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Canadian teenagers are encouraged by foreign organizations to get arrested in support of foreign interests

Arrest is no laughing matter. Perhaps few if any of the arrests led to charges, but there is no guarantee of that. Criminal convictions can carry lifelong consequences. As a parent, I would have been horrified to think that my teenage children were being encouraged by foreign organizations to get themselves arrested in support of foreign campaigns to suit foreign interests.

And how significant is that foreign interest? The question is now much more in the public debate, due to work by journalists such as the Financial Post’s Claudia Cattaneo; politicians such as Ellis Ross, formerly chief councillor of the Haisla Nation and now a Liberal MLA; researchers such as Vivian Krause; and information organizations such as Resource Works.

After all, pipelines are turned down not because no one knows how to build them, and not even because they don’t get approved, but because of well-funded and highly-active political opposition.

The U.S.-based Tides Foundation, for example, directs funds to Canadian organizations such as Dogwood Initiative and Leadnow, both of whom featured prominently in the anti-pipeline protest on March 10th in Burnaby, and both of whom take an active role in B.C. elections, aiming to get pro-energy politicians out of office and anti-pipeline politicians elected.

Whose money is it that Tides pays out? And whose interests does it serve? What donor requests are being satisfied? This of course is the great unknown. Over the last few years Tides has granted $40 million to 100 Canadian anti-pipeline organizations who, in return, have done a fine job of constraining the Canadian economy and saving money for American buyers of Canadian oil.