Greenwashing benefits Environmental Defence

Following is a post written by Parker Gallant.

I have not researched the topic personally and can’t be certain the green “belt” is referencing a geographic location and not the other “belt” possibilities, including; a mental location, a serving of an intoxicant, or a clothing accessory utilized as a disciplinary tool

Greenwashing1 benefits Environmental Defence

When the Ontario Liberal Government create “not-for-profits” strange things happen! One example is an entity called “Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation” (FGF) created in 2005. Their website states their purpose as: “to coordinate and fund activities that bolster the richness of life in the Greenbelt.”

FGF was launched with $25 million in funding by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and went about handing out grants when the opportunity presented itself.

By 2012 FGF managed to get rid of most of their start-up cash so the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing gave them another $20 million of taxpayer dollars. According to the March 31, 2012 and 2013 year-end annual report the Greenbelt Foundation utilized about 40% of their annual spending on grants with the rest spent on salaries, public awareness, research and other activities. If they were an actual charity that would be a truly dismal record.

Despite so much of the money supplied by the Ministry going to pay”administrative” related expenses, Environmental Defence, with Rick Smith in the position of Executive Director, managed to secure grants of $2.2 million from FGF by March 31, 2012-  as noted in an article published in 2012.

Reviewing the list of grants on the FGF website you find MaRS Discovery District, a charity recently bailed out by the Liberals (via another Liberal creation-Infrastructure Ontario) in their most recent scandal. One can also find a grant ($200,000) to the Toronto Environmental Alliance and another to the Sierra Club Foundation ($185,000).

Included in the year ended March 31, 2013 “grant” list was a 2 year $350,000 grant to Environmental Defence. Environmental Defence didn’t include any part of this grant in their (“provincial/territorial governments”) filings with the CRA presumably because it was green-washed through the “not-for-profit” FGF organization funded by Ontario’s taxpayers. ED claimed only $1,000 was received from provincial/territorial governments! ED also received a $211K grant from the Trillium Foundation in the summer of 2013, another Provincial owned entity. The “Foundation” has luminaries such as Rick Smith on their Board of Directors. Smith is the former Executive Director of Environmental Defence (ED) and now is Executive Director of the Broadbent Institute.

As a taxpayer 2. I have an opinion that doesn’t allow me to accept the Greenbelt Foundation’s purpose in life is “to coordinate and fund activities that bolster the richness of life in the Greenbelt.” Bolstering the life of the people at Environmental Defence, MaRS Discovery District and the others takes money from taxpayer’s pockets that clearly provides no fundamental benefit to the residents of the Province other than greasing the palms of individuals who have the ear of the ruling Liberal Party! That simply “bolster[s] the richness of life” for people like Rick Smith working for those pseudo charities.

Parker Gallant
November 9, 2014

1. Greenwashing: defined by Merriam-Webster as: “expressions of environmentalist concerns especially as a cover for products, policies, or activities”
2. Full Disclosure. The writer was named in a report from the Broadbent Institute indicating I had authored “much of Energy Probe’s online content” which has been disputed by Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post.