Diane Francis: Ottawa must protect Canadian industry from foreign meddling

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China deployed thousands of fake social media accounts to protest a rare earth mine project in Saskatchewan, as well as projects in Texas and Ukraine, according to Bloomberg.

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“Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to give China, the largest producer of rare earth minerals, a competitive advantage,” Bloomberg reported last week. “The fake accounts claimed that the (mine) processing facility would spur irreversible environmental damage and radioactive contamination that could cause cancer and deformities in newborns.”

This is not the first time Canada’s resource industry has been targeted by foreigners. Last summer, an Alberta Public Inquiry found that, between 2003 and 2019, a collection of foreign entities spent $1.28 billion on “Canadian-based environmental initiatives,” designed to impede Canadian energy development.

Worse, the Inquiry stated that the Canadian federal government was directly involved in damaging the energy industry in Canada. Between 2004 and 2019, over $414 million in federal funds was given to, some of which were directly involved in anti-energy campaigns. Only $41 million of this was handed out before Trudeau’s election in 2015. It’s outrageous that a government would self-sabotage a Canadian sector.

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The Liberal government should not have been financing one side against another in order to influence public opinion or, worse, to influence its own regulatory bodies. As Mac Van Wielingen, founder of ARC Resources and a prominent philanthropist and investor in Calgary, told me in an interview recently: “Undisclosed private funding of activism is the problem. That’s the essence and foreign funding is the worst example. How and who is funding them?”

Now it appears that China has been involved in damaging Canadian projects — a matter that should be investigated by the resource industry here. The Alberta Inquiry was the first to do so and revealed that millions of dollars in American money was funnelled to try and strand the country’s oil sands and create regulatory gridlock in order to block the construction or enlargement of pipelines, transmission lines and economic development.

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Others have called out alarms about such interference. The U.S. Congress has investigated Russian anti-fracking efforts, and here in Canada prominent Indigenous leader B.C. Liberal MLA Ellis Ross said in a video interview that American interests and environmental organizations have aimed to “destroy” Canada’s fossil fuel, mining and forestry industries. His warning was made in 2020, before the Alberta Inquiry released its findings.

“There is a well co-ordinated, well-funded machine shutting down Canada,” said Ross. “The agenda is basically anti-fossil fuel, but also forestry and mining. This machine has set back Aboriginal reconciliation by 20 years.”

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He added that such American interests and environmental organizations aim to destroy Canada’s fossil fuel, mining and forestry industries — a goal that is at odds with improving the lives of Aboriginals and all Canadians, said Ross. They manipulate the media and “break up small communities” by fuelling dissension about resource development, or stirring up battles between First Nations over competing land claims.

“This is about U.S. interests sending money into our country, making sure that we Canadians destroy our own country. This is corporate warfare on a global scale and I don’t think Canada understands we’re in this game and being outplayed. We ship crude at a discount (due to pipeline shortages) and will be shipping gas to them at a discount for their LNG projects,” he said.

As evidence piles up that Canada’s wealth is under attack by surreptitious nations and entities, Canadians need to know from Ottawa and the provinces just what they are doing to protect Canadians and their economy from attacks by outsiders.

Financial Post

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