Angry in the Great White North

Finally, environmentalists are being called out as being political partisans, willing to sell out the environment and their own intellectual honesty in order to see the Liberals return to power:

Canada's high-profile environmentalists have set themselves up as the Earth's lobbyists but some critics accuse them of concealing less lofty sympathies.

Insiders from three federal parties told The Canadian Press they have concerns that some of the activists judging climate-change action have become too cosy with the Liberals.

They say the Liberals had a poor record on acting to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while in power for 13 years but faced much less criticism than the current Tory government.

As one internal Conservative memo recently noted: "These environmentalists need to be exposed for their hidden agenda - support the Liberal party at all costs."

Environmentalists seem all too willing to label the Liberals as Canada's environment party despite the fact that the Liberals achieved nothing on the Kyoto file. The last environment minister, who accomplished nothing on the environment, was none other than the current leader Stephane Dion.

When it was pointed out during a Liberal Party leadership debate that he accomplished nothing, all he could do was mewl pathetically about the difficulty of setting priorities.

And Stephane Dion is an environmental hero?

Stephane Dion is irrelevant and can be ignored. His environmental policy is uttterly unrelated to why environmentalists are so eager to get the Liberals re-elected, which also explains why his record is so conveniently ignored.

The real reason is money.

While Stephane Dion was environment minister in 2005-2006, these environmental groups received vast amounts of money through grants and transfers:

Consider these numbers. They are the funds received by environmental groups in 2005-2006, while Stephane Dion was environment minister:

• Pembina Institute: $403,240
• Sage Foundation: $107,000
• Climate Action Network: $1,783,769

The Pembina Institutes essentially subcontracts itself as the Liberal Party environment office:

The Pembina Institute denied any partisanship, saying they had merely provided analysis to the Liberals as they would to any party that asked. [The Institute's Matthew Bramley] noted that [Environment Minister John Baird] himself had asked the institute for briefing notes on his latest plan, though declined to engage in the kind of broad policy discussions Pembina was accustomed to under the Liberals.

"We released an in-depth careful analysis of the government's most recent proposals on greenhouse gases at the end of May, and the only response we've had from Minister Baird is an apparent attempt to attack our reputation instead of dealing with the substantive issues we raised," Bramley said.

But a Liberal insider who spoke on condition of anonymity said Bramley was intimately involved the [Liberal Party's] Carbon Budget, and even helped draft questions for Liberal MPs to ask of various witnesses during committee hearings.

"Nothing went into the plan without Matthew Bramley's prior approval," said the Liberal.

The Sage Institute was deeply involved in making sure the Liberals looked like they knew what they were doing, and making that point to the press, pretending to be an independent and unbaised opinion:

One of the main targets of criticism has been Louise Comeau of the Sage Centre and Climate for Change.

Comeau is a widely consulted environmentalist who has been on the beat for 20 years, a fixture at such high-profile events as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the meetings that formed the Kyoto Protocol in Japan in 1997.

She also provided advice, while at a previous job at the Sierra Club of Canada, to the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney.

But Comeau had the closest relationship with the Liberals under Paul Martin. That began around 2000 when Martin unveiled funds for green municipal projects, and Comeau was working at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

Comeau acknowledges she was consulted on the Liberal Kyoto plan called Project Green in 2005, but insists she was not involved in the actual writing of the document. One former government official saw it differently, saying Comeau was deeply involved in the formulation of the Liberal plan. Comeau also commented on the plan in the media as an environmentalist.

That same year, Comeau and Martin's former policy adviser Brian Guest formed a think-tank called the Canadian Centre for Policy Ingenuity, of which Climate for Change is a direct offshoot. Guest left the organization to help Stephane Dion's Liberal leadership campaign last year.

What these environmentalists are doing is helping the Liberals with their green camouflage. We know that senior Liberals like John Duffy and Nicole Foster Woollatt are, or have been recently, lobbyists for major polluters and greenhouse gas emitting industries.

The environmentalists turn a blind eye, allowing the Liberals to enrich themselves with this lobbying. As long as it is only a conservative like me putting this information out, no one will take it too seriously. A "respected" environmentalist would have to make noise, but none will do it, so the Liberals can pretend to be green and still make money being very ungreen.

This works as long as environmentalists continue to insist publicly that the Liberals are green.

But I still haven't explained why. In fact, I've written about this before. It's not just because of the money. The Conservatives could double the grants, and it wouldn't blunt the attacks environmentalist organizations aim at them. The problem for environmentalists is that the Conservatives have passed the Accountability Act. It will subject the millions that the environmentalists have been receiving to possible audits, as well as requiring the potential recipients to justify why they ought to receive the money in the first place.

To have that Act repealed and to return to the days when millions would flow to their organizations with no strings is of paramount importance. If that means portraying do-nothing Liberals who lobby for major polluters as the one-and-only choice for Canadians who worry about the environment, then so be it.