Marxipedia, your tax dollars at work – by Peter Foster (National Post – November 20, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

When Joe Oliver was Natural Resources Minister in the Harper government, he identified “foreign-funded radicals” as obstructions to Canadian resource development. He was pilloried for speaking the truth. Imagine if any government-funded organization had given out millions of dollars to study those sources of foreign funds?

There would have been political and academic outrage, cries of “witch hunt” and “muzzling.” Well, the muzzle is now off, and foreign-funded radicals have nothing to fear.

They are seated at the right hand of power, radical funding has been repatriated, and the anti-corporate witch hunt can begin in earnest right here in Canada with local funding.

Last week, a grant of $2.5 million dollars by the taxpayer-funded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, was announced for a project called “Mapping the Power of Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector.”
An additional $2 million for this guaranteed hatchet job is being provided by the likes of trade union giant Unifor.

The study is being “hosted” by the University of Victoria with partners the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, CCPA.

Parkland was founded by “political scientist” Gordon Laxer. Laxer believes that climate policy is not being held back by uncertain science or cost-benefit analysis that is all costs and no benefits, but by the selfish influence of Big Oil. He is rabidly anti-oilsands.

According to current Parkland Director Trevor Harrison, “Albertans are all too familiar with the influence that the fossil fuel industry exerts over the political process in Alberta and beyond.”

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