You can’t track the money trail to Canadian politicians as easily as you can to American politicians. I finally have a theory on what is driving Jason Kenney in Alberta.
I have kept an eye on Kenney since he first appeared in Ottawa as a member of parliament for Calgary in 1997. He went through the iterations of reform, alliance and finally the conservative party of Canada. As a fat and forty, career politician, at the time, many thought he was gay but my opinion was that he was just dedicated to his profession. It seemed to be coincidental that he disliked women as a life-long misogynist.
When the conservative government was defeated in 2015, I was of the school that thought Kenney was assessing his chances in replacing Harper. When he set out to unite the right in Alberta, I was as surprised as anyone else. When I did not hear of him passing the hat in Calgary’s Petroleum Club. I got curious. I could not see where the money was coming from.
It was not until a few things came together, that I realized there was a logical source. Mr. Kenney was on course with the interests of Koch Industries in Canada. It started with a combination of factors. They try to be low key in Canada but there was the money Koch Industries invested in the Fraser Institute, their reputed million plus acres of Alberta’s oil sands as well pipelines.
Koch Industries are the second biggest oil company in the world. They are not just a New York-based family that pours hundreds of millions every year into extreme right-wing politicians, lobbyists and radical groups such as the Tea Party in the United States. They are also big men on campus in Alberta. They have tar sands to exploit, storage tanks to fill, pipelines and refineries such as the huge Pine Hills Minnesota refinery reachable by those pipelines. They were heavy investors in the Keystone XL pipeline.
It makes me curious when Jason Kenney also invested $1.5 billion of Alberta taxpayers’ money in Keystone XL in addition to guaranteed loans to the pipeline company for another $6 billion. He is obviously not as good at managing a pandemic for Alberta. That seems to be something outside his objectives.
But Koch Industries can buy what it wants. They invested heavily in Donald Trump in the United States, so they would hardly think small when they need political help in Canada. It makes you wonder what they might be promising someone?
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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