Green Charities Clash With Harper Conservatives
OTTAWA -- The Conservatives have taken
their battle with environmentalists to new levels of lunacy, some
groups said Tuesday, after a Tory senator suggested they would accept
funding from Al Qaeda.
"Let me ask you this, honourable senators: If environmentalists are willing to accept
money
from Martians, where would they draw the line on where they receive
money from? Would they take money from Al Qaeda, the Hamas or the
Taliban?," Senator Don Plett, the party's former president, asked in
the Senate.
"It's jaw-droopingly bizarre," Devon Page, executive director of EcoJustice told The Huffington Post Canada late Tuesday.
"I have no idea where this comes from. To me this defies reason, logic and all of this is so bizarre I have a hard
time
responding to it. To me, it's a good example of why we need an elected
Senate," he said. "They are being irresponsible, I think they are not
representing the Canadian public, I think the Senate is disassociating
itself from reasoned debate."
Plett,
who was appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009, made the
comments during an inquiry into the foreign funding of Canadian
charities.
He told the upper
chamber that Canada is a sovereign nation and "foreign entities should
simply not be allowed to meddle in the Canadian regulatory process
under the guise of charities."
Many
environmentalists are upset with Harper's seeming obsession with the
millions they receive each year in charitable funding from the U.S.,
while ignoring the millions more spent in Canada each year by foreign
business interests.
Liberal
Senator Grant Mitchell pointed out that the Tories have no trouble
with foreign funding as long as it benefits it's own causes, such as
the National Rifle Association petitioning to kill the long gun
registry.
"Funding flows in all
directions across borders, and to somehow single out a subset just
because you don't like the stance of certain organizations and then
demonize them for it for receiving the funding...is really a
reprehensible treatment," Peter Robinson, the chief executive officer
of the David Suzuki
Foundation told HuffPost.
The
David Suzuki Foundation, EcoJustice and several other groups,
including Tides Canada, Sierra Club Canada, Greenpeace and even the MADD
Foundation, found themselves on another Conservative senator's hit
list of "bad" charities Tuesday.
Harper-appointee
Percy Mockler told the Senate it had to stop the interference of
foreign foundations who were "muddling" in the business of our country.
"I believe they do abuse the laws of Revenue Canada," he said.
Not all foundations, of course, were "evil," Mockler said. "Just some of them."
The
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did good work, as did The
Rockerfeller Foundation and the Canadian Tire Foundation for Families.
But
others were "qualified bad, not to mention ugly, foundations," Mockler
said, listing: The David Suzuki Foundation, the Packard Foundation,
the Greenpeace International Foundation, the Sierra Club Foundation,
the Hewlett Foundation, the Ecojustice Canada Bullitt Foundation, the
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Tides Canada and the MADD
foundation.
"They are all anti-Canadian," said Senator Mike Duffy, a former television personality and another Harper-appointed Tory.
"To
suggest that David Suzuki hasn't made a strong contribution to Canada
is just insane," said Sierra Club Canada's executive director John
Bennett.
"Here is a Canadian icon
who has devoted his life to informing Canadians about the 'nature of
things' and because he's done that he's now considered an Al Qaeda
sympathizer?"
Bennett said his
organization, which receives funding from American and Canadian
foundations and donations from individuals on both sides of the border,
doesn't support civil disobedience let alone a violent armed struggle.
"Clearly,
this is just a continuation of the (Conservative government's) smear
campaign to try to cripple the environmental movement," he said.
The
federal government has lashed out at environmentalists after the
Northern Gateway pipeline's public hearings were delayed because too
many participants wanted to have their say in the controversial project.
The Tories labelled environmentalists 'radicals' and they now plan to
streamline the National Energy Board and the Canadian Environmental
Assessment agency's reviews as a result.
Bennett
said environmental organizations like his are only asking to halt
expansion of the tar sands until the federal government figures out how
it will reduce its overall emissions and clean up the toxic mess.
"All
the polling we've done say that I'm representing the majority and he's
(Harper) is representing the lunatic fringe," Bennett said. "This
makes the case for an elected Senate because obviously members of the
lunatic fringe can be appointed by the Conservative government."
The
Senate's debate on foreign funding of charities happened the same day
that another Conservative senator, Nancy Greene Raine, said she doesn't
believe that greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for climate
change.
Harper's spokesman Andrew MacDougall said he had "no comment on the opinions of Senators."
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