I don’t know how I ended up being part of a group with a radical environmental agenda. It all happened so gradually.
I do remember being invited to join the board of the Tides Canada Foundation when it was founded over a decade ago. It seemed innocent enough, a registered Canadian charity that offered Canadians a chance to donate to protecting the environment and creating socially just communities. In fact, it seemed so Canadian. Silly me, but hey, this was over a decade ago.
In fact, I used to tell people that Tides Canada was just like a community foundation, say the Vancouver Foundation or the Winnipeg Foundation, except that instead of a geographical community it was a community of interest. A community of people interested in the environment and social justice.
And I must admit I was fooled. Every board meeting we would approve foundation grants for things like developing new models of sustainable forestry, or aquaculture, education for school kids on ecosystems, and the development of low income housing. I was so blinded that I thought these things were good for Canada and its communities.
And then I made a very big mistake: I became chair of the Tides Canada board. What was I thinking? I was involved in recruiting a top-level management team with senior experience in government, business and academia. And Tides Canada became deeply involved in the multi-sectoral effort to create a sustainable future for the mid-coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest. It only looked good, I am sure, because it was a collaboration of commercial interests, government, First Nations, and residents unique in the world. There must have been something wrong with it, and I just didn’t see it.
But Ezra Levant does see it. He now says that in 2008 Tides Canada paid two First Nations “$27.3 million specifically to oppose the Northern Gateway pipeline.” And I thought that the $27.3 million was actually our part of philanthropy’s match to the Harper and Campbell governments’ contributions to support 27 participating coastal First Nations in their transition to a sustainable future. I’m always amazed how some people can see what nobody else can.
One of my biggest mistakes was to think that commercial enterprise could be done sustainably, that management regimes in forestry and fishing could protect jobs and communities in those industries for future generations. And even worse, to think that accepting financial support from outside Canada for the development of new models was in Canada’s national interest. I totally failed to see the complicated conspiracy where U.S. philanthropy was disrupting Canadian industry so U.S. companies could eat our lunch. And I have to confess, I still find that hard to see.
I’ve probably been blinded because I’ve spent a lot of time over the years with U.S. philanthropists, and they don’t seem like lackeys of industry to me. They do things like develop housing supports for disabled people, create powerful narratives of the civil rights movement, and improve the quality of schools. They seemed too busy for complicated conspiracies.
I owe a penance, and I plan to go back over the Tides Canada list of grants to ferret out the heinous and extremist ones. It may take a while.
I guess I should have been more attentive to the changes that came over me as I drifted into radical extremism. For sure, something changed. I seemed on the right track before Joe Oliver and Stephen Harper called me out. So, I confess and repent. I regret the mistakes of my past and wish I could do it all over. All I ever wanted to be was a jet-setting celebrity.
Original Article
Source: Star
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