many of those American dollars you are going to be getting for it.

1) Who is "Kevin"?

2) To "?", who said "I am just as likely to give money to an American politician who supports a progressive environmental platform as I am to a Canadian politician.". That would, of course, be illegal under US law.

3) Two business donations, of $28,000 and $20,000 to Gregor Robertson's provincial campaign in 2005 is most unusual, I would say probably totally unprecedented, for any NDP campaign. One could check Elections BC records, but I don't think you'd ever find anything similar anywhere else.

4) How does this new stream of business money, "green" business money, relate to the present fractures showing up in provincial politics?

Rod Smelser

Although you can't donate directly to American politicians , it is legal to contribute to organization that do support them in the U.S.

Perhaps Vision’s “strategic plan” is better understood by looking at their bagman’s vision for us. This is how Joel Solomon describes his initial meeting with Carol Newell in a recent Huffington Post interview:

“We met on this little island off the coast, pulled together a visioning session for others in the Vancouver area who were thinking similar thoughts and asking themselves the same questions about how they might use their lives in a positive way. And we just talked and talked and talked. It happened that we were meeting on the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery, and so it occurred to us to think about what had gone wrong in the last five centuries and what we could possibly do that would have a positive impact on the next 500 years.”

Obviously there support of “indigenous” sovereignty at the expense of 95% of the rest of us (unless you are heir to a big American fortune) is no coincidence.

Although their names have since been removed from the “sampling” of institutions and agencies supported by Tides, Endswell et al, the first time I looked at it, it contained the names of many tribal councils.

The parallels between their parents and grandparents generations’ support of the destruction of the Russian Empire and the mass murder, enslavement and looting of tens of millions of otherwise innocent “bourgeoise” are truly frightening here because nowhere is there any indication of what the vision is for the rest of us beyond “decolonization” and “rewilding.”

Recently the moderator of a supposedly “progressive” online discussion board rabble.ca which is sponsored by most of Canada’s unions said that if she had her way, the government of Canada would be taken over by native, preferably female, elders.

I am as opposed to fish farms and the sheer toxicity and corruption and the oil industry as much as anyone, but I am not seeing any kind of campaign to protect the rights of the rest of us, but a bunch misguided Americans who think the money earned by their families’ shopping malls, plastics factories, junk food chains, sweat shops, factory farms, oil company shares, federal reserve bank shares, weapons, pharmaceutical, tobbaco et al entitles to them to move to where ever they choose and remake to fit their own fantasies.

As "Nachum" pointed out, higher up in the comments, 90% of funds for large canadian enviro groups comes from the US. This relatively well known fact can be viewed as bad for our collective Canadian influence, but good for an enviro influence that we favour, even though it comes from an American perspective.

The same can be said for our politics. If progressive American funds come across the border, why would we send them back. Because we are proud of our Canadian heritage or maybe because we have a distrust of anyone who has more money than us.

The American philanthropy, that we are benefiting from here in Vancouver and BC, may raise our hackles, and may, at times, be misdirected, but overall, it is not hurting our progressive ways, it is furthering them.

No one will argue against US philanthropy in the arts, in education, in the sciences and research and shared technology. The Gates Foundation, for example, is doing incredible work defeating malaria, and helping eradicate polio. With UN leadership, and (largely) US money, we have actually removed smallpox from the face of the earth. The Ford Foundation has done amazing work in South America building schools, coops, clinics and hospitals.

US enterprise and philanthropy in all of these arenas is extraordinary.

But Americans themselves do not allow foreign investment in their elections. It is illegal for a foreigner to donate to a US election campaign. That said, the Roberts Court has recently and gravely weakened these protections. There is evidence that multinationals contributed to the outcome of the last US election, and it is deeply resented by progressives across that country.

Why would we permit US intervention at any level in our politics? They don't permit it in theirs.

The best disinfectant remains disclosure. We are ENTITLED to know who pays for our political campaigns. Left or right makes zero difference. Canadian or non-Canadian makes a big difference.

This applies equally to Vision and the NPA, unions and corporations, private businesses and public co-ops. Most of us want to know who's paying for dinner.

And why.

It's apparent that some people don't like anyone remarking on the predominance of business funding in Gregor Robertson's 2005 election campaign, or any suggestion that "green" busines money is having a major influence on the present party unity troubles in BC provincial politics.

Federal politics is more immune to this kind of leverage because the donor base has been legislatively restricted to private Canadian citizens, a move that would clearly not be favoured by most readers here.

It's nothing short of incredible that green business interests, and for that matter ENGOs, are seen as somehow beyond reproach and even beyond scrutiny. One particularly idiotic, dishonest, and insulting suggestion was made to the effect that if anyone wanted to know what a certain ENGO stood for and did, they should refer to the "about" statements on the organization's website.

Exactly what kind of credulous morons do these smug, self-righteous people take the general public for? Where does this insufferable arrogance come from?

Is there really anyone out there who's so totally naive that they think the economic interests of ENGO employees and donors are one and the same thing as their declaratory positioning? Are these organizations and their donors and employees not part of the same real world as the rest of us? Who do they think they are kidding with this kind of baloney?

Rod Smelser

<i>As "Nachum" pointed out, higher up in the comments, 90% of funds for large canadian enviro groups comes from the US. This relatively well known fact</i>

It's a well known fact is it? Curious. I did a bit of digging and couldn't find anywhere online that made that claim. The closest I came was<a href="http://www.ecofascism.com/article12.html"> this page</a> of a website calling itself "Environmentalism is Fascism" that claims - while there are thousands of foundations and endowment funds, 90% of funding from said sources comes from 40 groups. But that's only 90% of funding from foundations, not 90% of all funding.

So I had a peak at a few of the annual reports of some of the groups listed on that site.

For example, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society <a href="http://cpaws.org/about/financial.php">receives only 63% of it's funding</a> from foundations. The David Suzuki Foundation <a href="http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/downloads/2009/DSF_AR-08-09.pdf"... 10% [pdf]</a>. The Western Wilderness Committee <a href="http://wildernesscommittee.org/sites/all/files/publications/2010_annual_... 3% [pdf]</a>

Your claim isn't standing up to 10 minutes of Googling.

@Spartikus - Western Wilderness Committee is not actually considered a large Canadian enviro org. Google is not the only source of info in this world. But that's besides the point. Call up WestCoastEnviroLaw or EcoJustice and ask them to set you straight, they have considerably more discretion in knowing what's what in the enviro world than "Google".

Dear spartikus;

If you can't find proof that a high number of enviro groups get most of their funding from U.S. foundations then here's the reasons;

#1 - you can't google search very well
#2 - you are being very selective
#3 - they are lying
#4 - because the U.S based $$ was funneled through TIDES CANADA, which is the WHOLE point of exposing this nonsense!!