Given the economic significance of the Alberta oil industry to all of Canada, the credibility and impartiality of the Alberta Energy Regulator is important.
Recently, the Alberta Energy Regulator appointed a new director: Ed Whittingham. For his bio as posted at the AER's web-site, click here. Not mentioned in Mr. Whittingham's bio is that he has a long history of involvement in activism to sabotage the Alberta oil and natural gas industries.
According to the Order in Council pertaining to his appointment, Mr. Whittingham is to serve on the board of directors of the Alberta Energy Regulator for a period of five years during which he will receive $76,500 per year plus $750 per day to a maximum of $3,000 per month. All in, that's a minimum of $382,500 over five years, and a maximum of $562,500. Mr. Whittingham was appointed to the AER at the recommendation of the current Minister for Energy, Margaret McQuaig-Boyd.
For more than a decade (2005 - 2017), Mr. Whittingham was employed at The Pembina Institute and between 2011 and 2017, he was the Executive Director. Pembina presents itself as an independent, energy think tank and has produced numerous publications on a wide range of topics: geothermal, solar, wind, transportation planning, carbon pricing and more.
Pembina Institute has also been quietly involved in a U.S.-funded effort called The Tar Sands Campaign. For many years, the strategy of this campaign was not entirely clear. But now it is. As CBC has reported, this campaign takes credit for "land-locking" Canadian oil, keeping it out of overseas markets where it could fetch higher prices per barrel.
Lacking pipelines to the ocean, Canadian oil producers are forced to sell into the United States at a steep discount, causing Canada to lose billions of dollars in royalties and other revenue. Scotiabank estimated that for 2018, the lack of pipelines and access to overseas markets cost Canada more than $10 BILLION.
During his years at The Pembina Institute, the institute and its sister organization, The Pembina Foundation for Environmental Research and Education, received at least $8 million (US$7.4 million) from the U.S. funders of The Tar Sands Campaign and other activism against the Canadian oil and natural gas industry:
For a .pdf file that compiles pages of tax returns showing 56 payments for a total of $8 million, click here (64 pages).
Inaccurate Information
One of the problems with The Tar Sands Campaign is that the information that it provides is selective and in many cases, is inaccurate. One of the inaccuracies that this campaign has perpetuated is the false claim that producing oil from the Canadian oil sands generates "three to four times" as much greenhouse gas emissions as conventional oil. Pembina has perpetuated this inaccuracy as shown in examples of some of Pembina's literature.
The Tar Sands Campaign is a continuation and intensification of U.S. funded activism against Canadian oil and gas that began around 2004. That year, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the main co-funders of The Tar Sands Campaign, granted $70,000 to Tides Canada Foundation to develop a "strategic plan" to address oil and gas development in British Columbia. Subsequently, Tides Canada in Vancouver received a further US$1.9 million and Tides Foundation in San Francisco received $7 million. Since then, The Tar Sands Campaign has been executed by a team of organizations funded via Tides in San Francisco, Tides Canada Foundation in Vancouver, New Venture Fund in Washington, D.C. and other organizations in Canada, the U.S. and in Europe.
To date, more than 400 payments totalling more than US$40 million have been made to finance The Tar Sands Campaign.
Rockefeller Payments to Pembina Institute
The first payment from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to Pembina Foundation was made in 2006 for $50 000. At the time, Mr. Whittingham was apparently the Director of Consulting. According to U.S. tax returns, that money was "to prevent the development of a pipeline and tanker port that endangers the Great Bear Rainforest protected area. Tax returns show that Rockefeller Brothers Fund paid $50,000 to Pembina Institute in both 2006 and 2007, a total of US$100 000.
When the Rockefellers first began to fund the protection of the traditional habitat of the kermode bear (now branded "the Great Spirit Bear"), their strategy made good sense. The kermode bear is of spiritual significance to First Nations people. It makes perfect sense to protect the traditional habitat of this special bear. When the Rockefellers first began to fund the protection of the habitat of the kermode bear, the goal was to set aside a small area on the north coast of B.C. which truly is the traditional habitat of this remarkable bear. To see a map of this area in the Annual Report of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1999, click here. (Source: page 25). But that's now what the Great Bear Rainforest is about anymore.
Even though the traditional habitat of the kermode bear is only a small area on the north coast of British Columbia, the Rockefellers and the organizations that they fund now claim that the entire north coast of B.C. is the Great Bear Rainforest, and now, in the name of protecting the coast, Rockefeller-funded organizations - including Pembina Institute - claim that there can be no pipelines and no tanker traffic on the entire north coast of British Columbia. As it were, the Great Bear Rainforest has become the Great Trade Barrier to Asia. Pembina Institute is one of the many organizations that has perpetuated the false notion that the entire B.C. north coast is home to the Great Spirit Bear. For an example of this, click here, here here, or see the report Pipeline and Tanker Trouble, co-authored by Pembina Institute in 2011.
Oak Foundation
Of particular concern is the US$1.7 million that Pembina has received from Oak Foundation.
Oak is an intermediary funder as are Tides Foundation, Tides Canada and New Venture Fund. Oak has refused to disclose the origins of the funds that it has granted to organizations operating in Canada, a total equivalent of $28 million.
Another concern with the Oak Foundation is that it has substantially re-written the details of the grants that it provides to Canadian activist groups. Oak has removed wording that acknowledged an agenda to sabotage proposed pipeline projects. This was reported several years ago in The Financial Post.
All of these considerations are relevant to Pembina Institute because during both 2011 & 2012, Oak Foundation was Pembina's #1 top funder, according to Pembina's annual financial reports.
Since 2013, Pembina Institute no longer includes a list of its funders in its annual financial reports. This backward decline in transparency while Pembina Institute was under the direction of Ed Whittingham, is yet another concern.
The Tar Sands Campaign
In 2007, Rockefeller Brothers Fund began financing a San Francisco-based organization called Corporate Ethics International to design and execute The Tar Sands Campaign. During the early years, there was no publicly available information about this campaign. In fact, it was only discovered by accident in the course of other research. Over the years, some written information has become available, notably from three sources:
1) A Power Point presentation by The Rockefeller Brothers and other organizations.
2) The original strategy paper for the Tar Sands Campaign.
3) A series of covering letters on payments made by Tides Foundation was available at its web-site in 2013. The details in these covering letters have been reported in The Financial Post.
In the tax returns and other records of payments to fund The Tar Sands Campaign, the descriptions of the purposes for which the funds were granted are vague. In the covering letters on payments, somewhat more information is provided, but still not as much as would likely be included in the grant proposals.
From covering letters on payments made to Pembina Institute, it is clear that Pembina has been funded via Tides to pay a key role in The Tar Sands Campaign. In 2013, Pembina Institute received two payments, as follows:
US$225,000: According to the covering letter on this payment, "This six-month grant is for your organization to advance policy improvements, the narrative that oil sands expansion is problematic, land use decisions that slow expansion, and improved climate policy. This grant is also to provide regular briefings to the Tar Sands Group and broaden the base of key influencers, as outlined in your proposal." NOTE that the grant for US$225,000 was for only six months.
US$55,000: According to the covering letter on this payment, "This four-month grant is for (Pembina Institute's) work for further raising awareness of the negative impacts of the tar sands on the economy, for participating in conversation with Province of Alberta about water land and air regulatory reform, technical support to tar sands campaign partner, and for participation in the Shell JRPs and preparation for the Tech Frontier JRP."
Both of these payments were made specifically to the attention of Ed Whittingham. This means is that in his role as Executive Director of Pembina Institute, Mr. Whittingham accepted funds for advancing the narrative that oil sands expansion is problematic and for advancing land use decisions to slow the expansion of the Alberta oil industry.
As these covering letters show, on behalf of Pembina Institute, Mr. Whittigham also accepted funds that were specifically to enable Pembina's staff to provide "regular briefings" to the group of U.S. organizations that are running The Tar Sands Campaign. What did these "regular briefings" include? And to whom were they provided? These are questions that Mr. Whittingham should be able to answer. Mr. Whittingham accepted funds for Pembina to provide "technical support to tar sands campaign partner(s)."
In January of 2019, CBC televised an extensive report on The Tar Sands Campaign. Shortly after CBC's broadcast aired, Corporate Ethics substantially re-wrote the description of The Tar Sands Campaign at its web-site. CorpEthics removed the sentence that acknowledged that "from the very beginning, the campaign strategy was to "land-lock" the tar sands so the crude could not reach international markets where it could fetch a high price per barrel." The re-writing of this web-site does not change the fact that CorpEthics has stated that from the get-go, The Tar Sands Campaign aimed to harm the Canadian energy industry. This campaign targets not only the Canadian oil industry, it also aims to stop the construction of infrastructure required for the overseas export of natural gas. This is clear from tax returns for Corporate Ethics International.
In summary, from the above it is evident that Mr. Whittingham has a long history as a lead activist in close dealings with the undisclosed funders of a non-Canadian campaign to sabotage the Canadian oil and natural gas industry, not only in Alberta but elsewhere as well. For this reason, Mr. Whittingham's appointment to the Alberta Energy Regulator should be revoked.
Response from Mr. Whittingham (Added March 12, 2019):
On February 27 and 28, I spoke at length with Mr. Whittingham. He explained briefly his vision for what he referred to as a clean energy highway in Ontario, and his involvement in another project to develop direct air capture technology. Mr. Whittingham also shared these three articles as examples of his point of view:
Mr. Whittingham's passion for renewable energy projects is clear. He also confirmed that as Executive Director, he led The Pembina Institute to participate actively in The Tar Sands Campaign that aims to "land-lock" Alberta oil. Mr. Whittingham acknowledged that this campaign aimed to "sacrifice" Canada to symbolize that fossil fuel development should be stopped.
The net result of The Tar Sands Campaign and other factors - including the Alberta oil industry's ineffective response - is that thousands of Canadians, coast to coast to coast, have lost their employment and yet not one single barrel of oil has been kept in the ground. In Texas and elsewhere, oil is being produced faster than ever. With the dip in oil prices, Americans have bought bigger trucks and driven more miles. Oil consumption has gone up, not down.
Far from keeping the worst oil producer out of the global oil market, Tar Sands Campaign has succeeded in keeping out one of the best. Asked if he regrets any the course of action that he led The Pembina Institute to take over the six year period as Executive Director, Mr. Whittingham replied, "“I will be very, very disappointed if because we didn’t get this pipeline done, that what I think is a very good climate plan gets tossed out in the spring along with the NDP.”
To sum up, I wish Mr. Whittingham great success in a role that would allow him to continue on projects that would bring about better use of both renewable and non-renewable resources. Given Mr. Whittingham's long history of involvement in activism to sabotage the Alberta oil industry, it is clear to me that it would be inappropriate for him to serve on the board of directors of The Alberta Energy Regulator.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post reported that Mr. Whittingham was Executive Director of Pembina Institute for ten years. That was incorrect. Mr. Whittingham was Executive Director from 2011 to 2017.
A partial list of reports produced by Pembina Institute:
"Raise the negatives" by generating "a high negative media profile" about Canadian oil is one of the goals of The Tar Sands Campaign, as outlined in its original strategy paper (see page 4). Below is a list of 50 reports that have been produced and publicized by organizations that are funded as part of The Tar Sands Campaign.
Disclaimer: This blog offers the author's opinions and the analyses on which they are based.
As I've said before, questions need to be asked about the oversight of registered charities by the Charities Directorate at the Canada Revenue Agency. Initially, I came to this conclusion because of how the Charities Directorate handled the controversial audits of the political activity of registered charities. Further to that, on the basis of additional research into the revenue and expenditures of Chimp Foundation and a network of charities that shares a common core of directors with Chimp, it is clear to me that there is some monkey business going on in the charitable sector and that, unfortunately, the Charities Directorate is allowing some charities to run amok.
Click here to continue reading about how I came to look at the financials of Chimp Foundation, and what I found.
For a list of more than 100 charities that share a common core of directors including Blake Bromley and the employees of his company, Benefic Group, click here. Eight of these charities have had their status revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency:
Updated November 25, 2018.
Blake Bromley, a Vancouver-based lawyer, claims to have registered more than 650 charities and executed more than $2 billion worth of charitable giving. Mr. Bromley refers to himself as "one of the world's foremost experts in charity law, and the recognized pioneer of charitable law and gifting in Canada."
Of the 650 charities that Mr. Bromley has been involved with, so far I have taken a look at the finances of 70 registered charities. Of these, the charitable status of 20 has been revoked; seven had their status revoked following an audit by the CRA while 13 revoked their status voluntarily. All of these charities share a common core of directors, including Blake Bromley and the employees of his company, Benefic Group.
Click here for a summary of my analysis of the revenue, expenditures and grantmaking of 25 charities where Blake Bromley is involved. Have a look at the pattern of revenue and expenditures of these 25 registered charities and ask yourself, is this charity?
