Rustad targets environmental groups, echoing Alberta 'fiasco'

Feb. 25, 2025

B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad is pitching new laws targeting provincial environmental groups as part of his party’s strategy to combat U.S. tariff threats. 

Flanked by billboards reading “US millionaires are funding the destruction of B.C. economy” at a press conference Monday, Rustad argued the province needs legislation to ban B.C.-based environmental groups from receiving any U.S. funding for climate campaigns against oil and gas companies.

“These troublemaking layabouts have wasted RCMP resources, violated court injunctions, and dragged our resource industries through costly litigation,” Rustad said, “in good part thanks to American financial backers.”

Rustad’s campaign echoes former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s strategy that resulted in the $3.2 million Allan Inquiry. 

Kenney launched Alberta’s public inquiry headed by commissioner Steve Allen in 2019 to investigate the belief “foreign-funded,” “anti-energy” campaigns were hurting oil and gas production in the province, which is responsible for greatest amount of Canada’s carbon pollution fuelling the climate crisis. After repeated extensions and going $1 million over-budget, the inquiry found no evidence of legal wrongdoing by environmental groups. 

“No individual or organization, in my view, has done anything illegal. Indeed, they have exercised their rights of free speech,” Allan stated in the report, which also found that market forces, not environmental activism, were responsible for the industry’s struggles. 

The inquiry spent millions of public dollars but ultimately failed to prove the “conspiracy theory” it set out to uncover and was an embarrassment for Kenney, who didn’t show up at the unveiling for the inquiry’s findings, said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University in Alberta. 

“It was a fiasco,” Bratt said. 

“They had a conclusion that they wanted when they created the inquiry, and they couldn't find any evidence to support it.” 

Aside from the fact that under Canadian law, it is legal for nonprofit groups to accept foreign donations, the inquiry found a vast majority of funding for environmental groups came from domestic sources, Bratt added. 

Despite falling flat in the past, Rustad is reviving the deceptive and potentially costly strategy of targeting environmental groups because it appeals to the Conservative Party base, provincially and federally, that backs unimpeded oil and gas expansion, he said.

“It’s good politics,” Bratt said. “That base is convinced that environmental groups are illegitimately blocking energy projects.” 

However, Conservative politicians don’t apply the same standard when it comes to the comparatively massive U.S. investment into Canada’s oil and gas industry or as a market for B.C. or Alberta’s fossil fuel, Bratt noted. 

Nearly 37 per cent of Canada’s oil and gas assets are under foreign control with American investment controlling the lion’s share at 16 per cent, followed closely by Asia with 15 per cent, and the European Union at five per cent in 2022. Both Rustad and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith originally advocated against the B.C. or federal government imposing any retaliatory tariffs in response to a trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump that would harm the Canadian fossil fuel sector. 

“Foreign funding [for environmental groups] is minuscule compared to the amount of foreign money that goes into an oil company,” Bratt said. 

“So, is it illegitimate for Greenpeace to receive some funding from Americans, but it's not illegitimate for [Canadian oil company] Suncor to sell to the Americans?” 

A defamation lawsuit against Jason Kenney and Alberta filed by five environmental groups for misleading the public about the inquiry's findings is still wending its way through the courts. 

The B.C. Conservatives rehashing the Kenney-era tactic is a bid to divert voters’ attention from Rustad’s failed conciliatory approach to the Trump administration, said Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.Earth.

Attacking provincial environmental groups and his 10-point trade war plan, which aims to claw back any policy or regulations standing in the way of the unabated expansion of the fossil fuel industry, isn’t a “serious plan” to deal with tariffs, she said. 

“If Rustad is more worried about what B.C. environmental groups are doing than the Trump administration, that tells you a lot about his capacity to lead. Now is not the time to be firing missiles at each other,” Berman said. 

If Rustad wanted to contribute to Canada’s economy and democracy, he could advocate for tens of thousands of good jobs by growing the renewable energy sector, she said. 

Rustad, who has denied the climate crisis is serious and promises to get rid of the carbon tax, is now backing that very thing for American coal crossing into B.C. before export to other markets, Berman noted. 

“It’s actually [an idea] that was popularized by environmental groups in British Columbia, specifically the Dogwood Institute,” she said.  

“So, it shows that environmental groups are actually contributing important ideas to political discourse.” 

With files from John Woodside/ Canada’s National Observer 

[Top photo: B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad is reviving former Alberta premier Jason Kenney's (above) failed tactic of attacking environmental groups for getting U.S. funding as his answer to the Trump tariff threats. File photo by Alex Tétreault]