When I heard that ForestEthics, a group targeted in a Prime Minister’s Office memorandum as an “adversary” of the PMO agenda, had decided to split its activities so as to make advocacy a separate arm, I thought “how brave.” The fact is that PMO senior staff had pressured the group’s main funder; 2012 budget is working to silence critics.
Where I would expect a phalanx of Executive Directors of the country’s major national conservation and environmental groups blasting back with one voice at the unravelling of decades of environmental protections, there has been a fairly small roar from only the bravest. This is not intended as any criticism of my former colleagues. When you don’t know what the new rules will be, when you have an obligation to your organization to stay in the black and when money is scarce and threats abundant, it is hard to know how to respond.
Then there is ForestEthics. Valerie Langer -- she of the Kennedy Lake blockade, putting herself in a precarious position chained to a log suspended out over open space, then rallying thousands to the burnt over clear-cuts of Clayoquot Sound over the summer of 1993 to halt the logging of the ancient coastal temperate rainforest, and she, my dear friend of many years -- stood up bravely.
Valerie has been working with ForestEthics for years. Far from the civil disobedience of the early 1990s, she and Forest Ethics had pioneered in market based campaigns, tackling catalogue giant Victoria’s Secret and developing a local economy through toy building with Heiltsuk First Nation.
ForestEthics had found ways to find consensus with the forest industry at the board room tables. ForestEthics is too effective for the Harper regime. Clayton Ruby has agreed to head up ForestEthics Advocacy -- a new organization that will not seek any charitable dollars for its work. Ruby declared “what we need now is more advocacy for the environment, not less advocacy for the environment. We need more speech, not less speech.”
The announcement was barely made before the spin doctors of the Prime Minister’s Office issued the following “Info Alert”:
From: Alerte-Info-Alert [mailto:Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca]
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 07:03 PM
To: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>
Subject: Legitimate Charities/Organismes caritatifs
Legitimate Charities
Canadian law has long restricted the generous tax advantages associated with charitable status to organizations that focus their energies on charitable activities – not politics. Unfortunately, some organizations have been using taxpayers’ generosity for their own political purposes.
In Economic Action Plan 2012, our Government announced that charities would be required to be more transparent and more accountable to Canadians when it comes to their activities.
But this was all too much for at least one radical organization who today announced the creation of a stand-alone group devoted entirely to political advocacy.
ForestEthics may be the first radical group to admit that their activities, for which they have collected tremendous financial advantages at the expense of Canadian taxpayers, were not charitable at all.
After all, legitimate organizations carrying out legitimate charitable activities would have no reason to do anything differently. From: Alerte-Info-Alert [mailto:Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca]
Right you are. Only those with something to fear would be willing to stop being afraid. Only people with something to hide will object to the warrant-less access to their email address and phone numbers and ISP information. Right, only someone who is doing wrong will object to mandatory minimum sentences or pre-emptive arrest.
And when a conservation group, unsure how to speak in this Brave New World where the 10 per cent legal advocacy by charities leads to endless harassment with threats of loss of charitable status, decides to voluntarily relinquish its charitable status, it will stand condemned by the PMO.
This is my country. The actions of this PMO belong in some other country. Maybe one described by George Orwell where an “Info Alert” could be a tool of propaganda and smear.
This PMO spends more on “information officers” than any previous PMO. Talk about abuse of taxpayers’ dollars; this bunch spends $10 million/year in shadowy political operatives and “Info Alerts.”
This PMO does not belong in Canada.
Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and a Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Yet the big surge in Corporate owned Government fascism starts here in Alberta on Monday with the current election – we will be used as an example to the rest of Canada.
In Alberta, the biggest single Conservative-Industrial backed endeavor has been the Oil Sands extraction at Fort McMurray. If you check out Google Earth and follow the water shed from McMurray (confluence of the Athabasca and Clear Water Rivers) north, it flows into Lake Athabasca directly across from the outflow into the Slave River. The Slave continues north through Wood Buffalo National Park and on to Great Slave Lake. From Great Slave, the water flows into the mighty Mackenzie River and north again to the Arctic Ocean - Mississippi sized river boats use to ply all these waters. What will the Wildrose Conservatives and the PC's do with complete power as leadership and opposition when they both believe in totally freeing enterprise?
Find the Cost of Freedom… Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
http://youtu.be/ekZEZf14nOU (a beautiful video)
Richard Nixon was a Republican, a Conservative. After apparently rescinding his election promise to end the Vietnam War with the announcement of the intervention in Cambodia on May 1 1970, there was a converse massive escalation. A national Student strike was invoked to protest the announcement and on May 4, nine students were wounded and four killed by gun fire from Ohio State National Guardsmen. Today, here in Alberta, The Wildrose Party are Conservative extremists who along with the Progressive Conservative Party are most likely to win the provincial election in first and second place, forming a Conservative leadership and Conservative opposition. The "big money" is behind them both ...what is known else where as "The Military-Industrial establishment."
Ohio… Crosby, Stills Nash and Young
http://youtu.be/YnOoNM0U6oc
An important factor to consider when declaring something "Orwellian" is that Orwell's book 1984, the one to which most people are referring when using that term, is a book where the governments are all running under the banner of socialism.
Re: "redscourage" reply above.
...And yet the new dominance is a 'Push,' is Republican style corporate monopolies where the Government becomes mindless camp followers - kind of an "Ayn Rand-ism."
Hold it! I think, to a great degree, we're already there.
...did you know that on Facebook, you can't delete your profile picture(s)???
(not on mine, anyway)
Quite aside from the thuggery of Stephen Harper to push through his monstrous oil pipeline, Elizabeth May's recommendation of ForestEthics must be considered in light of the 'market-based solutions' of itself and its founder Tzeporah Berman. This new corporate environmentalism, which is primarily interested in leveraging money and power - as it did with the Boreal Forest Agreement, should be anything but an example. For more information see
Fracturing Solidarity - by Dawn Paley
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/fracturing-solidarity/
When Ms May chooses to champion this kind of corporate driven, green-slime sellout, she telegraphs her own orientations and credibility with respect to her 'Green Party'. This green we don't need.