THE same week the federal government is expected to approve the Trans Mountain Expansion project, the Trudeau Liberals need to explain why they are funding radical anti-oil and gas lobby organizations, said John Barlow, Conservative Critic of Employment, Workforce Development, and Labour, on Monday.

“[Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau has made it clear that he wants to ‘phase-out’ Canada’s oil and gas sector,” said Barlow. “Providing funding to organizations whose entire reason for existence is to shut down Canadian resource development is a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of Canadians who depend on these good-paying jobs.”

The Liberals provided Canada Summer Jobs funding to a number of organizations that are actively trying to shut down Canada’s oil and gas sector, including the Dogwood Initiative, Tides Canada, West Coast Environmental Law, the Pembina Institute and the Sierra Club.

“This just goes to show who the Trudeau Liberals are really focused on helping. They’d much rather cater to their elitist friends on the cocktail circuit and the radical environmental lobby than support hardworking men and women in the oil and gas sector. No amount of lip-service is going to change that,” said Barlow.

“The Trudeau Liberals need to stand with Canada’s oil and gas workers, revoke Summer Jobs funding to these anti-energy activist groups and immediately get to work on the construction of the Trans Mountain Expansion in Burnaby.”

Organizations getting funding:

• Tides Canada has orchestrated a decade-long foreign-funded smear of Alberta’s oil sands.

• According to researcher Vivian Krause, the Dogwood Initiative “runs get-the-vote-out campaigns in municipal, provincial and federal elections in order to elect candidates and political parties who oppose pipelines and more broadly, to defeat any politician or political party who supports the Canadian oil & gas industry.”

• According to their own website, the West Coast Environmental Law Association “is working to prevent the expansion of the tar sands by opposing pipelines and tanker projects in BC…”

• According to Krause, the Pembina Institute “has also been quietly involved in a U.S.-funded effort called The Tar Sands Campaign” which “takes credit for ‘land-locking’ Canadian oil, keeping it out of overseas markets where it could fetch higher prices per barrel.”

Canada Summer Jobs Funding 2019: http://disclosure.esdc.gc.ca/dp-pd/eec-csj/eec-csj.jsp