Related Correspondence:
- Vivian's e-mail to Mayor Gregor, May 9, 2012
- Mayor Robertson's Letter to Vivian Krause, May 17, 2012
- Vivian's e-mail to Mayor Greogor, May 18, 2012
In April of 2010, Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Chief of Staff, Mike Magee, went to New York for a two-day trip, April 13 & 14. According to CityCaucus blogger, Mike Klassen, the trip cost Vancouver taxpayers $6,000.
While in New York, one of the people that Mayor Robertson met was Michael Northrop, the Program Director for Sustainable Development for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. However, none of this was public knowledge until Bob Mackin, a 24 hours reporter, obtained Robertson's travel itinerary under the Freedom of Information Act.
Two years on, there is a lingering question, especially since Mayor Robertson has now placed himself front and centre of a campaign to stop the expansion of oil tanker traffic through Vancouver waters. The question, first asked by City Caucus in June of 2010, is What the heck were Mayor Gregor Robertson and Mike Magee doing in New York?
Earlier this year, a document came to light showing that for several years now, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has been co-ordinating a $7 million dollar per year "Tar Sands Campaign." This campaign has been underway since 2008, perhaps much earlier (see Additional Notes, below), but as far as I can tell, there was no comprehensive, public information about the Rockefeller Brothers' Tar Sands Campaign until a power point presentation was unearthed earlier this year. The name of the author of this document is Michael Northrop. He's the same person that Mayor Robertson met with in New York on April 14, 2010, according to the mayor's agenda.
No doubt about it, if all goes according to plan, one of the outcomes of the Rockefeller Brothers' campaign would be to choke off Canada's export opportunities to Asia by stopping the Northern Gateway pipeline and by blocking tanker traffic on the coast of B.C.
The projects that are listed as part of RBF's "Tar Sands Campaign" are the MacKenzie pipeline, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and tanker traffic on the coast of B.C. and in the Canadian Arctic.
A map contained in RBF's document suggests that the only two areas where RBF has concerns about tanker traffic are on the north coast of B.C. and in the arctic. Never mind all the tankers that import oil into the U.S. onto a daily basis, the only oil tankers against which the Rockefeller Brothers are funding a secret, multi-million dollar campaign, are the tankers that would take Canadian oil to Asia.
According to the Rockefeller Brother's document, one of the main tactics of their "Tar Sands Campaign" is to stop pipelines & refinery expansions. Part of the strategy is to involve "opinion leaders" and to enroll "key decision makers." The question is, is Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson part of this campaign? If this isn't the reason that Mayor Robertson met with the Rockefeller Brothers in New York, then what is?
Mayor Robertson has been asked by e-mail for an opportunity to speak with him about these questions. So far, no reply has been received.
Whatever it was that prompted Mayor Robertson to go to New York in 2010 and take along his chief of staff, it must have been something pretty important because according to his agenda, Mayor Robertson seems to have missed a meeting of the Mayor's Council for Translink which was ongoing in Vancouver at the same time that Robertson met with the Rockefeller Brothers in New York. Indeed, the minutes of that meeting show that Mayor Robertson was absent and was represented by Councillor Goeff Meggs.
(Click on the agenda for a larger view).
The document from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund shows that their "Tar Sands" campaign involves leading environmental organizations and two American foundations: The Hewlett Foundation and the U.S. Tides Foundation.
The Rockefeller Brothers' document says that the Tar Sands campaign has an annual budget of $7 million for "legal suits, organizing, education and legislation." The campaign's steering committee involves co-ordinators in the U.S. and Canada, funders and the Tides Tar Sands Fund. U.S. tax returns for 2009 and 2010, the U.S. Tides Foundation paid $10 million to 40 organizations involved in the Tar Sands campaign. This is no small campaign.
Since 2004, the Hewlett foundation (mentioned as one of the funders) has poured at least $26 million into projects to thwart the Canadian oil sector. That money followed a grant for $70,000 to Tides Canada in 2004 "to address the oil and gas development in British Columbia." Mayor Robertson is was a director of Tides Canada from 2000 to 2004 until his entry into B.C. politics with the NDP, in 2005.
In the fall of 2011, the U.S. Tides Foundation purchased a $2 million 150 acre ocean-front property on Cortes Island, a remote island between the B.C. mainland and Vancouver Island. It just so happens that this property is right next door to private property owned by Vancouver Mayor Robertson. Whatever the reason that the U.S. Tides Foundation chose to purchase that particular property - instead of, say, a homeless shelter in East Vancouver - it sure won't hurt the value of Mayor Robertson's property to be right next door to a 150 acre ocean-front park.
One of the slides in RBF's presentation is a collage of the logos of the environmental organizations that are somehow involved in the RBF's Tar Sands campaign. The Pembina Institute, Forest Ethics, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Boreal Songbird Initiative which involves Ducks Unlimited are among the environmental organizations involved in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's "Tar Sands" campaign.
Part of the Rockefeller Brother's strategy is to "define the terms of the debate" by involving opinion leaders and the media. The Rockefeller Brother's "theory of change" is to "raise the negatives, raise the costs, slow down and stop infrastructure development and enroll key decision makers." Indeed, this appears to be precisely what the environmental organizations and their funders, have been doing.
To sum up, what we see here is a sophisticated, multi-million dollar campaign to thwart oil tanker traffic (read: Canadian oil exports). The question is, is Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson part of the Rockefeller Brothers' campaign? If not, then why did Mayor Robertson meet with the Rockefeller Brothers' campaign co-ordinator? And why did they have to meet in person, in New York?
See also:
- Charlie Smith, Mayor Gregor Robertson investment sits next to Cortes Island park created by Tides USA foundation, November 5, 2011.
- Brian Hutchinson, Is A U.S. Charity Pulling The Strings of Vancouver's Mayor?, November 15, 2011.
- Terrence Corcoran, Vancouver's Mystery Mayor, November 16, 2011
- Vivian Krause, Who's Funding Mayor Robertson?, November 16, 2011
- Brian Hutchinson, Vancouver Mayor Plays His Anti-Tanker Re-Election Card, May 3, 2012
Additional Notes:
While the document about the Rockefeller Brothers "Tar Sands" campaign is dated 2008, this campaign may go back well before that. In 2004, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) made a small grant to the David Suzuki Foundation "to support a moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration." In 2006, RBF paid $200,000 to the Pembina Institute and to the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation "to prevent the development of a tanker port and pipeline that would endanger the Great Bear Rainforest." RBF also granted $1.1 million to the Coast Conservation Endowment Fund Foundation which support B.C. First Nations - but only on the strategic, north coast of B.C. RBF also granted at least $105,000 to the First Nations at Kitimat. Surely there are aboriginal people in the U.S. and around the world who are in need of philanthropic aid so why, of all the aboriginal people in the world, are the Rockefeller Brothers funding the First Nations at Kitimat?
Back in 2004, prior to his entry into B.C. politics with the NDP, Mayor Robertson was a director of Tides Canada (2000 to 2004), Canadian tax returns show. Over that same period, Mayor Robertson was "involved" (whatever that means) with the Linnaea Farm Society, a Tides-funded charity on Cortes Island. At the time, Linnaea's president was Amy Robertson, the mayor's wife. Tides Canada paid $298,415 to Linnaea in 2004 and $192,406 the following year, the same year that Robertson went into B.C. politics with the NDP. How the money from Tides Canada was spent by the Linnaea Farm Society is unclear. Over those same years, Linnaea also received approximately $850,000 from government sources. In 2005 and 2006, Linnaea reported rather large expenditures for "occupancy costs," a whopping $608,456 in 2006 and a further $233,199 the following year.
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