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In terms of both their assets and influence, six of Canada's leading environmental organizations (ENGOs) are the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society, the Coast Conservation Endowment Fund Foundation (Coast Funds), and Tides Canada. Since 2000, the total, combined assets of these six ENGOs have increased six-fold, from $140 million to $911 million. These figures are based on publicly available Canadian tax returns.
Generally speaking, the total assets of non-profits have more or less doubled over the past ten years. For health and education organizations, assets appear to have more or less tripled. Thus, in comparison to the non-profit sector as a whole, the total assets of these environmental organizations appear to have increased at about two or three times the rate of other non-profits.
Between 2000 and 2010, the assets of the Nature Conservancy increased from $75 million to $543 million. Ducks Unlimited more than doubled its total assets, from $55 million to $140 million, as shown below.
As shown above, the total assets of the Escarpment Biosphere Foundation Inc. (EBF Inc.) increased and fluctuated remarkably. From 2002 to 2003, the total assets of EBF Inc. jumped from $451,650 to $68 million. By 2008, the reported assets were $186 million.
Over the same years, EBF Inc. received $407 million from two foundations whose charitable status has been revoked for cause, by the Canada Revenue Agency for involvement in tax shelters. These two foundations are The Choson Kallah Fund of Toronto and the Alberta Distribution Relief Agency Aid Society International ("Choson Kallah" and "Alberta Relief Distribution").
As shown below, the David Suzuki Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund of Canada ("WWF Canada" also accumulated substantial assets. The David Suzuki Foundation increased its total assets nearly seven-fold, from $1.3 million to just over $9 million. WWF increased its assets nearly five-fold, from $4.2 million to $20.8 million. For WWF, the figures are for both WWF Canada Fund and WWF Canada Foundation, combined. As a point of comparison, the trend in the total assets of the Fraser Institute (including its sister organization, The Free Market Research Institute), is also shown in the figure below.
Tides Canada Foundation and the Coast Conservation Endowment Fund Foundation experienced enormous increases in assets. Tides Canada Foundation became a federally registered Canadian charity in 1999 and obtained equivalency status in the U.S. in 2003. CCEFF became federally registered in Canada in 2005 and was, in essence, brought about with substantial funding from U.S. foundations, through Tides Canada. In 2007, Tides Canada made a large grant to the CCEFF, for a total of $27.3 million, according to U.S. tax returns. The purpose of the CCEFF is exclusively to benefit certain First Nations on the north/central coast of B.C.
From 2000 to 2009, the total assets of Tides Canada increased from $2.4 million to $33 million. In a previous post, unanswered questions were raised about the origin of Tides Canada's assets and about to what extent the resources of Tides Canada are from U.S. sources. Since 2000, U.S. foundations have granted $60 million to Tides Canada, U.S. tax returns show.
Tides Canada and the CCEFF (Coast Funds) are legally distinct entities but initially, Tides Canada played a leading role in creating the CCEFF in the first place, and in bringing together at least $35 Million in capital from U.S. foundations. At least fifteen million from the Nature Conservancy apparently originated as a loan from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. For the Great Bear Rainforest, the Moore foundation also granted $268,714 through the Nature Conservancy.
As shown below, when one considers the assets of both Tides Canada and the CCEFF, one sees that their combined resources increased from $2 million to nearly $100 million. This is what leads me to believe that Tides Canada is an influential and powerful organization that is operating in Canada with a substantial money from the U.S. This leads me to wonder, who is behind Tides Canada? And why? And what will Tides Canada and its U.S. funders do next ....?
Here are links to the Canadian tax returns for the organizations mentioned above:
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