The Alberta government has announced that they will be launching an inquiry into the foreign funding of anti-oil organizations in Canada.
“There’s never been a formal investigation into all aspects of the anti-Alberta energy campaign. The mandate for Commissioner Allan will be to bring together all of the information,” Premier Jason Kenney said Thursday.
Evidence has been building for a long time of funding, particularly from wealthy Americans, going to organizations which are trying to see the Albertan energy sector destroyed or extremely limited.
“I believe having foreign interest groups funnel tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign designed massively to damage our vital economic interests is a matter of the greatest public concern,” Kenney said.
“The energy industry and the emissions challenge are global. The question then is, why is the anti-energy campaign so overwhelmingly and disproportionately focused on one major producer?”
The research of independent researcher Vivian Krause, showing definitive proof of a money trail from American philanthropists (some of whom have vested interests in the American energy sector) and Canadian anti-energy groups have worried many in the province about the extent foreign interests are attacking Albertan jobs.
One especially strong group, the Tar Sands Campaign, has been connected by Krause to the powerful Rockefeller family and their Foundation.
“The Tar Sands Campaign has been running for more than a decade with financial help from the US$870-million Rockefeller family philanthropic foundation. The goal of the campaign, as CBC reported in January, is to sabotage all pipeline projects that would export crude oil from Western Canada to lucrative overseas markets,” she wrote.
This unsettling reality could not be properly addressed in Alberta under the previous NDP government because, as Krause claims, the NDP was trying to benefit from leftwing organizations funded by the Tar Sands Campaign.
The currently seen crisis in the energy sector is mostly driven by a lack of pipeline capacity to get oil and gas to market, True North has reported on the disastrous loss of income this has put on both the industry and the taxpayer.
Billions have been lost on both sides due to the postponed and cancelled pipeline projects.
The legal challenges, protests, and other forms of sabotage initiated by these foreign-funded groups have hugely contributed to the tribulations seen in the sector.
Kenney has made it clear that he wants to see how far the foreign influence goes, and how it can be stopped.
A report from the inquiry is expected to be ready early July of 2020.
