Declare your support to reverse the flow of the Line 9 pipeline and support bringing Ethical Oil and jobs to Ontario.

Given the rest of the briefing note was filled with diplomatic filler, the kind of language UN bureaucrats specialize in, trying to stifle EthicalOil.org’s right to free speech appeared to be the Saudi agenda (document below). From the heavily blacked out document, we’ve learned the Saudis wanted to complain about our advertisement and the Saudi desire to sue us into silence was front and centre.

As Ethical Oil recently wrote on the Globe and Mail.com:

If the Saudi rulers are uncomfortable with the yawning chasm that exists between our ethics and theirs, the remedy is for the Saudis to close the gap by taking human rights seriously. They can start with respecting and liberating women, gays or religious minorities. More than 500 years have passed since the medieval era – the Saudis have had ample time to start catching up with more contemporary values.

We won’t be intimidated and it’s about time the Saudi’s get with the times and start respecting human rights. As Canadians who cherish our liberal-democratic values, we think it is time we choose Ethical Oil and stop supporting are a regime that seeks to suppress free speech in Canada.

With Canada’s oil sands increasing their production, the Ethical Oil alternative exists right here in Canada. Let’s hope projects like this and this become a reality sooner rather than later.

Saudi Ambassador briefing note for Minister Baird

The decision to shelve the proposal, gushed Hollywood activist Robert Redford, “represents a victory of historic proportions for people from throughout the pipeline path and all across America who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.”

Even Barack Obama doesn’t believe that nonsense.

The president made that much clear in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine. He said he had “respect” for certain anti-oil sands crusaders, like James Hansen at NASA who said approving Keystone XL would mean “game over” for the climate. But, Obama said, his decision on whether to allow the pipeline into the U.S. actually wouldn’t change a thing.

“But it’s important to understand that Canada is going to be moving forward with tar sands, regardless of what we do. That’s their national policy, they’re pursuing it,” Obama said.

The president’s decision at the time was plainly all politics: he just couldn’t stand up to a far left base of support that he’d desperately need to keep him in power come the November presidential election. The Council on Foreign Relations had pointed out that piping just shy of a million barrels of Canadian oil every day into the U.S. oil supply chain would scarcely alter the nation’s carbon footprint. But it would have the effect of displacing a whole lot of conflict oil from dangerous regimes in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

The anti-oil sands zealots deployed their standard farrago of exaggerations and lies to mislead the public, prompting Obama to make the unethical choice. Now, even the president admits that it was all pointless: The world will continue to use oil. Canada will develop its oil sands with or without Keystone XL. The U.S. will just have to keep buying more and more harmful conflict oil, instead of ethical, friendly and stable Canadian supplies.

To the anti-oil sands fanatics, that’s called “victory.” Reasonable people would just call it tragic.

CBC News has reported that TransCanada has reapplied for their permit to build Keystone XL. Will President Obama now do what is right?

Dole produces bananas too, but it doesn’t have a corporate history quite as, shall we say, colourful as Chiquita, a company with links to Third World government coups and which was caught, just a few years ago, funding terrorists. When Chiquita tried whitewashing its human rights sins by agreeing to participate in a ForestEthics boycott of Canada’s ethical oil, customers were understandably outraged. Canada’s oil, after all, is produced in a country that respects human rights, the environment, peace and stability — all the things that Chiquita has had plenty of trouble with before.

The backlash was brutal. As The Economist noted: “This may have pleased environmentalists, but it infuriated Canadians who depend on the oil industry. A pro-business lobby called EthicalOil.org is urging a boycott of Chiquita’s products that is said to be costing the company a fortune. Chiquita would not quantify its losses.”

Evidently the foreign-funded radicals at ForestEthics see Chiquita’s severe loss as their gain: they’ve begun ramping up their campaign to pressure the fruit giant Dole to follow Chiquita’s foolish lead. “Big American corporations like Dole need to serve us — not Big Oil,” they write in a ridiculously asinine letter. Oil companies are American corporations, just like fruit companies, and Dole doesn’t “serve” them; it just buys gasoline from them, just like millions of commuters do every day — whether it’s from oil sands sources or other sources.

Clearly no one would accuse the extremists at ForestEthics of understanding, or caring, how economies actually function — when you work in a bubble of activists funded by foreign trusts with billions of dollars at their disposal, the real economy is meaningless, anyway (that’s why they don’t care about putting Canadians out of work with their calls for boycotts, for example).

But presumably the folks who run Dole have a better grasp of economic, and ethical, realities, and if they’ve been paying attention, they’d know that there’s nothing to gain by shunning the most ethically produced oil in the world to suck up to a fringe group of zealots. But choosing to buy more conflict oil from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela while insulting millions of Canadians proud of our commitment to peace, the environment and rights for women, minorities and workers? As Chiquita is discovering the hard way, that’s a strategy that’s a surefire loser.

To read more about the Boycott Chiquita campaign, click here.

OTTAWA – Given the mounting evidence of political and partisan activity the David Suzuki Foundation engages in, on April 24 EthicalOil.org wrote to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) calling for the environmental lobby group’s charitable status to be reviewed.

The CRA clearly states that registered charities are prohibited from engaging in partisan activity and sets very strict rules for political activity. The 44-page letter details the political and partisan activity of David Suzuki Foundation over the past year, including:

• David Suzuki endorsing Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty’s record and appearing in a Liberal Party of Ontario partisan ad
• Persistent calls to action political action
• Frequent condemnation of government policy
• Trying to sway the Senate to abandon their inquiry on foreign funding of charities.

____________________________________________________________

“The David Suzuki Foundation his a highly political organization. With the mounting evidence of partisan and political activity, it is time for the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate.”

–Jordan Graham, National Spokesperson, EthicalOil.org

Letter to CRA – DSF

UK High Commission – DSF
NFB DSF

Just ask Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz, daughter of King Saud himself. In an op-ed for the BBC she lists all the things she wishes she could change about Saudi Arabia. As it happens, they’re the very things our Ethical Oil ad pointed to, and more:

• “The constitution should protect every citizen’s basic human rights regardless of their sex, status or sect,” writes Princess Basma. “Everyone should be equal before the law.”

• “I strongly believe that current divorce laws are abusive” because they require a woman to buy her way out of a marriage, get a witness (male, of course) to attest firsthand to the validity of her request — “an impossible condition to fulfil given that such reasons usually are the kind that remain within the four walls of a marriage” — and because of the “automatic granting of custody of any children over the age of six to the father in any divorce settlements.”

• “Our young are taught that a woman’s position in society is inferior. Her role is strictly limited to serving her family and raising children. They are actually taught that if a woman has to worship anyone other than God it should be her husband; ‘that the angels will curse her if she is not submissive to her husband’s needs’.

• “The ministry of social affairs is tolerating cruelty towards women rather than protecting them. The only refuge homes that abused women can turn to are state ones. In these, women are continuously told that by seeking refuge they have brought shame on their families. If they come from powerful families then they will be sent straight back to their homes in fear of the wrath of a powerful patriarch. As a result we have seen many cases of suicide by educated women, doctors and scientists who were sent back to their abusers.”

• “Women in Saudi cannot get around or travel without a mahram (a kind of chaperone – usually a male relative)…Today the only purpose of such a law is to curtail women’s freedom of movement. This not only infantilises women but turns them unnecessarily into a burden on their men and on society. Today women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive…In the current climate if a woman drives, she could be stopped, harassed beaten or worse to teach her a lesson.”

It’s a good thing the princess pitched her op-ed to the BBC, rather than to Canadian TV networks who might have been too nervous about upsetting the misogynist Saudi monarchs to put it on their websites. It would be even better, though, if this op-ed appeared in a Saudi news source. But there are no Saudi news sources that aren’t controlled by the royals, so that isn’t likely to happen. Still, those of us in the West who read these things can’t say we don’t know what kind of human rights abuses are being inflicted on Saudi women every day — things we support by purchasing Saudi oil.

Some groups “may not be respecting the rules regarding political activities,” the government said, and there is a need for “greater public transparency related to the political activities of charities, including the extent to which they may be funded by foreign sources.” The federal government is giving the Canada Revenue Agency $8 million to “enhance its education and compliance activities” and “improve transparency by requiring charities to provide more information on their political activities, including the extent to which these are funded by foreign sources.” Ottawa wants to make sure charities are following the rules that they agreed to when they apply for charitable status — a classification that gives them generous benefits, such as tax-free status and the ability to offer donors deductible receipts — and it wants to know more about where that money is coming from. So it’s providing a very small amount of money to the CRA to keep a closer eye on things.

Who could object to that?

Well, John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club Canada, does.

In an over-the-top opinion column in the wake of the federal budget, Bennett called the budget a declaration of “war.” The “troops came storming across the border last Thursday,” he said. This was an attack on basic freedoms, he fulminated. “Last week, our freedom to speak, our freedom to assemble and our freedom to participate were curtailed. We are less free today and all Canadians should be concerned.” Next to a picture of Big Brother, from the movie adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 (no kidding), Bennett wrote: “Who’s next?”

Well, one supposes, who is “next” are those groups that don’t abide by the law. Certainly that’s how it should be: groups like Sierra Club that fight against the oil sands may think their cause is uniquely righteous, but in the government’s eyes, all charities have to play by the same rules. If the Canadian Cancer Society and United Way have to abide by the Income Tax Act in order to qualify for charitable status, then it’s only fair that environmental groups should, too. Canadians clearly realize that: an Angus-Reid poll conducted after the budget found that greater transparency and accountability for charities doing political activity and receiving foreign funds was one of the most popular items in the bill: 80% of Canadians support it. Even dropping the penny only managed 68%.

Canadians know this isn’t about curtailing free speech: groups that want to fight Canada’s energy sector are free to keep doing so if that’s what they want. They have every right to fight the government and Canadian employers. They just don’t get to take taxpayer subsidies to do it. Those are the kinds of choices Canadians, and Canadian organizations, face all the time. Public office holders make the choice to give up making money in the private sector in order to represent us in our legislatures; public servants agree not to engage in public political partisanship.

But Canada’s rules about keeping politics out of charity are there for a reason. When groups spend most, if not all of their taxpayer-subsidized money fighting controversial crusades against industries like the oil sands, it means they’re not busy using their charitable license to do things that Canadians generally agree are good for the country. For instance, charitable groups fighting against the Northern Gateway pipeline in B.C. are firmly off-side with the large support among British Columbians for that project. Why should taxpayers be subsidizing these groups to fight against initiatives and jobs that Canadians very much want?

So John Bennett can relax. Groups that want to occupy themselves with politics can still do so, on their own dime. And groups that adhere to the rules about allowable charitable activities will keep getting their subsidies. Bennett himself says he’s “pretty sure” he hasn’t broken any rules. That’s good — though it sounds like now’s probably a good time for the Sierra Club, and all those other anti-oil sands charities, to double check and make sure. Sticking to the law is all Ottawa’s asking. That’s not “war.” That’s just asking them to play fair.

To help you get past the fear mongering and rhetoric, we thought we would show you the law that we cited in our letter to the CRA.

To read more about our efforts and take action, CLICK HERE.

CRA RULES REGARDING CHARITIES AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY

Section 149.1(1) of the Income Tax Act, RSC, 1985, c. 1 (5th Supp.) provides that a charitable organization is required to devote all of its resources to charitable activities. Section 149.1(6.2) provides that a charitable organization may donate part of its resources to political activities, provided that the activities are ancillary and incidental to its charitable activities and do not include the support of, or opposition to, any political party or candidate. The application of the Income Tax Act is described in CRA Policy Statements, as set out below.

An organization with political purposes does not qualify for registration as a charity. Political purposes are those that seek to:

• further the interests of a particular political party; or support a political party or candidate for public office; or
• retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country.

Partisan political activity involves direct or indirect support of, or opposition to, any political party or candidate for public office. A charity may make the public aware of its position on an issue, even if that position is supported by a candidate or political party, provided:

1. it does not explicitly connect its views to any political party or candidate for public office;
2. the issue is connected to its charitable purposes;
3. its views are based on a well-reasoned position; and
4. public awareness campaigns do not become the charity’s primary activity.

A charity may provide information to the public on how all Members of Parliament or legislative body voted on an issue connected with the charity’s purpose. However, a charity must not single out the voting pattern of any one elected representative or political party.

A registered charity may take part in limited political activities provided the activities are non-partisan and connected and subordinate to the charity’s purposes. A charity engages in political activity if it:

1. explicitly communicates a call to political action (i.e., encourages the public to contact an elected representative or public official and urges them to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government);
2. explicitly communicates to the public that the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country should be retained (if retention is being reconsidered by a government), opposed, or changed;
3. explicitly indicates in its materials (whether internal or external) that the intention of the activity is to incite, or organize to put pressure on, an elected representative or public official to retain, oppose, or change the law, policy, or decision of any level of government in Canada or a foreign country; or
4. attempts to sway public opinion on social issues.

While not all attempts to inform public opinion on an issue are political activity, any purpose that suggests convincing or needing people to act in a certain way and which is contingent upon a change to law or government policy is a political purpose.

To read the full policy statement, click here.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver announced on Tuesday new details of plans outlined in the recent federal budget to ensure that major project proposals don’t keep getting bogged down in interminable regulatory red tape. “We need a process that ensures timely, efficient and effective project reviews, promotes business confidence and capital investment, while strengthening our world-class environmental standards,” he said. In the past, some applications have taken as long as six years from proposal to approval. “What kind of message does that send to investors?” Oliver asked.

Anti-development groups know exactly what kind of message that presents: “Don’t invest in Canada; don’t create jobs for Canadians; take your money somewhere else.” And it’s exactly the message they want to send. Clogging up regulatory approval processes to block new projects and scare off investment — and the jobs that come with them — is their modus operandi. One group battling against the Northern Gateway pipeline project, which would help boost Canada’s energy business and jobs by allowing us access to export markets beyond the U.S., even created a “mob the mic” campaign to literally swamp the Gateway’s regulatory hearings with hundreds and hundreds of testimonies, slowing the process down to a crawl. Other groups evidently signed up witnesses as far away from Brazil — who didn’t even know their names had been added to the testimony list. Our regulatory processes have been turned into a circus by radical groups interested only in paralyzing our reviews, and with them, our economic development.

Obviously having 1,600 people from the same organization offer the same anti-development dogma again and again isn’t contributing to a smart, efficient regulatory process; it’s a way to cripple Canada’s competitiveness for investment, and the anti-development groups know it. That’s why they’re livid over Oliver’s plan. Environmental Defense claimed that the streamlined process — which will consolidate assessments into three departments, rather than the astounding 40 (!) that are now involved, while letting provinces handle smaller project reviews, instead of duplicating the process federally — proves that business gets “a free pass to do whatever it wants.” Hardly. Environmental rules don’t need to be managed by more than three dozen different federal departments, and two separate levels of government, to meet a high standard. And Minister Oliver has promised that all new reviews will have to meet the same standards as before. The only ones who refuse to believe him are zealously anti-oil groups with their fevered conspiracy theories that our government is a secret puppet of Big Oil.

More reasonable Canadians know that we elect our government to properly balance our interests. We all agree that environmental protection is important. Most of us also agree that economic development and jobs are important, too. But that’s where the vast majority of Canadians part ways with the radical anti-development, anti-oil groups like Environmental Defence and Dogwood. Those groups are funded by foreign interests. The non-Canadian billionaires and their foundations who send fat cheques to ED and Dogwood don’t care about our economy and our jobs — and we don’t expect them to. But we do expect our elected representatives in Ottawa to balance our environmental protection with economic and employment growth. Making the process for approving major job-creating projects more efficient and more intelligent can only help that.

Canada’s oil is already some of the most ethical in the world and we’re rightly proud of it. We produce our oil to environmental standards that are second-to-none, while setting the world’s highest bar for worker’s rights and human rights. Nobody wants to change that. What reasonable Canadians do want is the opportunity to sell our ethical oil to the world — via pipelines like Northern Gateway and Keystone XL — to displace the conflict oil from the bloody regimes in Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. Canadians work hard to uphold a high moral standard in our energy production. That’s one of the reasons investors like us: as a stable, safe, and peaceful oil producer we are a rarity in the world. We should be free to welcome their investment, and reap the rewards it brings: rewards like jobs, prosperity, and tax revenue for our schools and hospitals.

Getting better at approving resource projects, like oil pipelines, is a vital step in realizing our potential as an ethical energy superpower. Of course that upsets the radical activists who had hoped they could stop our energy economy from growing. But for the overwhelming majority of Canadians who support a robust energy industry and the jobs it brings, balanced with first-rate environmental protection, Oliver’s plan is nothing but good news.

We wrote after the budget why this measure is so important. Fringe environmental groups are using millions of dollars from non-Canadian sources to sabotage businesses and jobs here in Canada. And they’re using tax-break subsidies, originally designed to help Canadians, in their anti-jobs, anti-economic crusades that end up hurting Canadians.

That’s why exposing foreign funding of anti-oil groups — the way Ethical Oil did in its OurDecision.ca campaign earlier this year — is so critical: those groups that work for foreign interests are doing things that foreigners want them to do, not things that Canadians want. It puts them out of touch with Canadian values, as we’ve seen in their reckless and outrageous sabotaging of the Northern Gateway pipeline approval hearings, a project supported by British Columbians.

The fact that 80% of Canadians want Ottawa to provide more oversight of these groups’ political activities and foreign support — an overwhelming majority — is yet more evidence of how out of sync these organizations are from the Canadian public. After the budget, anti-oil sands groups actually complained about how unfair it was that they should have to meet these levels of accountability. All the more reason why we need to make sure these foreign-funded political groups play by our rules — Canadians’ rules — and not their own.