Blog

Follow the Money, Part 6 — Obesity: A new role for second-hand-smoke-causes-cancer deniers

Last week I wrote about tobacco industry funding for Fraser Institute research that “proved” second-hand smoke doesn’t cause cancer. You may think that’s ancient history. And in one sense you’re right. The tobacco industry has shifted its doubt-manufacturing operations to countries like Russia, Indonesia and China, where the incidence of smoking—and cancer—continues to rise. But …

Follow the Money, Part 5 — The Tobacco Papers Revisited

Michael Walker, former executive director of the Fraser Institute, long denied that institute directors—the people who fund the institute’s work—can tell researchers what to do. According to this rosy view of the think tank’s mission, Big Oil directors from Calgary, for instance, don’t tell Fraser Institute researcher Kenneth Green to produce studies denying global warming …

Follow the Money, Part 4 — Who Owns the National Post?

It’s no secret that Postmedia Network, publisher of the National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun and other major Canadian dailies, is hemorrhaging money. For the year ending August 2013, the company lost $154 million. And the bleeding continues. In the six months since, the company lost an additional $37 …

Follow the Money, Part 3 — Big Oil and Calgary’s School of Public Policy

If it disseminates pro-free market studies like a right-wing think tank, and if it courts Big Oil money like a right-wing think tank, and if it recruits conservative scholars like a right-wing think tank, then it probably is a right-wing think tank. Except it’s a graduate school within an accredited public university. Can it be …

Follow the Money, Part 2 — Barrick Gold’s Peter Munk

The Fraser Institute awarded Barrick Gold chairman Peter Munk its T.P. Boyle Founder’s Award at a gala dinner in Toronto in 2010. This is the think tank’s most prestigious award, which it gave to Munk “in recognition of his unwavering commitment to free and open markets around the globe and his support for enhancing and …

Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his think tank colleagues have transformed Canada

harperism cover

Margaret Thatcher transformed British political life forever. So did Ronald Reagan in the United States. Now Canada has experienced a similar, dramatic shift to a new kind of politics, which author Donald Gutstein terms Harperism. Among its key tenets:

A weakened labour movement – and preferably the disappearance of unions – will contribute to Canada’s economic prosperity
Cutting back government scientific research and data collection will improve public policy-making

The success of Harperism is no accident. Donald Gutstein documents the links between the politicians, think tanks, journalists, academics, and researchers who nurture and promote each other’s neo-liberal ideas.

Donald Gutstein