Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, June 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
By Jim Warren
Sustainable Development Technology Canada: home of the Green Slush Fund
The Conservative-led parliamentary filibuster over the Green Slush Fund is heading into its third month and the Liberals haven’t budged. They still refuse to release unredacted documents related to Auditor General, Karen Hogan’s June report on Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC).
The SDTC has given away more than $750 million to various “environmental” projects since 2021. Hogan identified a number of unethical and potentially illegal practices in the awarding of SDTC grants. For example, SDTC board members were awarding grants to each others’ companies. The Conservatives want to turn the information over to the RCMP.
When investigating the ethically questionable awarding of $40 million in SDTC grants, Doug McConnachie, Assistant Deputy Minister for Innovation, Science and Economic Development, flippantly quipped “It was free money, that is almost a sponsorship scandal-level kind of giveaway.”
McConnachie was way off. The $14 million Gomery Commission inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal uncovered a mere $3.75 million in improper spending. The Auditor General’s report suggests more than $300 million in SDTC grants could have been improperly awarded.
An intriguing detail to emerge in the House of Commons Committee proceedings is that Environment and Climate Change Canada minister, Steven Guilbeault, holds a beneficial interest in Cycle Capital, a Quebec-based venture capital firm that received tens of millions in SDTC grants. Apparently, Guilbeault was a consultant for Cycle Capital for ten years and took shares in the company in exchange for work he performed.
Conservative MP Rick Perkins has been doggedly digging into the SDTC scandal at the House of Commons Committee on Public Accounts. At the committee’s October 9 session, Perkins indicated Andrée-Lise Méthot, a Cycle Capital official and shareholder, was a member of the SDTC board when her company was awarded $114 million in SDTC money.
Perkins has demanded that Guilbeault appear before the House Committee and explain his involvement with the fund and whether he was lobbying on behalf of Cycle Capital during his first campaign for a seat in Parliament.
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The other Green Slush Fund
So what’s new? The Trudeau Liberals have been running a green gravy train since forming government in October 2015. They have literally showered environmental organizations with hundreds of millions of dollars. And, it happens that the Liberals’ record of environmental largesse intersects in interesting ways with Steven Guilbeault’s career as an environmental activist.
Early signs of the Liberals’ devotion to Guilbeault and the environmental movement date back to the days of Stéphane Dion—one time leader of the opposition in the House of Commons (December 2006-December 2008). In 2007, Dion lauded Guilbeault with unabashed praise. He told Montreal’s L’actualité that Guilbeault, “is among the select few in the environmental community with whom it is important to remain in contact, because his reactions and his opinions will count.”
And the Liberals did indeed stay in touch with Guilbeault. Between 2015 and 2019, Equiterre, a Montreal-based environmental organization Guilbeault helped found and later worked for, received over $12.5 million in government grants.
Guilbeault first came to the attention or environmentalists across Canada and internationally for performing a couple of infamous media stunts. In 2001 he scaled Toronto’s CN Tower, unfurling a banner that read “Canada and Bush Climate Killers.” The following year he led activists in an assault on the home of Alberta premier, Ralph Klein. They managed to erect a fake solar panel on the roof and scare Klein’s wife, Colleen, who was home at the time.
Many people, including yours truly, made the mistake of assuming Guilbeault was nothing more than a politically irrelevant prankster who should have been jailed for mischief. We failed to realize this was how activists hoping to rise in the hierarchy of the environmental movement made their bones. By the time Guilbeault was helping engineer the demise of Trans Canada’s Energy East Pipeline in 2016 and 2017, his fans were calling him the “Green Jesus.”
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There’s no getting around the fact Guilbeault built a successful career as a zealous activist and leader in the environmental movement in Quebec and beyond. His sources of income spanned several environmental organizations, government agencies and, as was seen above, at least one private sector venture capital firm. A partial list of his former employers and clients includes:
- Equiterre, a Montreal-based environmental organization: co-founder (circa 1995) and longtime board member.
- Greenpeace Canada: head of climate change division and Quebec bureau chief
(circa 1997- 2005)
- Greenpeace Canada: Quebec spokesperson (circa 2005-2007)
- Greenpeace International: Climate Change Coordinator (circa 2005-2008)
- Consultant: government of Quebec including Climate Advisory Committee
(periodically 2003-2018).
- Equiterre, returned to the organization to work on climate change issues (circa 2008-2018)
- Consultant and shareholder: Cycle Capital, a Quebec company that received as much as $200 million in Green Slush Fund money.
Luck and good timing had a lot to do with Guilbeault’s success as a grant magnet. His activist career overlapped with the first four years of the Justin Trudeau government—a period when the environmental movement received an unprecedented deluge of federal government funding.
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Table 1 below uses data from Alberta’s Allan Commission report to compare the value of federal grants awarded to Canadian environmental groups during the 2010 to 2014 period with the amount awarded from 2015 to 2019. The earlier period includes the final two years of the Paul Martin Liberal government and the first eight years of Steven Harper’s Conservative government. During the 2010 to 2014 period a total of $41,444,483 in federal grants was awarded to Canadian environmental organizations.
The second period (2015 to 2019) includes Harper’s final 10 months as prime minister and the first four years of Justin Trudeau’s term as prime minister. In just four years the Trudeau government awarded $372,558,420 in grants to Canadian environmental organizations. That’s approximately nine times more than the Martin and Harper governments dispensed in 11 years.
Table 1
Government Canada grants to not for profit Canadian environmental organizations from 2004 to 2014 (inclusive) and from 2015 to 2019 (Inclusive) and party leaders and governments in office during each period.
Source: Data supporting figures in the table were derived from Allan, J. Stephens (July 30, 2021) Report of the Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaign. Ministry of Energy, Government of Alberta. pp.549-551.
The Trudeau government awarded Equiterre $2.9 million between 2015 and 2019. This was during the ten year period Guilbeault was working for the group. Equiterre’s haul was considerably less than the $8.96 million the World Wildlife Fund Canada (WWFC) received from the federal government. Perhaps that’s because the WWFC’s former CEO, Gerald Butts, was higher up the Liberal food chain than Guilbeault. Butts was Chief of Staff to the prime minister from November 2015 to February 2019.
On the other hand, Equiterre outperformed the WWFC when it came to hoovering up grant money at the provincial and municipal level. Between 2003 and 2019, Equiterre received $9.2 million in provincial government funding along with $410,000 in municipal grants. WWFC garnered just $1.6 million in provincial grants and obtained no municipal money.
While Guilbeault did not announce his federal Liberal candidacy until 2018, he had been getting along well with Liberals at the provincial level for a decade or more. He did consulting work for the province and was on the Quebec government’s climate change advisory board. Equiterre’s heyday when it came to landing grant money coincided with a period when it employed Guilbeault and the Liberals were the dominant party in Quebec provincial politics.
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Table 2 below identifies Quebec’s governing parties and premiers, the period when former Liberal Cabinet Minister Denis Coderre was mayor of Montreal and Steven Guilbeault’s parliamentary history. From 2003 until 2019, when Guilbeault took a seat in Parliament, the Liberals under Jean Charest and Philippe Couillard were in office for eight years compared with less than two years for Pauline Marois and the Parti Québécois, and CAQ leader François Legault’s first year as premier.
Table 2
Influential Quebec politicians during the period coinciding with the international environmental movement’s Anti-Alberta oil campaign (and the last 15 years of Steven Guibeault’s career as an environmental activist, campaign coordinator, lobbyist and consultant prior to being elected MP).
*Coalition Avenir Québec
**Environment and Climate Change Canada
***Energy East Pipeline cancelled Oct. 25, 2017 in wake of Montreal Municipal Community’s (a group of 82 Montreal area municipalities) opposition and Coderre’s public comments condemning the project. Coderre was a federal Liberal cabinet minister during the Sponsorship Scandal. A whistleblower implicated Coderre in the scandal. However, the Gomery Inquiry did not find him guilty of corrupt behaviour.
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The Damage Done
Clearly, the federal grants to environmental groups were far more damaging to the oil and gas sector on the prairies than SDTC’s misspending. Yes, the Green Slush Fund scandal involves the unethical and allegedly corrupt distribution of hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ money. On the other hand, the $373 million in government handouts to Canadian environmental groups helped fund their participation in the international environmental movement’s anti-Alberta oil campaign. According to Alberta’s Allan Commission report, Canada’s non-governmental environmental organizations received another $800 million in donations between 2003 and 2019 from foreign, principally US, foundations and green organizations in support of their oil-sands bashing. It turns out grant chasers like Equiterre and Steven Guilbeault have been playing with serious money.
Between 2003 and 2019 Equiterre received $2,435,040 in foreign funding. Gerald Butts’ former employer, the World Wildlife Fund Canada, received $42,057,290 in foreign grants.
Canada’s federal government embraced many of the environmental movement’s positions on fossil fuels which contributed to policies like Bills C-48 and C-69. Even before those bills were passed by Parliament, environmental organizations connected to the Green Jesus of Montreal had secured all the funding required to lead the campaign to block Trans Canada’s Energy East pipeline.
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