Michelle Stirling of Friends of Science reveals Canada’s top 40 ENGOs earned $11.2B (2000–2018), dwarfing environmental law groups ($167M) and federal political parties by 18x, with foreign-funded groups like Yellowstone to Yukon opposing oil/gas projects. Taxpayer subsidies, UNPRI-aligned banks, and conflicts tied to LavScam fuel concerns over ENGO influence, while policies like carbon taxes slow pipeline approvals—120 months vs. 120 days in the U.S.—and BC’s "eco-wall" blocks energy access. Friends of Science warns of potential foreign interference, citing a 2017 Newsweek report on Russian-backed ENGOs, and calls for transparency amid media bias against dissenting climate views. [Automatically generated summary]
Hello Rebels, you're listening to a free audio-only recording of my show, The Gun Show.
Today the guest on my show is Michelle Sterling from the Calgary-based climate realist group Friends of Science.
They've just released a shocking new report that shows just how much money environmental NGOs have at their disposal to influence politics and politicians here in Canada.
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Just how much cash do environmental non-governmental organizations have in their war chest to influence politics here in Canada?
My guest today has all the numbers and they shocked even me.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Here in the week, Justin Trudeau, in what was very obviously a desperate and frankly pathetic attempt to change the channel on the snowballing SNC-Lavalin obstruction of justice problem he has on his hands right now,
held a pro carbon tax event in Toronto.
Now several people had to be removed from the event and hecklers abounded.
Trudeau seemed overly animated and out of sorts, even for him and my muse, my muse.
The environment minister Catherine McKenna was there to remind everybody that unfavorable weather conditions that they may have experienced in the past year are likely deadly climate change.
She shouted in the microphone that people have quote unquote literally died.
You know what?
Just listen for yourself here.
Who remembers last summer?
I remember you won!
Who remembers the extreme heat that we felt last summer?
Who remembers that people literally died of extreme heat?
Now, I'm more inclined to think that people might die from not being able to afford the electricity and energy required to cool themselves in the odd and completely normal spell of extreme heat they may experience because of expensive liberal taxes.
Now, like Ezra says, when he gets a little down or stressed out, he eats.
I go pull a few arrows through the compound bow in the backyard.
But McKenna here, she's clearly stressed out by the SNC Lavillin scandal and she has taken to shaking her fist at the sky and yelling at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson.
Now, with your recent elections of three carbon tax fighting premiers in the country, Blaine Higgs, Scott Moe, and of course, Doug Ford, and nearly the guaranteed impending election of one more in Alberta,
Jason Kenney, why are these liberals so hung up on pushing an unpopular carbon tax to fight climate change, especially when climate change is not even close to a top of mind issue for regular Canadians at the ballot box who are worried about jobs, pipelines, taxes, and of course, corrupt Quebec-based businesses co-opting the justice system for themselves.
It has a lot to do with the amount of power and influence environmental NGOs have in this country.
It's really unfettered.
And our friends at Friends of Science have all the details about just how much money these NGOs have at their disposal these days.
So joining me now in an interview we recorded yesterday is the communications manager for Friends of Science, my friend Michelle Sterling, and of course, at some points, her cat mustache.
So joining me now from Calgary is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.
I love having Michelle on because first of all, when Michelle's on the show, I feel like I'm drinking from a fire hydrant and not a garden hose.
It's just so much information coming all at once.
And I think that's really great.
But secondarily, on Monday evening, Justin Trudeau, embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, had a carbon tax rally.
And around these parts, when you have a carbon tax rally, it's against the carbon tax.
Justin Trudeau had one in favor of the carbon tax.
And, you know, he did get some booze.
He did get some heckles.
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna was, you know, shouting in the microphone and very enthusiastic that forest fires are caused by climate change and people are dying because of climate change and heat.
And I thought I'd have Michelle on to tell the other side of this story, the more scientific side of this story and the less hysterical side of this story.
So Michelle, thanks for coming on.
Thanks for joining me.
Pleasure.
Now, Friends of Science has a really great report out right now.
And I was reading through it this morning and I thought it was very timely and very pertinent to what's been happening here in Alberta with regard to the Bighorn.
The Bighorn Backcountry, the motivation for that park has not come from the people who live in the communities within the Bighorn Backcountry.
It's really come from foreign-funded environmentalist groups like Yellowstone to Yukon and SeaPaws, both of which receive money from the Wilbur Force Foundation and from Tides Canada to use things like the grizzly bear habitat to block oil and gas development.
And you'll see in the press releases about the Castle Park before the Bighorn that grizzly bear habitat was a big concern.
And you have this really great report that is out that basically shows just how much money these foreign-funded organizations have to do work in Canada.
And in some instances, they have more money in the bank than our major political parties.
They have way more money in the bank than our major political parties.
Way, way more.
I believe they have, let me just make sure that I get the numbers right.
This is called Money Matters, the ENGO Political Advantage, and it's on our blog.
So this is kind of the short overview.
So the top 40, so that's not all the ENGOs, but the top 40 between 2000 and 2018, I believe it was, received $11.2 billion in revenues, some of that from offshore, quite a big chunk of it.
And the environ law groups like EcoJustice and Environmental Defense and West Coast Environmental Law had revenues of $167 million in that same time period.
And all of these groups, of course, work hand in hand.
So the ENGOs and environro law groups had 18 times the revenues of all the federal political parties and 27 times the revenues of market-oriented groups like say Fraser Institute and other, I don't know, Frontier Center, other groups like that that really do economic analysis of these proposed climate and energy policies.
So you can see that the information has been really skewed.
And of course, these groups also have lots of money to buy op-eds in mainstream media and lots of influence in other ways too.
One of the things we're working on, another report right now that's just doing a very simple overview, but looking at, say, social media, Greenpeace, I think, has a million followers.
This is in Canada on their Facebook page.
And they claim to have 1,800 volunteers in Vancouver, another 1,800 or 1,500 in Toronto.
So you have these groups with tons of money, lots of cause-oriented youth, lots of volunteers.
And these people are easily tapped into by the electoral officials.
And actually, you can see that in another report of ours called Manufacturing and Climate Crisis.
And this is a rebuttal to West Coast Environmental Law.
You can see that prior to the last election, Justin Trudeau was tweeting that if he was elected, he would cancel Northern Gateway.
And when you look at the West Coast Environmental Law grant from the Oak Foundation, you find that they applied for a $97,131 grant to make legislation to ensure that Northern Gateway would be canceled.
So then you have to ask, was that a dog whistle for all these other massive environmental groups to tag on?
They were not allowed as charities at the time to be political, but they could always say, well, vote for the party that doesn't want Northern Gateway.
Or, you know, we'd have to go back through the records and check.
But I do recall there was quite a bit of stuff about promoting renewables by these.
Anyway, so we have actually three reports that deal with this.
One is called Dark Green Money.
Another one is called Big Green Money.
And Big Green Money recounts how much money these groups also get from the federal and provincial government.
It's amazing.
They just get hundreds of millions of dollars from the government to block jobs.
So taxpayers are subsidizing the charities and they're also funding them for these grants where there's no performance requirement.
It's absurd, ridiculous.
Yeah, I mean, I saw, again, I was looking through reports doing some research on the Castle Park plan and then the subsequent Bighorn plan.
And you could see, I mean, they have to publish this information.
CPAWS gets money from the city of Calgary, the city of Calgary with their 30% vacancy rate in the office towers downtown because of the attacks on the industry by the Tides Foundation is giving money to CPAWS, who also receives money from the Tides Foundation to block industry.
It is insane, but there's other sinister things in there.
You see big banks funding these environmental organizations for their environmental good works.
And I think a lot of people don't realize where the money comes from.
When they're checking that little charitable box on their TD, you know on their TD account to say, we want to, I want to give this money to this wilderness foundation, whatever it is.
They don't really know what that money does when it gets in the hands of those people.
And that's why I think that Friends OF Science is so great, because you do a lot of the same sort of work that Vivian Cross does and that's tracing the money back to where it's going and what it's doing.
And one of the things in, I mean, that report on the amount of money that these environmental charities have blew my mind.
The Suzuki Foundation had more money than the NDP, I mean, but at the end of the day, are they really all that different?
I suppose they have the same goals at the end of the day.
Well, an interesting note on the David Suzuki FUND.
It has been funded by Power Corporation since 2007.
We don't know for how much, but it's interesting to note that Power Corporation is deeply embedded in SNC Lavalin.
SNC Lavalin is very active in DC now and they were all hoping that they would have some kind of resurrection by engaging with the Asian Development BANK, which is probably unlikely if the director of public prosecutions proceeds with prosecution, which may be why things are so hot in Ottawa these days on LavScam.
But you know, you have to wonder.
Caste Depot was one of the biggest shareholders of Kinder Morgan Canada and Keste Depot and Power Corporation are deeply embedded with each other.
And guess who was the beneficiary of the sale of Kinder Morgan?
Who would have benefited most?
So you know, these are very interesting things.
But a lot of this is driven behind the scenes by the United Nations Principles For Responsible Investment which most of these major banks and the CDP worldwide, most of these major banks and institutional investors are signatory to the UNPRI and they're pushing all of these sustainable goals.
So that's why a bank turns around and goes, okay, well, we'll throw money at this.
Not to mention, banks are constantly being hammered by all of these big ENGOs.
They band together from time to time to hammer the banks on tar sands, on pipelines.
You know, they try to shred their reputation just like Greenpeace did to Resolute over the years.
So it's interesting that very few of these corporate bodies ever fight back and they should.
And the public should fight back too.
The public should be writing letters to their banks and writing letters to the charities directorate and saying, I don't want my money funding organizations that are blocking my jobs, our economy.
You know, I really do think it is, We might see the tide turning now that Resolute Forestry Products, based in Montreal of all places, is fighting back against Greenpeace.
And likewise, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline is also suing some of those same environmental organizations for the damage they did to their company's bottom line while they waited and waited and waited for Obama to do nothing to get that pipeline going.
So, I mean, we're seeing people and companies go bankrupt all the time because of bad environmental policies.
And I think it's time for some of these environmental charities to experience some of the same pain.
Well, you know, they certainly have lots of money.
So there could be shareholder action.
I just saw a note the other day from the Alberta, I don't remember what the name of the group is, but they were talking about how share prices have declined 67% on a lot of the big companies.
I spoke with one person who used to be with Total and he told me that their oil sand share prices are down something like 80%.
So either these offshore groups are trying to create a market situation where they can be vulture investors and take advantage of these low prices.
And they certainly have tons of money, so they have the ability to wait and then jump in.
Or, you know, they're just trying to crater the market completely and probably because they have other oil interests worldwide.
We're the only place in the world that's facing this kind of ENGO opposition.
Engos Pushing Party Politics00:03:27
You know, it really is true.
It's funny because when you were talking about SNC Lavalin, it occurred to me that a lot of people are outraged because it appears as though Justin Trudeau politically interfered in the prosecution of SNC Lavalin for political gain.
But is it really any different than calling off the audits of the environmental charities and helping them skirt prosecution for what they had been doing, breaking the law around charities here in Canada?
I mean, everyone's mad because it's SNC Lavalin, but it's been happening to Alberta for years.
Yes, well, that's an interesting point because not only were the audits of the charities canceled, also in the fall, the government made the law more lenient in regard to political activity by these charities.
And in my opinion, they were already highly politicized prior to that.
But they were never really prosecuted or even called out for that.
But now they apparently have free reign.
So, you know, when you add together all this money that's noted on our Money Matters, the ENGO Political Advantage blog post, and when you add together all of the money and influence that noted in our report, dark green money, and in our report, big green money, you realize that we're just being, we, the ordinary taxpayer, are being crushed by a green Titanic.
And this is completely contrary to any principle of democracy, as far as I can see.
We're supposed to be the electorate.
We're supposed to be the ones who are setting policy and agreeing or disagreeing on proposals by the government, but it's being driven by these massive ENGOs and all their money, much of which is from somewhere else.
Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of people out there who still believe that Russian collusion helped Donald Trump get elected with little to no proof whatsoever.
And they believe that as though it's the gospel truth.
But we've seen actual foreign collusion, environmental charities dumping money into Canada to help sway an election in favor of the Liberals.
We saw it with LEED Now and how the whole Vote Together campaign and all the Russian collusion conspiracy theorists seem to think that's perfectly fine.
Yeah, it is odd.
I haven't followed the detail on that.
I am aware of it, but I'm not deeply involved in that LEEDNOW election issue.
But, you know, you can say the same for any of these ENGOs that are pushing for the party that will push renewables.
And why are they doing that?
Because in the background, the Climate Works Foundation, which we've talked about before, these 13 billionaires are pumping out hundreds of millions of dollars every year to ENGOs worldwide to push their global cap and trade program and to put $12 trillion of renewables on the grid, which don't work.
We just issued a press release today on Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore calling out AOC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her Green New Deal because it doesn't work.
Renewables Fall Short00:09:07
And oddly enough, McKinsey and Company issued a report on February 14th saying that, oh yes, renewables will take over the market by 50% by 2030 or something like that.
And the same day, Robert Lyman, the Ottawa energy policy consultant that we work frequently, issued a report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
And he demonstrated that these renewables are not up to the challenge.
They can't do it.
And we should really bring our energy policies back down to earth.
So that would mean getting rid of the carbon tax and getting rid of these renewables.
Except in certain complementary situations, certainly not in Canada.
They're not really a viable energy source on the grid in Canada.
Yeah, and that brings me to another report that Friends of Science has done.
It's about how the carbon tax has basically made us completely uncompetitive with the United States, who was once our largest customer, still remains our one and only largest customer.
But now they are our largest competitor.
They're exporting and we can't even build a pipeline.
It was 120 days from signature to oil pumping in the Dakota access pipeline.
And in Canada, to build a pipeline, you're looking at 120 months and not 120 days.
If that.
If that.
Yes, somebody will think of some little, I don't know, spotted owl or something that's at risk, but we can't build a pipeline here.
In fact, I did a commentary a few years ago called The Great Eco Wall of Canada, and it looks at all of the environmental regulations and blockades in BC.
And sure enough, BC is the great eco-wall of Canada because you can't go anywhere there without running afoul of these various groups.
Yeah, and that's really where these groups are really concentrated is in British Columbia because that's our one way to tide water.
That's our one quickest, most economically viable way to tide water.
And yet we can't get there.
Now, you guys at Friends of Science have something very important coming up.
And it's something that I'm pretty well interested in attending.
And again, it's telling the other side of the story of the demise of the friendly, cuddly polar bear.
Yes, we have polar bears and solar flares coming up on April 10th at the Red and White Club in Calgary.
It's at 6 p.m. in the evening.
It's our annual event, our 16th annual event.
And we'll be hosting Dr. Susan Crockford, who is an author and researcher, a zoologist and polar bear expert.
And also Dr. Willie Soon, who is an astrophysicist, and he'll be talking about how the sun drives climate and solar effects on climate for Canada.
So both of these researchers, of course, hold a somewhat different view, dissenting view from the mainstream.
And Dr. Crockford, in particular, has been hammered by a large group of researchers calling her a denier.
And they issued a paper a couple of years ago that really tried to shred her reputation completely.
And, you know, this is not scientific inquiry.
This is just a personal attack, in my opinion.
Terrible.
And Dr. Soon, also, he's been attacked by Greenpeace.
They found that an oil company was funding some of the research through the Smithsonian, where he does his work.
And, you know, of course, almost every oil company in the world funds research at various universities.
They give money to places like the Pembina Foundation.
So give me a break.
That's no smoking gun.
Claim that an individual researcher is somehow pocketing millions of dollars.
And again, when you look at our reports and you see the money that's out there from Climate Works billionaires, you recognize that the whole funded by big oil scenario is just a lark.
It's the Alinsky version of, you know, blame them for what you're doing.
Yeah, yeah, so true.
So how do people get tickets to polar bears and solar flares?
And secondarily, how do people find you and support what you're doing?
Well, you can get your tickets for polar bears and solar flares on our website.
There's a link through there or through Eventbrite in Calgary.
Look for Calgary events.
And also on our Facebook page, we have an event page there.
So our website is www.friendsofscience.org.
And Eventbrite, just look for polar bears and solar flares.
And on Facebook, you'll just find it posted at the top.
So we don't have any more early bird pricing, but we are still selling tickets to the end of this month.
We have to close the ticketing early just for the catering because it's a big event.
It's from 6 to 9.
We have a buffet dinner.
We have two speakers and we'll be selling some books and offering some reports.
And Susan is releasing a brand new book that day.
So it'll be, yeah, it'll be a big event.
It's usually like lots of fun.
People have a very nice social.
Yeah.
I went to one a couple of years ago that the boss spoke at.
And dinner is something else.
Like it's worth the price of admission just for dinner.
And all the great discussion and incredible speakers and being in a room of like-minded people is just an added benefit because the dinner was amazing.
Yeah, well, you know, we also, thank you.
We also have a number of people who come who are brand new to the whole issue and we welcome them.
You know, nobody is required to agree with us.
We simply want open civil debate.
We want people to be able to ask their government to provide cost-benefit analysis and to do smart goal planning, you know, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based, so that we're not getting into like a carbon tax that will incrementally go up forever.
You know, but we tried the carbon tax for a year or a few in Alberta and it's not working.
So let's get rid of it because you know our report, carbon pricing consequences for Alberta, certainly shows that there was a huge domino principle and many things fell apart in Alberta in that timeframe simply because of the carbon tax.
And we will be paying billions of dollars for many years because of that one policy.
bad policy, but we should stop it now.
So, you know, this is what we are trying to get across to the public: that you have a right to call for open civil debate on these issues and a right to call for smart goals, not this, we're all going to die so anything goes.
Yeah, there's so much urgency that we just have to do whatever the government tells us to do without questioning it.
Michelle, how do people, let's say people want to get involved with Friends of Science, throw a couple bucks your way to help support these reports, these very comprehensive reports that you guys are putting out?
Well, there's a donate and membership button on the upper right-hand corner of our website.
So you can just go there and become a member and donate and we'd be happy to have you.
And members get a bi-weekly, sorry, bi-monthly edition of our FOS extracts, which is a world roundup of news related to climate and energy issues around the world, which people may not see here with only the CDC providing point of view and Katie Telford making sure that everybody gets the right message.
And we also provide CliSci, which is a roundup of recent academic and peer-reviewed papers on climate science.
So, you know, and some of our events.
And so there's lots that you get our press releases.
Well, and more importantly, I think people just want to give money to someone who is fighting for not only transparency, but just the ability to have these discussions.
Because as we know from the CBC, there will be no discussion.
Michelle, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show.
I try to keep these things to 20 minutes, but I always, always go over.
And hopefully your event sells out.
I think it's going to be a big hit.
Russian Collusion Claims00:02:50
And thank you again for being so generous with your time.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having us on the show.
And we appreciate everything that you do too at the Rebel and you especially Sheila out there in the cold with your billboard.
Oh, it was great.
Thanks, Michelle.
Okay, thank you.
Michelle and I touched on in our interview, the real foreign meddlers in our elections are the environmental NGOs.
And if we really want to get technical, it actually might be the Russians meddling in our electoral process, but not in the way the left would love to have you believe.
Just look at this article here from Newsweek magazine, first published in the Daily Signal.
A June 29th, 2017 letter from two Texas congressmen to Treasury Board Secretary Steve Munchin details what they call a covert anti-fracking campaign with little or no paper trail.
Representatives Lamar Smith and Randy Weber quote sources saying the Russian government has been colluding with environmental groups to circulate disinformation and propaganda and undermine hydraulic fracturing, of course, commonly known as fracking.
The sources cited include a former Secretary General of NATO who is quoted by these GOP congressmen as saying, Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations, environmental organizations, working against shale gas to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas.
The article reads that Gazprom, a large Russian oil company with ties to Putin, stands to benefit from Russian-funded environmental activism resulting in reduced levels of fracking and natural gas production in the United States.
And that same propaganda campaign is spawning all those talking points environmentalists now use against Canadian gas.
That's your real Russian collusion right there.
That's your real foreign meddling.
That's a real Russian attempt to subvert North American energy production.
But you won't hear any Democrat or liberal conspiracy theorist talking about any of it, will you?
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thanks again so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.