National Post – Nov. 19, 2010
A charity with plenty of very long tentacles
By Kevin Libin
In late October, a group of environmental and social justice activists met at a remote lodge on Cortes Island, 150 kilometres north of Vancouver, up the Georgia Strait. The four-day gathering was billed as the Social Change Institute – an event that says it “gathers seasoned and emerging leaders with thinkers and trainers from the change-making world” – and it’s been happening for years. The lodge is called the Hollyhock Centre, a New Age retreat known for its holistic healing circles, Shaman drum making workshops and Tantric “sacred sexuality” seminars.
Stop before you conjure up images of hippies dreaming of a utopian free love world. The Social Change Institute is a magnet for professionals. Professional activists. Professional environmentalists. And, yes, professional business people and politicians. One does not sign up for the SCI; one applies and is accepted– or not. The 12-hectare centre, which started life in the early 1980s precisely as something resembling a hippie caricature, has been transformed into the virtual headquarters of a powerfully sophisticated and co-ordinated network of people who are mobilizing millions of dollars “towards systemic social change focused in one region,” as Hollyhock president Joel Solomon has described his mission.
On his side are wealthy trust-fund progenies, powerful U.S. business leaders, billion dollar American foundations, a web of environmental groups and prominent Vancouver political players. The region under focus for “systemic” change is Western Canada. The funding is frequently foreign. And Canadians may not know it yet, but the program is already well underway.
In a promotional video, praising the institute’s work, one attendee notes, “I think we’re starting to see ourselves as parts of a whole, rather than as separate pieces.” And that co-ordination, co-operation and collective power is precisely the point of the Social Change Institute. And not just the institute: It’s the point of all the efforts Mr. Solomon has brilliantly co-ordinated into a breathtakingly enterprising strategy.
Mr. Solomon is the vice chair of Tides Canada, and a director and former chairman of Tides’ American board. And he is a major reason Tides has been pumping money into environmental and social activist groups that have been fighting fish farms in British Columbia, the oilsands in Alberta, logging in the Boreal forest, and dozens of other anti-industrial campaigns. Most any prominent green group you might think of has probably been on Tides’ list of recipients. Tides also provides charitable assistance to The Tyee, its website shows, an NDP-friendly online magazine. Tides has hired government lobbyists. Former officials and affiliates of Tides, meanwhile, have influence at the highest level of Vancouver’s city government, including its eco-chic mayor Gregor Robertson, who has made it his explicit goal to turn Vancouver into the “greenest city in the world.” Some of the biggest donors to his campaign, and that of his Vision Vancouver party, are also connected to Tides.
“The Tides Foundation has some very long, strong tentacles into all sorts of businesses that all support Vision Vancouver, not as a political party, but as a movement, and this is extremely troubling,” says Alex Tsakumis, a former political analyst for the newspaper 24 Hours and former director of Vancouver’s municipalNon-PartisanAssociation opposition party, who blogs on political affairs. “And [Joel] Solomon is the green father, if you will, behind this social engineering movement.”
At an SCI gathering, a representative of ForestEthics, a bumptious American antagonist of Canadian forestry and oil industries, announces “we need to gain power.” A visitor from the Dogwood Initiative, which pursues a roughly similar agenda, proclaims “we have an incredibly ambitious agenda we have to achieve, unprecedented in the history of humanity.” The head of Environmental Defence talks of “advancing things that can be implemented right away, that are tailor-made to be implemented by a receptive government.”
If corralling the kind of money that can bring corporate-scale power and disciplining the social change lobby is the goal, an organization such as Tides is certainly a good place to start. Tides was designed by its American founder, Drummond Pike, in 1976, to be a vehicle through which large donors could give immense sums of cash, which Tides would then redirect to non-profit recipients. There would be no public connection between the originator of the funds — much of the more than US$700 million Tides has given away in the U.S. and Canada since 2000 has come from esteemed American foundations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and others, controlling billions of dollars between them — and the recipients who eventually got the cash.
Under the direction of the American Tides Center, the organizing branch of Tides, those recipients eventually included, besides hospitals, schools, religious groups and museums, a catalogue of left-wing causes, everything from anti-war groups and anti-gun groups to pro-choice efforts, gay-marriage advocates and numerous environmental causes, ranging from the mainstream, such as Ducks Unlimited, to more hard-core anti-industry groups like Corporate Ethics International, an organization that this year launched the “ReThink Alberta” boycott against the province’s tourism industry to protest the oilsands.
I like this article because it so clearly shows how stupendously and outrageously ridiculous the article is. This clearly sheds light on the author’s intent to discredit other organizations for purposes of confusing people who actually have better morals than the not very ‘Christian’ tone of this piece, don’t you think?
Actually Esther, good christians believe that giant multinational corporations are entitled to control our governments, pollute all they want and exploit people and resources to the max without any hippies or socialists interfering with them. After all, didn’t Jesus say”to hell with the children, the sick, and the poor: for they sow and they reap little and are of little consequence to the Almighty (dollar).”
I’m sorry, could you please tell me what article you are referencing. Are you familiar with the Tides Foundation? Try looking up George Soros and discover if that isn’t where the big money is coming from. So when big businesses under the guise of charity to exploit the system, that is serving the needs of the poor, the sick and children? Could you explain to me how bankrupting businesses, raising taxes and deficit spending (you know, the kind our kids will be stuck with) to counteract a mythical concern (global warming/climate change/insert eco-crisis here) helps children, the sick or the poor? Are you aware of the consistent stats that show Christian conservatives give more to charity (even eliminating church contributions) than any other group? We just support choice – like that term you claim to support when we are talking about disposing of babies. You obviously also support new age and aboriginal tax funded initiatives. What happened to that advocacy of “separation of church and state.” Jesus did say that people will reap what they sow and you should keep that in mind as you are maligning people and views that don’t match up with your socialist teacher’s tax-funded indoctrination.
I happen to be a capitalist whose source of income has been damaged by the not mythical eco-disaster that (Norwegian) fish farms have caused to some of our most productive salmon runs. I’m concerned about the ongoing destruction to the very resources that provide jobs for our future generations. Fish farms and the godlike corporations you apparently worship are interested in profit, not creating jobs like small business owners such as myself do.
If you’re really concerned about foreign interference why don’t you check on where much of the propaganda on this website comes from. Also ask Tim to assure us that none of the funding for this site comes from across the border.
As far as my apparent socialist indoctrination; try using your brain for once and stop getting your education from Glenn Beck and his merry band of fascists.
You certainly talk like a socialist with your contempt for Christians and talking points about greedy corporations while defending them against the poor hippies socialists looking out for the good of humanity. You also throw in a generous helping of class welfare.
It sounds as though your capitalist interests ends at what impacts you. Using broad strokes to swipe at anyone not within your specialized area of employment, you have contempt for employers and employees you rely on to make money at your trade. Furthermore your gripe with Norwegian fish farms is irrelevant to greedy U.S. corporations your venom is directed toward. Are your myriad positions merely an attempt to avoid being pinned down to adopting a specific position. You do realize you are a murderer to any hippie PETA friends you are defending?
Instead of swiping at Glenn Beck, I would like to know if you believe that George Soros is just a wrongly maligned philanthropist. You can group together an awful lot of corporation fat cats to stack up against George Soros to determine who is attempting to exert “godlike” control over people’s lives. Among many rich corporations you will find a large number of humanitarians who do much good with their wealth while many others are usually guided by their own greed. Soros is guided by a desire to intentionally destroy economies taking anyone down with him in the process and has massive political influence over the left. If you are willing to defend Soros, you are not concerned about greedy corporations or loss of personal or economic freedom, just as long as they match with your ideology. It appears you have chosen your god and it’s not the God of love.