Left-Wing Group Caught Paying Off Indian Leader To Oppose Canadian Oil Sands
Imagine if Exxon or a Koch Brothers-affiliated group had been caught paying off a public official, or a tribal leader, to support oil development. It would be a major scandal, whether it happened in America or Canada.
But a left wing group like the Tides Foundation caught paying off a tribal leader who is also an elected official to oppose the Canadian oil sands? Something tells me this story won’t get quite the same story as it would if Big OilTM was involved.
The Toronto Sun reports that the Tides Foundation paid $55,000 Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam to oppose the development of oil sands in Canada. The San Francisco-based Tides Foundation is a grant-giving organization that provides “fiscal sponsorship for over 230 groups across the country” operates and supports environmental groups and grants “millions each year to charitable organizations across the globe.”
According to journalist Ezra Levant, this is a huge problem because Chief Adam is an elected official of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, meaning that Tides gave money to a public official for opposing oil sands development.
It makes you wonder how much opposition to energy development, not to mention energy infrastructure like the Keystone pipeline, is authentic as opposed to manufactured noise from a small but vocal and well-monied group of environmental interests.
Just the fact that a group like Tides doesn’t get nearly the sort of hand-wringing coverage the Koch brothers and their various conservative/libertarian groups get is an illustration of just how inaccurate a portrayal the public gets of this stuff.
