Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups Part 3: U.S. doctrine of ‘Minimum Duty’ vs. the Alberta doctrine of ‘Acting Like Owners’
An image of Nelson Rockefeller. Image credit: Library of Congress.
Written by: Regan Boychuk
Author’s note: At the end of the First Cold War, Canada tried to make the polluter pay. This resulted in the United States launching an unknown, but successful coup in Alberta over the course of 1991-92. And the results of that coup are the single biggest threat to a liveable future.
This will look at the secret January 17, 1991 ‘no-lookback’ deal over oilfield cleanup, the December 5, 1992 selection of Ralph Klein as the leader of Alberta’s governing party, and the April 9, 2003 US recognition of Alberta’s oilsands as “bankable” reserves.
Editor’s note: This series was originally published on Capital As Power. There are now three parts to this series.
Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups Part 3: U.S. doctrine of ‘Minimum Duty’ vs. the Alberta doctrine of ‘Acting Like Owners’
In a diplomatic note sent to Mexico in 1918, the United States explained its doctrine of Minimum Duty. The doctrine asserted that American investors were a “special, privileged class, not subject to the laws of the nation in which they do business.” In effect, countries were free to regulate business activity, so long as these laws ‘did not apply to foreigners’ (Shaffer 1983, pp. 49-50). [1]
With this doctrine in mind, let’s look at the unequal relationship between the US and Canada. This relationship centers around oil, which Alberta enjoys enough of to be the crown jewel of any empire (Breen 1993, pp. 701n24, 164-65).
Although Alberta was subject of US imperialism for much of the 20th century, local control of Alberta’s oil was reasserted by Peter Lougheed after his landslide victory in August 1971 (Richards & Pratt 1979, pp. 165-66). However, Alberta’s independence was later reversed by a secret deal between industry and regulators in January 1991 and the US installation of the comprador Ralph Klein as premier in December 1992 (Boychuk 2022a n13; Boychuk 2022b n13). [2]
To make sense of this political coup, we need to understand US imperial ambitions, which date back three centuries. George Washington described the United States as a “rising empire” (Van Alstyne 1960, p. 1). Thomas Jefferson declared that the American confederacy was “the nest, from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled” (Chomsky 1987, p. 13). John Quincy Adams claimed that by the “law of nature”, America’s “proper dominion” was the entire continent of North America (Chomsky 1987, p. 13).
Given this imperial ambition, Canada’s first Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, summed up Ottawa’s apprehensions after confederation:
It is quite evident to me … that the United States Government are resolved to do all they can, short of war, to get possession of the western territory and we must take immediate and vigorous steps to counteract them.
(quoted in Stacey 1940, p. 7) [3]
In hindsight, it appears that this fear was well grounded. Arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes observed that the British considered it their white supremacist duty to “seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory”. To accomplish this goal, which was obviously contrary to the wishes of local peoples, Rhodes argued that a secret society would be a “splendid help” (Rhodes 1877a).
To this end, the British Round Table was quietly organized in Canada in 1908 before its official British birth in 1909. While masquerading as a study group, the Round Table was really a propaganda organization devoted to influencing imperial policy and eliminating diverse opinions. In short, it was a puppet of London (Quigley 1962, pp. 218-19).4 Noting the power of the Round Table, Wilfred Laurier wrote in 1917 that “Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London” (Eayrs 1957, pp. 5-6).
Summarizing the importance of the Round Table movement, Carroll Quigley writes:
There is no necessity here to emphasize the importance of the Round Table group. Anyone who is at all familiar with Canadian history has merely to look at the names of Round Table members and recall the positions they held to see the significance of the group in Canadian history especially in external affairs, in banking, and in the press.
They were very influential in Canadian education (with memberships on the Boards of Governors of the University of Toronto and Upper Canada College), especially in the writing of Canadian history, and played a major role in forming Canadian opinion on external affairs, through various agencies, including subsidiary organizations such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Institute of Pacific Relations (both creations of the Round Table group in London).
This pattern of interests and influence was repeated in England, in all the Dominions, and in the United States and frequently can be discovered by digging only slightly below the surface in episodes which, at first glance, seem utterly remote from the Round Table or the Rhodes Trust.
(Quigley 1962, p. 224) [5]
British-American competition over Alberta drew a million Americans north of the 49th parallel between the US Civil War and World War I, (Maclean’s 1/1/36, pp. 14-15) and by the 1930s American interest was growing with regards to previous threats of annexation in the 1860’s (Smith 1935, p. 67).
The same year Standard Oil installed the provincial government in Alberta, (Boychuk 2022c) US General Smedley Butler — who declared ‘I was a racketeer for capitalism’ (Butler 1935) — advised “in these times”, “look for the oil deposits when you are trying to get at the bottom of deep international intrigue” (Katz 2021, p. 201).
In June 1935, on the advice of Canadian Prime Minister R.B. Bennett (a former Rockefeller executive in Calgary), King George V appointed John Buchan as the first Lord Tweedsmuir and Governor General of Canada. He held the post until his death in 1940 (Wikipedia, John Buchan; London Gazette 1935, p. 3620). [6]
Judge magazine (29 June 1895). Source: US Mint
Not unlike American “Free Silver” enthusiasts who had been driven north by hopes of free money after the civil war, (Encyclopedia Britannica, Free Silver Movement) Standard Oil used the promise of free money to install its legislative agents in Alberta on August 22, 1935:
To depression-ridden Albertans, harassed by drought and debt, Aberhart’s promise [to give each Albertan $25 per month] was an inducement that no other party could match. … Aberhart was ushered into office pledged to fulfil his campaign promise of a monthly dividend within eighteen months.
(Schultz 1960, p. 1)
After Aberhart’s election, the New York Times wrote that the previous United Farmer government has been substituted by the ‘almost personal rule of a man who is a school teacher by profession and a radio evangelist by vocation’ (NYT 1/9/35, p. 55). [7]
A few months later in January 1936, Britain’s ‘King George V died and his eldest son, Edward VIII, succeeded him as king.’ (Wikipedia, Abandoned coronation of Edward VIII)’. By the time he graduated from Harvard that spring, David Rockefeller’s father:
sent him up to Canada to visit Mackenzie King and get the benefit of the Prime Minister’s advice. Junior wrote to his old friend from Ludlow days about his youngest son: “He had a fine mind and a wide interest both in world affairs and in cultural subjects. Whether he will enter some form of business, whether he will ultimately be attracted to a political life or to the diplomatic service, only time will tell.”
King agreed that the sky was the limit as far as the Rockefeller son was concerned, but his feeling was that the decision should be delayed. With the world situation so unpredictable, the best thing David could do was to go to graduate school. David went to London that fall to enroll in the London School of Economics … Finishing his studies [A Master of Arts in the economics of conservation under Friedrich Hayek] in London, David returned to the University of Chicago to take a PhD in 1938.
(Collier & Horowitz 1976, pp. 222-23) [8]
What young David Rockefeller was studying were the economics of conserving oil, (Rockefeller 1941) which the North American industry had recently begun self-regulating (Ely 1938, pp. 1215-16, 1244n118). By the summer of 1936, the million-dollar job of transforming Ontario’s Fort Henry into a museum had begun (CP 21/7/36).
In July, President Roosevelt visited Quebec to meet with Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir. It was the first time an American president met with a Canadian Governor-General on Canadian soil (FDR Day-by-Day, 31/7/36). In August 1936, President Roosevelt foreshadowed his more explicit 1938 speech: “our closest neighbors … know that we can and will … defend our neighborhood. … Let those who wish our friendship look us in the eye and take our hand” (Roosevelt 1936). But at the time Roosevelt’s “unilateral declaration received little attention, even in Canada” (Beatty 1991, p. 4).
By March of 1937, Prime Minister Mackenzie King was enjoying an exclusive dinner as an overnight guest at Roosevelt’s White House (FDR Day-by-Day, 5/3/37) to discuss Atlantic and Pacific coast defence for the first time (Beatty 1991, p. 4). [9]
Governor General Tweedsmuir met with President Roosevelt again in March 1937 (FDR Day-by-Day, 31/3/37), and in May, Mackenzie King proposed the first ever British royal tour of Canada (Wikipedia, 1939 royal tour of Canada). In September 1937, Imperial Oil and the British American Oil Company simultaneously announced a sharp reduction in the price their refineries would pay for crude (Breen 1993, pp. 110-11).
Premier Aberhart’s ex-attorney general John Hugill observed in the Edmonton Bulletin that the premier’s political philosophy was predicated on the theory of “the divine right of Aberhart” (Schultz 1964, p. 193). Meanwhile, Roosevelt traveled to Victoria aboard destroyer USS Phelps for lunch at British Columbia’s Lieutenant-Governor’s mansion (FDR Day-by-Day, 30/9/37). Before Christmas 1937, Roosevelt’s Secretary of State was cabling FDR about military staff officers meeting their Canadian counterparts (Granatstein 1974, p. 16n2). [10]
On January 4, 1938, the president of Royalite Oil announced price of Montana crude had collapsed, that there was now no recognized posted price, and that distress prices were in effect; ten days later, minister Nathan Tanner announced conservation legislation would be introduced at the forthcoming session of the Alberta Legislature (Breen 1993, p. 116). And by the end of the month, the first meeting of both countries’ military brass took place, “arranged in secret and with the direct authorization of President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King” (Granatstein 1974, p. 4).
In March 1938, Alberta legislation created a new conservation board, (Breen 1993, pp. 118-29) “Hitler marched into Austria … the Push to the east had begun”, (Preparata 2005, p. 238) the US-born minister in charge of Alberta oil telegraphed the US Bureau of Mines to ask names of petroleum engineers prepared to come to Alberta, (Breen 1993, p. 118), Mexico expropriated the assets of nearly all foreign oil companies, (DoSOH 1937-45) and former Texas Railroad Commissioner William F. Knode arrived in Edmonton to lead the new Alberta ‘conservation’ authority (Breen 1993, p. 119). [11]
In April 1938, the Conservation Act was assented, but restricted by a clause stating that the Act would only come into force after Mackenzie King’s Parliament ratified the agreement (Breen 1993, p. 121); “General Keitel received orders from Hitler ‘to draft plans for invading Czechoslovakia.’” (Preparata 2005, p. 238)
In May, “Mr. King … sent Mr. H.L. Keenleyside of the Department of External Affairs with a personal message to Mr. Roosevelt … in … Washington three times … each time as a personal envoy of the Prime Minister to the President” (Stacey 1954a, p. 110) and the ‘first ever … Pulitzer awards … ever made outside the realm of the United States press’ saw plagues awarded to the Edmonton Journal and dozens of local Alberta papers for their resistance to premier “Bible Bill” Aberhart’s pantomime against press freedom (CP 3/5/38). [12]
In June 1938, the Mexican national oil company (Pemex) was established and began operations (DoSOH 1937-45; ERCB 2013, p. 5) and Congress enacted the Natural Gas Act to protect consumers of natural gas against exploitation at the hands of natural-gas companies. The act’s declared policy was “that federal regulation … [was] necessary in the public interest”’ (Huard 1956, pp. 551-52). [13] Comprador prime minister Mackenzie King delivered the ‘retaliatory’ salvos.
With the federal natural resource transfer act now ‘amended’ the Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board’ was cheekily founded on Canada Day (ERCB 2013, pp. 160, 5). A month later, Canada’s only military defense against the US, Fort Henry was opened as a museum and historic site by the prime minister, who later wrote: “I shall recall it always as one of the greatest and most significant events of my life” (Mackenzie King 1938a).
Two days later, Mexico repudiated the Minimum Duty doctrine the US had been trying to impose since 1918 (Borchard 1940, p. 445). The following day, Alberta’s new regulator issued its first conservation order (Breen 1993, pp. 134-35). [14]
On August 18, 1938, Prime Minister King hosted President Roosevelt in Kingston to receive an honourary degree, and where Roosevelt declared that Canada would now be guarded by the Monroe Doctrine (G&M 19/8/38a-f; NYT 19/8/38a-l). The hubris of the imperial US President was foreshadowed in the gall of FDR pretending to warn his unsuspecting Canadian audience against the threat of foreign influence on the very day he asserted colonial control:
To put it bluntly, a group of American interests is here gradually putting itself in a position where, unless caution is exercised, they may in time be able to determine the economic fate of a large area, both in Canada and the United States.
(Roosevelt 1938a) [15]
With the world sinking towards war again in Europe, history moved fast. By October 18, 1938, the US-run oil and gas regulator in Alberta had cut provincial production in half — a special session of the legislature was called and a Royal Commission was appointed to revise Conservation Act and investigate (Breen 1993, pp. 139-40).
On November 14, 1938 “there had been a very large conference at the White House … with administrative, military and naval heads … the President says the policy of continental solidarity had been the dominant theme of discussions. … He was noticeably precise in stating that he had good reason to believe that Canada as well as republics to the south would cooperate in that policy” (NYT 16/11/38, p. 6).
The next day, Roosevelt was forecast to win a third term as president (AP 15/11/38) and the first ever royal tour of Canada was publicly announced at the opening of the legislature’s special session to revise the Conservation Act (CP 15/11/38b). [16]
At the conclusion of the special legislative session a week later, sections 44 and 46 were added to the Conservation Act, enshrining in black-letter legislation the fact that the US-run regulator in Alberta is above local law and that taxpayers will be ones funding any eventual cleanup (GoA 1938, pp. 13-14).
The next day, a second secret meeting of US and Canadian military brass took place (Granatstein 1974, p. 16n2). [17]
Whether or not anyone appreciated it yet, Standard Oil had successfully applied Minimum Duty to Alberta. Acquiring new territory, the Rockefeller princes joined the ranks of Benjamin Franklin’s “Fathers of their nation” (Franklin 1751) and the five brothers were whisked to the heights of power. By the end of 1939, “details of the organization, purpose, scope, and procedure” of the Council of Foreign Relations/State Department’s Rockefeller Foundation-funded War & Peace Studies Project had been worked out (Shoup & Minter 1977, pp. 119-22).
In February 1940, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir fainted while alone in his study, hit his head, and died (CP 6/2/40; CP 11/2/40). In March, with a wink towards Canada, the first few meetings of the War & Peace Studies project established the principle that extending the Monroe Doctrine would deter Nazi Germany from assuming control of defeated European powers’ colonial possessions in the western hemisphere (Shoup & Minter 1977, pp. 122-23) and a Yale University professor of law published a timely refresher on the US foreign policy doctrine of Minimum Duty (Borchard 1940). [18]
The Rockefeller-installed government in Alberta withheld the 1940 Royal Commission report on Alberta’s oil industry (McGillivray & Lipsett 1940) for months, (CH 8/5/40) finally releasing it only on June 14th (CH 14/6/40) — the same day Nelson Rockefeller was presenting his post-WWII hemispheric economic vision at the White House (Colby & Dennett 1995, pp. 94-96). The Chief Justice of the Alberta Supreme Court’s “untimely death … at 56 removed the one individual who might have reminded Albertans of the Commission’s findings” (Breen 1993, p. 187). [19]
On August 16, 1940, President Roosevelt called up his American agent in Ottawa to invite him to military manoeuvres in New York the following day. “Mr. King accepted” and came accompanied by no one except the new American Ambassador to Canada; President Roosevelt proposed permanent and unequal military arrangements between the two countries and “the Prime Minister accepted at once” (Stacey 1954a, pp. 111-12).
No paper was signed, and the [110-word] release remained the basis of the new board. Canada published its text in her Treaty Series and included it in an order in council. The United States regarded it as an executive agreement not subject to ratification by the Senate, and it was never submitted to that body. No international arrangement of comparable importance has ever been concluded more informally.
Mr. King appears to have had no opportunity of consulting his ministerial colleagues before his interview with the President, and it seems likely that he did not know in advance precisely what proposal Roosevelt intended to lay before him.
(Stacey 1954a, pp. 112-13)
In retrospect, the creation of the Permanent Joint Board of Defence marked the “shift of Canada from a British Dominion to Canada as an American protectorate” (Granatstein 1974, p. 8). [20]
The same year (1931) Alberta had levied its first royalty (5 per cent) on oil production, (ERCB 2013, p. 159) American social philosopher John Dewey warned that “politics in general is an echo, except when it is an accomplice, of the interests of big business” and that “As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance. The only remedy is new political action based on social interests and realities” (Dewey 1931). [21]
The political economy of North America since World War II and much else have been the shadow cast by November 22, 1938’s imposition of Minimum Duty on Alberta and Canada on August 18, 1940. The briefest review of Canadian challenges to that fact suffice to prove its truth beyond any shadow of a doubt.
Alberta’s US-controlled regulator had cut oil production on the eve of WWII and resisted the federal government’s efforts to increase production in service of the war effort. Ottawa’s first couple attempts to operationalize decades of bitumen research and development burned to the ground as the Abasand project in November 1941 and again in June 1945 (Breen 1993, pp. 441-43).
And in October 1945, when the first actual Albertan to chair the regulator signed a smart deal with Shell to develop Canada’s biggest gas field at Jumping Pound, “Board Chairman Dr. Edward Boomer … died of a heart attack just four days after the agreement was announced” (Breen 1993, pp. 228-29) and Shell decided to postpone the project (AB Culture & Tourism~Jumping Pound).
Shortly after Leduc #1 and Mackenzie King announced his retirement as Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, (NYT 21/1/48) Alberta tried to raise royalties. Then, we suffered the country’s worst onshore spill to date: Atlantic #3 blew out of control for six months, through an entire election campaign (Breen 1993, pp. 270, 285, 284; CH 13/2/97) — even after Ernest Manning’s comprador “government accepted to the [industry] request to set a royalty ceiling that it was bound not to exceed [16.7%]” (Breen 1993, p. 280). [22]
One-sixth as the limit to Albertans’ share of their resources was the first hard edge of Minimum Duty to reveal itself. The second had been declared by David Rockefeller in 1941, (Rockefeller 1941, p. 8) but practical precedent had to wait for Atlantic #3 (Breen 1993, pp. 270-72, 276, 717-18n91) — the blowout also established the Rockefeller principle that the polluter will not be paying in Alberta (Breen 1993, pp. 276-77, 285-87). [23]
The full shape of the Minimum Duty doctrine in Alberta was thus revealed: a cap of 1/6 as the public’s share of resource revenue with cleanup as a cost not born by the firm, but by the community. Whatever their ambitions, surely the Rockefellers couldn’t have maintained such control over the place this author grew up?
Only now does this author appreciate how radical a break Lougheed was in the history of Alberta: Acting Like An Owner only survived for a decade and by the end of the second decade was replaced by a regulatory and a political coup in 1991 (Boychuk 2022a) and 1992 (Boychuk 2022b).
But what if you took the value of all the oil and gas produced in the years of the chart above and divided it by the royalties collected? Do you know what number you’d get? 16.7 per cent. Spooky. And what if you looked at Albertans’ cumulative share of their oil and gas revenue? As if there were a higher power at play …
Minimum Duty in Alberta is now proven. History since — up to this very election — has merely been the shadow cast by November 22, 1938. There can be no other explanation for the score of royalty cuts that have taken place since Premier Ralph Klein retired in 2005. There can be no other explanation for why two Auditor General (AG) investigations of the regulator’s liability management programs just disappeared.
When this author asked the AG about the first missing audit, they said not to worry, they were scheduled to start a new audit in February 2018. This author met with their team its first week. But by the next summer the team had been pulled off the audit for a year, the work this author and their colleagues contributed to went into the garbage, and the AG redid the audit on the AER’s terms over an additional few years before trying to bury it in the lead up to this month’s provincial election.
There is no other explanation for more than half a billion in unpaid property tax owed by Alberta’s oil and gas industry since the last election. [26] There is no other explanation for the fact that not one of the companies which have not paid those taxes has so much as been named in the media. There is no other explanation for why the media have universally been misreporting the amount of unpaid tax in Alberta for more than a year, many even re-misreporting the same story a year after conceding the previous incarnation was slight of hand. The only explanation is Minimum Duty. That does not bode well for our collective future as colonial unpeople atop American treasure.
However disorienting and disconcerting a realization it may be, Minimum Duty in Alberta should come as relief in one sense: it proves Albertans are not so stupid or dysfunctional; for most of the last century, we were simply run by compradors. Mexico, which suffered much the same secret colonial relationship with the US, recently re-asserted its independence from American empire (as has Brazil). [27]
May 29th is Albertans last chance to do so. Vote like owners. Whoever you trust with your vote to steward the last of our natural inheritance, insist they represent you like the owners you are. True, both leading parties are compradors, committed to Minimum Duty and unwilling to discuss world’s lowest royalty rates. But that’s where Alberta’s first minority government could be the first step towards reclaiming our future. “The only remedy is new political action based on social interests and realities” (Dewey 1931).
References
1. Shaffer 1983 University of Alberta political economist Ed Shaffer Canada’s Oil and the American Empire Edmonton: Hurtig 1983 (pp. 49-50):
‘the United States set forth its doctrine of “minimum duty” in a note sent to the Mexican government … There is no question that this note threatened armed intervention unless the Mexican government adopted the doctrine of “minimum duty.” The Mexican government under President Calles finally acceded to the US demands in 1928. The US victory was relatively short-lived, as Mexico finally nationalized the oil properties in 1938. … “minimum duty” … doctrine in effect said that foreigners—or, more precisely, foreign investors—are a special, privileged class, not subject to the laws of the nation in which they do business. Any nation could enact any legislation it wished regulating the business activities of its citizens as long as these laws did not apply to foreigners.’
2. Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993 (pp. 701n24, 164-65):
‘The British Admiralty had monitored oil developments in Alberta since 1906. … From late 1937, the financial pages of London newspapers began to report on Turner Valley developments, and various British parliamentarians, including Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, began to receive letters advising that, given the importance and vulnerability of the nation’s oil supply, Great Britain should be looking closely at an attractive new source of supply developing “within the Empire” at Turner Valley. In August 1938, Air Marshal Sir Edwards Ellington visited the Turner Valley oilfield and spoke of Britain’s need for increased supplies of aviation fuel. Interest quickened even further after a press report—originating in Berlin in mid-September—claimed that German capitalists were planning to build a pipeline from Alberta and would accept crude oil in payment. … It was determined later than the alleged interest of the German corporation “Tropicorp” was unfounded, but this did little to slow the momentum of interest … By early October, as the momentum of interest continued to build, various London financial houses began to show enthusiasm for a Turner Valley pipeline project. … The really crucial question on everyone’s mind was what was the extent of Turner Valley’s proven oil reserves.’
Richards & Pratt 1979 John Richards and Larry Pratt Prairie Capitalism: Power and influence in the new west Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1979 (pp. 165-66):
‘six years after Peter Lougheed entered politics, the Tories won a stunning upset victory, electing 49 MLAs to the 75-member Alberta legislature. The Conservatives swept both large cities (25 of the 29 seats), most of the smaller urban areas and the disaffected north of the province, increasing their share of the popular vote from 27 to 46.5 per cent. Much of the increased support came, interestingly, from Liberal and NDP supporters’
Boychuk 2022a Regan Boychuk “The ‘no-lookback’ deal: Alberta’s Rockefeller coups (pt1)” York University Capital-As-Power blog (2 December 2022):
“The same regulators and industry lobbyists that had made a secret ‘no-lookback’ deal on January 17th 1991 immediately struck a subcommittee to manage the crisis.13
But by the time the Supreme Court affirmed Northern Badger on January 17th 1992, the fix was already in. And the main fixer was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
The Alberta oil and gas regulator’s manager of drilling and production, John Nichol pretended it was bad news for shareholders. “It’s certainly going to hurt,” agreed Nichol. “But that’s the oil and gas business. You can’t just drill wells and walk away from them.”14
In April 1991, as Nichol was informing industry of the ‘no-lookback’ deal at a Calgary drilling conference, the constitution of the Conservative Party of Alberta was changed to adopt a new American-style open primary for November 1992’s leadership convention.”15
Boychuk 2022b Regan Boychuk “American style democracy: Alberta’s Rockefeller coups (pt2)” York University Capital-As-Power blog (4 December 2022):
“Not only has the polluter not paid, but ‘Alberta’ regulators have also stood idly by while the polluter has plunged hundreds of billions deep into insolvency. Alberta’s oil and gas industry has not behaved according to provincial or federal law. But the oilpatch has behaved according to the Bush Doctrine, which includes the imperial principle that the US polluter will not pay.
The Bush Doctrine rules in Alberta still, but we know from the spreadsheet shared with the NYT, that it also had immediate effect. No one cleaned up anything more in 1991 or 1992 than they had in 1990. The polluter never ever paid.
That also means that one of the (if not the) first publication(s) of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) — a cleanup manual — was fake. And that means CAPP’s oversubscribed cleanup conference in Calgary on November 16th 1992 was also fake.
All this raises supreme suspicion about Party newcomer Ralph Klein and the sale of 120,000 new Party memberships (still a Canadian record?), including tens of thousands at the polling booth doors at second round voting on December 5th 1992 that gave Ralph Klein a landslide.”
3. Van Alstyne 1960 R.W. Van Alstyne The Rising American Empire New York: Oxford University 1960 (p. 1):
‘the United States was, to [George] Washington, a “rising empire”. The phrase describes precisely what he and his contemporaries had in mind, that is to say an imperium—a dominion, state or sovereignty that would expand in population and territory, and increase in strength and power. Benjamin Franklin had been speaking and writing in terms like these for nearly forty years.’
Chomsky 1987 Noam Chomsky On Power and Ideology: The Managua lectures Boston: South End 1987
Stacey 1940 Princeton historian C.P. Stacey “The military aspect of Canada’s winning of the west 1870–1885” Canadian Historical Review v21#1 (March 1940): 1-24↩︎
4. Rhodes 1877a Cecil Rhodes “Confession of faith” (June 1877):
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. … I contend that every acre added to our territory means in the future birth to some more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence.
… We know the size of the world we know the total extent. Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.
To forward such a scheme what a splendid help a secret society would be a society not openly acknowledged but who would work in secret for such an object.
I contend that there are at the present moment numbers of the ablest men in the world who would devote their whole lives to it.”
Rhodes 1877b Cecil Rhodes ‘Cecil Rhodes’ will’ (19 September 1877) (Clause 1):
“To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.”
Eayrs 1957 James Eayrs “The Round Table movement in Canada, 1909-1920” Canadian Historical Review v38#1 (March 1957): 1-20 (p. 6):
Influential Winnipeg newspaper publisher J.W. Dafoe in a private letter:
“I have no doubt that the Canadian Round Table circles are precisely what you describe them to be, an organization for inquiry; but I have never regarded the members of the movement in London as other than protagonists of a somewhat clearly defined idea. I have considered their assumption of the open mind as, to put it frankly, lacking in candour. They have had from the outset the intention that the inquiry should result in the apparent endorsement of their own scheme for Empire consolidation, which they have held from the beginning. What Mr. Curtis is advocating now as the claimed result of years of inquiry he believed in and advocated some years ago. … I have regarded the Canadian members of the Round Table as persons who were being shepherded along a definite path to a predetermined end, and have thought that many of them were thus being shepherded so skillfully that they realized neither the road that [they] were travelling, nor the goal to which they were tending.”
Quigley 1962 Carroll Quigley “The Round Table groups in Canada, 1908–38” Canadian Historical Review v43#3 (September 1962): 204-24 (pp. 218-19):
’Dafoe’s charge that the Round Table was disingenuous is quite correct, although much of this was unconscious … The disingenuous character of the Round Table appeared in three ways:
it pretended to be a study group when it was really an organization of propaganda and influence aimed at influencing policy;
it pretended to represent diverse opinions when as a matter of fact it insisted on unanimity (at least in the London group) and eliminated diverse points of view very quickly;
it pretended to be a co-operative organization an inter-Dominion basis when in fact everything of real significance was controlled from London.
A fourth, and in some ways more significant example, which cannot be examined here, was the fact that it pretended to be a single autonomous agency when in fact it was a multiple, ubiquitous entity whose influence was exercised through many agencies including professorships, periodicals, and other organizations (such as Chatham House, the Institute of Pacific Relations, or the Council on Foreign Relations).
The Round Table was organized, specifically to federate the British empire, by the same persons and using the same methods which had made the Union of South Africa. The disagreements among members were concerned with methods and not with goals and were also concerned with the speed with which the task could be done. These divergencies of timing and method appeared almost immediately (in 1909) but did not disrupt the group, because most of the members (always excluding Curtis) were not doctrinaire, but were pragmatic Anglo-Saxons quite willing to improvise from year to year, advancing to the degree and in the directions which the objective circumstances permitted. It is completely mistaken to believe, as many do, that the Round Table group was committed to federation and, when this failed, was left without a programme and without influence or power.
The Round Table group was unquestionably the most influential group in British political life for at least thirty years, and federation of the empire was not one of its primary aims after about 1913. The idea held in some circles that federation and cooperation were mutually exclusive solutions of the “imperial problem” and that the Round Table was exclusively committed to the former is quite untrue. The dominant consideration of the Round Table group at its founding was fear of Germany (as is clear from the first article in the first issue), and federation was but one possible way of strengthening imperial defence. Most of the alternative ways which have come to be called the Commonwealth of Nations, were advocated and, usually, brought into practice, by the Round Table and this from the beginning in 1909 and even earlier. The expression itself, Commonwealth of Nations, was propagated and made official under Round Table influence; although they did not invent the term, many of the Round Tablers (including Zimmern himself) believed that they had obtained the term (and the basic concept) from Sir Alfred Zimmern’s Greek Commonwealth which was published in 1911.’
5. Eayrs 1957 James Eayrs “The Round Table movement in Canada, 1909-1920” Canadian Historical Review v38#1 (March 1957): 1-20
Quigley 1962 Carroll Quigley “The Round Table groups in Canada, 1908–38” Canadian Historical Review v43#3 (September 1962): 204-24↩︎
6. Maclean’s 1/1/36 H. Napier Moore “What of Social Credit? Impartial notes on the progress of Alberta’s new prophet” Maclean’s v49#1 (1 January 1936): 14-15, 35-36 (pp. 14-15):
’a well-known business man who has covered every part of the province, who knows its people, who is broad-minded and an honest thinker. I said to him: “What made a Social Credit Government possible?”
He knocked me flat. He said: “The late William Jennings Bryan.”
Then he went on to explain. In effect, he said this: Away back, at the time Bryan was expounding his free silver policy, there were moving out to the Northwest States of the Union groups of people who might almost be termed agricultural gypsies. They were impatient with conventional farming and conventional economics. They hailed Bryan as a reformer, and the farther West they got, the more receptive to change they became.
Then came the opening up of Alberta. Attracted by cheap land and what was considered to be easy farming, they crossed the border in droves. They settled. Unlike the pioneers from Ontario and from the Maritimes, they had had little or no contact with the traditions of constitutional and conservative government as the East knew it. Their progeny grew up in the same spirit—fertile soil for experiment, for new ideas, for change.’
Smith 1935 Illinois College historian Joe Patterson Smith “American Republican leadership and the movement for the annexation of Canada in the eighteen-sixties” Canadian Historical Society Report of the Annual Meeting v14 (1935): 67-75
Boychuk 2022c Regan Boychuk “Who Would Do This To Themselves? Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups (pt. 3)” York University Capital-As-Power blog (13 December 2022):
“Ernest Manning’s father left a wealthy British market town where an Anglo-Saxon king and a French Tudor queen are entombed to become a farm labourer in Manitoba. Ernest’s mother stayed behind to ‘continue working as a live-in lady’s maid at a stately home near Piccadilly Circus in London’ until George Manning established the family’s first homestead in eastern Saskatchewan.2
Only occasionally attending Methodist church as a child, Manning considered himself a nominal Christian at best. But a 14-year-old Ernest mail-ordered a \(1,750 (in 2022\)) 30-ft radio tower, apparently because he liked to read Popular Mechanics and the Sear’s catalogue. It took Ernie another few months to scratch together the customs duty on his big investment from Chicago, but ‘the fire-and-brimstone radio broadcasts from a forty-seven-year-old Calgary high-school principal and self-taught Bible scholar’ it beamed in are supposed to have changed Ernie’s life. Barely two years after taking delivery of his radio tower, a 17-year old Ernest bought a suit from the Sear’s catalogue again, took the train to Calgary to meet ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart, and returned to Saskatchewan to listen to Aberhart crowd-source … 1 million (in 2022 … over the spring and summer of 1927 to build a bible college in Calgary. Ernest Manning would be its first student that fall, taken in as the son-they-never-had by the Aberhart family the following year, would be the school’s first graduate, and soon after Aberhart’s “Echo” on the radio as the Great Depression set in.3
Manning would disown the Aberhart family just as he had the family he left behind in Saskatchewan, but not before guiding Aberhart to adopt the ill-fitting political philosophy of social credit (which Ernest Manning’s son Preston derides as a mixture of “pre-Keynesian economics, social resentment, and untutored hope”) and riding political discontent and scandalous accusations during the Great Depression into provincial government on August 22nd 1935. At 26, Ernest Manning was the youngest cabinet minister in the British Empire, and when Aberhart died in 1943, Manning succeeded him as premier until retiring after 33 years in legislature in 1968. Ernest Manning’s first order of business in 1935 and throughout was to entice outside capital to invest in Alberta oil, but his sly creation of Savings & Loan-style “state credit houses” would also prove to be of great consequence in 2003.4”
Butler 1935 Major General Smedley Butler “America’s armed forces” (pt2): “‘In time of peace’: The army” Common Sense v4#11 (November 1935): 8-12
Katz 2021 Jonathan M. Katz Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the making and breaking of America’s empire New York: St. Martin’s 2021
London Gazette 1935 “Whitehall, June 3rd, 1935” London Gazette #34167 (4 June 1935): 3620↩︎
7. Schultz 1960 Harold J. Schultz “The Social Credit back-benchers’ revolt, 1937” Canadian Historical Review v41#1 (March 1960): 1-18
NYT 1/9/35 John MacCormac “Social Credit prophet will rule province: William Aberhart of Alberta carries all before him by Evangelical appeals and great promises” New York Times (1 September 1935): 55↩︎
8. Collier & Horowitz 1976 Peter Collier and David Horowitz The Rockefellers: An American dynasty [1976] New York: Signet 1977↩︎
9. Rockefeller 1941 David Rockefeller Unused Resources and Economic Waste Chicago: University of Chicago 1941:
“I have attempted … to develop a theory of resource use under the free-enterprise system. To begin with, a simplified set of conditions was assumed. … My greatest intellectual debt is to Professor Frank H. Knight, of the University of Chicago, whose writing and teaching have profoundly influenced my thought. … Finally, I must express my thanks to Professor Friedrich A. von Hayek, of the London School of Economics, who suggested to me this topic.” (pp. v-vi)
“Factory chimneys emitting sooty smoke in an urban area, or concerns polluting the water of a publicly used river, are stock instances of costs which are borne by the community but not by the firm.” (p. 8)
“Absolutely unrestricted use of property has never been permitted in any organized society. It has always been necessary to prohibit uses of property which would be seriously injurious to others. Further restrictions are imposed, even in a laissez faire economy, for purposes of conservation or national defense or because of aesthetic considerations.” (p. 93)
“When the corporate form is used to facilitate monopoly control and financial gain through pseudo-legal manipulations, it leads to a wasteful use of resources from the social point of view, but the individual firm may be benefitted.” (p. 99)
“Democracy in America has never been carried over into the industrial field.” (p. 119)
“A great deal of government regulation of competition has been undertaken (especially recently) in the name of conservation. Some legislation has been bona fide, and some has used conservation as a cloak to conceal other objectives.” (p. 131)
“Leaving aside, for the time being, consideration of the best interest of society as a whole, we discovered the criteria which make for optimum resource use from the point of view of the individual firm.” (p. 213)
Ely 1938 Northcutt Ely “The conservation of oil” Harvard Law Review v51#7 (May 1938): 1209-44 (pp. 1215-16, 1244n118):
‘On February 16, 1935, the states of Texas, Oklahoma, California, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado and Illinois entered into an oil conservation compact … The Compact was ratified by all but California. The contemplated uniform conservation laws have never been formulated. … the interstate body is without federal participation, and the states are not committed to enforcing quotas. The compacting states were unwilling to admit the Federal Government into participation.’ (pp. 1215-16)
CP 21/7/36 Canadian Press “Starts restoration” Globe and Mail (22 July 1936): 2
Roosevelt 1936 US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “Address at Chautauqua, NY” (14 August 1936) in Gerhard Peters & John T. Woolley (eds.) American Presidency Project online
Beatty 1991 David Beatty “The Canadian corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and the Ogdensburg agreement of 1940” The Northern Mariner v1#1 (January 1991): 3-22↩︎
10. Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
Schultz 1964 Harold J. Schultz “Portrait of a premier: William Aberhart” Canadian Historical Review v45#3 (September 1964): 185–211
Granatstein 1974 Jack L. Granatstein “Getting on with the Americans: Changing Canadian perceptions of the United States, 1939-1945” Canadian Review of American Studies v5#1 (March 1974): 3-17↩︎
11. Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
Granatstein 1974 Jack L. Granatstein “Getting on with the Americans: Changing Canadian perceptions of the United States, 1939-1945” Canadian Review of American Studies v5#1 (March 1974): 3-17
Preparata 2005 Guido Giacomo Preparata Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich London: Pluto 2005
DoSOH 1937-45 “Mexican expropriation of foreign oil, 1938” in US Department of State Office of the Historian Milestones in the History of US Foreign Relations: 1937-1945↩︎
12. Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
Preparata 2005 Guido Giacomo Preparata Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich London: Pluto 2005
Stacey 1954a Colonel C.P. Stacey “The Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence, 1940-1945” International Journal v9#2 (Spring 1954): 107-24
CP 3/5/38 Canadian Press “Alberta papers lauded in fight for free press: Edmonton Journal awarded Pulitzer plaque: ‘Dictatorship’” Calgary Herald (3 May 1938): 8↩︎
13. DoSOH 1937-45 “Mexican expropriation of foreign oil, 1938” in US Department of State Office of the Historian Milestones in the History of US Foreign Relations: 1937-1945
ERCB 2013 Gordon Jaremko Steward: 75 years of Alberta energy regulation Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board 2013
Huard 1956 Leo Albert Huard “The federal regulation of natural gas producers: A symposium: Foreword” Georgetown Law Journal v44#4 (June 1956): 551-54↩︎
14. Mackenzie King 1938a Canadian prime minister William L. Mackenzie King “Official opening of Fort Henry” CBC Radio (1 August 1938)
Borchard 1940 Edwin Borchard “The ‘Minimum Standard’ of the treatment of aliens” Michigan Law Review v38#4 (February 1940): 445-61
Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993↩︎
15. G&M 19/8/38a Jessie E. MacTaggart “Peril in seaway delay, says Roosevelt: Assurance given US won’t stand idly by should aggressor threaten Dominion: President’s pledge” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1-2
G&M 19/8/38b Special to the NYT + G&M “Whole Dominion stirred by promise of US assistance against invaders: Application of Monroe Doctrine to Canada viewed in Washington as logical step: Dominion has duty: Must guard own shores adequately, is opinion expressed by leading Canadian citizens” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1 … 0 words]
G&M 19/8/38c Ralph Hyman “Private power interests seeking to gain control, Canada and US warned: Two nations must act jointly on St. Lawrence to prevent inroads of uncontrolled forces, President declares in presence of Canadian premier at formal opening of bridge: Speaks out in role of good neighbor” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1-2
G&M 19/8/38d Canadian Press “Kingston speech hailed as proof of US friendship: Address on seaway draws definite refusal of Ontario’s consent to plan from Hepburn: May hasten action: Renewed interest in the scheme held likely as result of talk on power development” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1-2
G&M 19/8/38e Bruce West “Famous Roosevelt smile sets pace for weather at Kingston welcome” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1-2
G&M 19/8/38f Canadian Press “Ottawa views: Logical step: Official view” Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 1-2
NYT 19/8/38a Felix Belair Jr. “Roosevelt assures Canada of our help if attacked; urges speed on seaway: Aims at dictators: ‘We won’t stand idly by,’ he says in extending Monroe Doctrine: Link to Britain pledged: Kingston, Ont. throng thrilled by words: Power companies hit at bridge ceremony” New York Times (19 August 1938): 1, 3
NYT 19/8/38b John MacCormac “Roosevelt’s arms pledge to Canada is held vital factor in her future: Hailed in Dominion, it fortifies Mackenzie King’s ‘North American Defense’ policy: Speech jolts Hepburn on power” New York Times (19 August 1938): 1, 3
NYT 19/8/38c Canadian Press “Hepburn refuses to back St. Lawrence power plan” New York Times (19 August 1938): 2
NYT 19/8/38d Associated Press “President thinks court will let him take degree” New York Times (19 August 1938): 2
NYT 19/8/38e “Britain is cordial to Roosevelt talk: Daily Mail sees no change in isolation policy in pledge of military aid to Canada: Hails interest in Europe: Daily express says London could not have a more agreeable partner” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38f Associated Press “France pleased at speech” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38g Canadian Press “Defense steps to continue” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38h Canadian Press “Says Canada would help us” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38i Associated Press “Lehman hails”good-will” bridge” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38j Associated Press “Monroe Doctrine seen for Canada: Washington views President as giving a Pan-American position to Dominion” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3
NYT 19/8/38k “Entirely President’s statement” New York Times (19 August 1938): 3 (143 words)
NYT 19/8/38l Canadian Press “Bank of Canada a Dominion unit: Latest report shows government has assumed complete ownership of it: Reserves ratio declines: 54.86% compares with 55.36% previous week: Gold holdings increase” New York Times (19 August 1938): 25
Roosevelt 1938a US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “Text of address given by Roosevelt at bridge opening” Associated Press Globe and Mail (19 August 1938): 3; New York Times (19 August 1938): 2
“Let me make, now, an unusual statement, I am sure you will not misunderstand. … The almost unparalleled opportunity which the river affords has not gone unnoticed by some of my friends on our side of the boundary. A conception has been emerging in the United States which is not without a certain magnificence. This is no less than the conviction that if a private group could control the outlet of the Great Lakes basin, that group would have a monopoly on the development of a territory larger than many of the great empires of history.
If you were to search the records with which my Government is familiar, you would discover that literally every development of electric power, save only Ontario Hydro, is allied to, if not controlled by, a single American group, with, of course, the usual surrounding penumbra of allies, affiliates, subsidiaries and satellites.
In earlier stages of development of natural resources on this continent, this was normal and usual. In recent decades, however, we have come to realize the implications to the public—to the individual men and women, to business men, big and little, and even to Government itself, resulting from the ownership by any group of the right to dispose of wealth which was granted to us collectively by nature herself.
The development of natural resources, and the proper handling of their fruits is a major problem of Government. Naturally, no solution would be acceptable to either country which does not leave its Government entirely master of its own house.
To put it bluntly, a group of American interests is here gradually putting itself in a position where, unless caution is exercised, they may in time be able to determine the economic fate of a large area, both in Canada and the United States.
Now it is axiomatic in Canadian-American relations that both of us scrupulously respect the right of each to determine its own affairs. For that reason, when I know that the operation of uncontrolled American economic forces is slowly producing a result on the Canadian side of the border, which I know very well must eventually give American groups a great influence over Canadian development, I consider it part of a good neighbor to discuss the question frankly. The least I can do is to call attention to the situation as I see it.”
16. Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
NYT 16/11/38 “Roosevelt to arm for all Americas: Any overseas aggressor gets warning that solidarity is rule on this hemisphere” New York Times (16 November 1938): 1, 6
AP 15/11/38 Associated Press “Third term for Roosevelt predicted by Gannett” Globe and Mail (16 November 1938): 3
CP 15/11/38b Canadian Press “Alberta house gets program” Globe and Mail (16 November 1938): 8↩︎
17. GoA 1938 Government of Alberta An Act for the Conservation of the Oil and Gas Resources of the Province of Alberta 2nd session of 8th Alberta Legislature (assented 22 November 1938): 18pp (sections 44 & 46, pp. 13-14)
Granatstein 1974 Jack L. Granatstein “Getting on with the Americans: Changing Canadian perceptions of the United States, 1939-1945” Canadian Review of American Studies v5#1 (March 1974): 3-17↩︎
18. WFranklin 1751 Benjamin Franklin “Observations concerning the increase of mankind, 1751” US National Archive Founders Online
“the Prince that acquires new Territory, if he finds it vacant, or removes the Natives to give his own People Room … may be properly called Fathers of their Nation”
Shoup & Minter 1977 Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States foreign policy 1977; New York: Authors Choice 2004
Rockefeller ’Foundation granted the Council … Foreign Relations … $44,500 to finance the War and Peace Studies Project for the following year.
By mid-December 1939, details of the organization, purpose, scope, and procedure of the Council project had been worked out. … Jacob Viner … professor of economics at the University of Chicago, … – … d the Economic and Financial Group. … … len W. … ulles, an international corporate lawyer who had worked closely with Davis in disarmament negotiations during the 1930s, was co-rapporteur of the Armaments Group along with Baldwin, military correspondent for the New York Times. …
… Almost 100 individuals were involved in this work during these six years … Corporation lawyers, such as Allen W. Dulles, John Foster Dulles … newspaper correspondents such as Hansen W. Baldwin of the New York Times, George Fielding Eliot of the New York Herald Tribune, and John Gunther were also active in the project. … Through these individuals, at least five cabinet-level departments and fourteen separate government agencies, bureaus, and offices were interlocked with the War and Peace Studies Project at one time or another. They collectively attended 362 meetings and prepared 682 separate documents for the Department of State and the President. …
The aim of the vast undertaking, to which the Rockefeller Foundation alone gave over … 0,000 in a six-year period, was to directly influence the government.’’ (pp. 119-122)
The Council on Foreign Relations’ War and Peace Studies project’s ‘desire for influence began to be fulfilled immediately after the first meetings of the groups … The Territorial Group, headed by … uncil director, territorial expert, and Roosevelt advisor Isaiah … owman, considered the strategic importance of Greenland to the United States during that month, and … discussed the possibility that Germany might conquer Demark and thus be in a position to claim Danish colonies, including Greenland … It suggested that applying the Monroe Doctrine to Greenland could deter Germany. Early in April 1940 the German army overran Denmark. Bowman was summoned to the White House to talk with the President … with a copy of the Council’s recommendation in hand … At his press conference on April 18, Roosevelt stated that he was satisfied that Greenland belonged to the American continent’ (pp. 122-23)
CP 6/2/40 Canadian Press “Tweedsmuir is recovering: Unconscious for an hour following severe fall: Was alone at time” Globe and Mail (7 February 1940): 3
CP 11/2/40 Canadian Press “Lord Tweedsmuir dies in Montreal hospital three hours after third brain operation: Blocking of artery in brain declared cause of accident: Embolism fatal” Globe and Mail (12 February 1940): 1, 12
Borchard 1940 Edwin Borchard “The ‘Minimum Standard’ of the treatment of aliens” Michigan Law Review v38#4 (February 1940): 445-61↩︎
19. McGillivray & Lipsett 1940 Justice Alexander A. McGillivray and Major L.R. Lipsett Alberta’s Oil Industry: The report of a Royal Commission appointed by the Government of the Province of Alberta under the Public Inquiries Act to inquire into matters connected with petroleum and petroleum products Calgary: Imperial Oil 1940 (pp. 250-51):
That the government, as guardians of the public interest, should keep a watchful eye upon the activities of the industry in all its branches.
… that this may best be done by reconstituting the present Conservation and Proration Board, by providing for its freedom from political interference, by providing for its close contact with industry, and by providing for performance by the Board of the following added duties over and above those that have to do with Conservation and Proration: …
… That from this starting point the Board should accumulate, preserve and produce on request, any data as to the Turner Valley oil field and as to any other part of the Province, which can reasonably be expected to be of interest to those directly or indirectly concerned with the petroleum industry.
… That the Board should be required to be at all times fully informed as to every branch of the petroleum industry …
… That the Board be required to be familiar with the cost and profit performance and the price spreads in respect of all branches of the industry.
… That the Board should be required to be informed and able to report upon tax evasion
CH 8/5/40 “Gov’t has kept oil report for 3 weeks: Oilmen still waiting” Calgary Herald (8 May 1940): 1
CH 14/6/40 “Gasoline price fixing opposed: Report finds consumer goods safeguarded: Gov’t should not compete with ‘own people’ in oil industry” Calgary Herald (14 June 1940): 1-3, 11
Colby & Dennett 1995 Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett They Will Be Done: The conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and evangelism in the age of oil New York: Harpercollins 1995
Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993↩︎
20. Stacey 1954a Colonel C.P. Stacey “The Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence, 1940-1945” International Journal v9#2 (Spring 1954): 107-24
‘Mr. King … drove to Ogdensburg accompanied by [the new US Ambassador to Canada] Mr. Moffat. The evening was devoted to long discussions. Mr. King spent the night on the President’s train. … Mr. King had no other Minister with him. … It appears that on the question of military relations between the two countries Mr. Roosevelt took the initiative, and that it was he who proposed the immediate creation of a joint Canadian-American board. … the Prime Minister accepted at once.’ (pp. 111-12)
’the two statesmen issued to the press the now celebrated statement announcing the formation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. Mr. Roosevelt had been accompanied by Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, who took part in the conversations. …
… No paper was signed, and the … 0-word … elease remained the basis of the new board. Canada published its text in her Treaty Series and included it in an order in council. The United States regarded it as an executive agreement not subject to ratification by the Senate, and it was never submitted to that body. No international arrangement of comparable importance has ever been concluded more informally.
Mr. King appears to have had no opportunity of consulting his ministerial colleagues before his interview with the President, and it seems likely that he did not know in advance precisely what proposal Roosevelt intended to lay before him.’ (pp. 112-13)
21. ERCB 2013 Gordon Jaremko Steward: 75 years of Alberta energy regulation Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board 2013
Dewey 1931 John Dewey “The breakdown of the old order” New Republic v66 (25 March 1931): 115-16 in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 v6:1931-1932 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University 2006): 161-64↩︎
22. NYT 21/1/48 P.J. Philip “Mackenzie King retiring; calls communism tyranny: Canadian premier may quit this summer: He warns of system that surpasses Nazism in undermining human freedom” New York Times (21 January 1948): 1, 12
Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
‘In the pre-dawn darkness … the Atlantic Oil Company’s third well in the Leduc field roared out of control. … a terrific surge of pressure shot a 150-foot gusher of oil, gas and drilling mud up through the drill pipe. … Miniature geysers of mud, oil and gas began to erupt out of hundreds of craters in a wide radius around the drill hole.’ (pp. 270)
‘faced by an opposition too small to be truly effective, and blessed with burgeoning oil revenues, Social Credit emerged from the 1948 election with its power consolidated beyond anything the party had achieved since it had been first elected in 1935. … The 1948 election represents a lesser, but still important, turning-point in Alberta’s political history. The election confirmed acceptance of Manning’s recast Social Credit party.’ (pp. 285, 284)
CH 13/2/97 Jim Farrell “Potential for disasters: Safety rules toughened after 1948 well blowout” Calgary Herald (13 February 1997): L9↩︎
23. Rockefeller 1941 David Rockefeller Unused Resources and Economic Waste Chicago: University of Chicago 1941 (p. 8):
“Factory chimneys emitting sooty smoke in an urban area, or concerns polluting the water of a publicly used river, are stock instances of costs which are borne by the community but not by the firm.”
Breen 1993 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993:
As March passed, with the rogue well still blowing thousands of barrels of oil to the surface each day … The Board could no longer avoid becoming directly involved. … As owner of 80% of the fields production, Imperial Oil … From the outset … had monitored control efforts closely at Atlantic No. 3 and had consistently lent whatever material assistance was required … especially since Premier Manning and his colleagues were contemplating an election call that would have to be announced within a few weeks … Following discussions with Imperial Oil on May 11, the Conservation Board directed wells in the Leduc field to cease production at 8am May 13. When, for obvious reasons, the Atlantic Company was unable to stop production from its No. 3 well, the Conservation Board directed that, by authority granted under section 46 of the Oil and Gas Conservation Act, it was assuming control of Atlantic No. 3. … Only by shutting in the field could Imperial Oil’s pipeline system be made available for clearing the growing lake of oil … an estimated 50 million cubic feet of gas and 10,000 barrels of crude oil daily …
… the Board also announced that it had retained the services of V.J. (Tip) Moroney, Imperial Oil’s western Canadian operations manager, to supervise operations at the well until it was brought under control. … Tip Moroney was a Standard Oil of New Jersey career man, and had been with the company since 1926 … With Moroney directing efforts at Atlantic #3, Imperial was seen to be in charge … The now muted concern about Atlantic #3 came just in time for the Alberta government. With a provincial election called for August 18, Premier Manning and N.E. Tanner were busy enough defending their government’s petroleum policy without having to address awkward questions about the six-month-old Atlantic #3 blowout.
… In his book, Atlantic No. 3, Aubrey Kerr suggests that the Board was dilatory, that belated and effective action came only after the government, under pressure from Imperial Oil, signalled to the Conservation Board that it was time to take more forceful action. (pp. 270-72, 276, 717-18n91)
Board Chairman Ian McKinnon arrived for the critical and long-awaited moment. … Braving pieces of rock and loose bits of iron being hurled into the air … Moroney’s … men had just started pumping water down the relief well when Atlantic No. 3 caught fire. McKinnon, who had stayed up all night with Moroney at the wellsite, was on had to witness the huge fireball that engulfed everything at once. From acres of burning oil and gas, flames shot 700 feet into the air. The blaze could be seen from 20 miles away, and soon a pall of black smoke stretched for nearly 100 miles across central Alberta.
… the fire was quenched, but not before pictures of the inferno had made the front pages of newspapers throughout Europe and North America. … As soon as the fire at Atlantic No. 3 was extinguished, the Board issued an order … permitting all but the closed Atlantic wells to return to the production of their normal quotas … A new uncertainty, however, emerged from the background to preoccupy the Leduc producers, the Conservation Board and the government. The critical issue was that of liability. (pp. 276-77)
Anxious to dealt with matters outside the courtroom … the Atlantic Oil Company expeditiously submitted to the Conservation Board a memorandum that the company hoped might provide the basis of a negotiated settlement among the involved parties. … As long as Moroney and his men were still trying to place a permanent seal at the bottom of the Atlantic No. 3 wellbore, the final cost of taming the rogue well could not be determined, and this gave the Conservation Board time to move potential litigants towards an out-of-court settlement.
Atlantic presented an opening proposal, supported by an assertion of “the absence of any negligence or misconduct” on its part. … Atlantic even went so far as to suggest that there was at least one positive side to the disaster, by pointing out that the experience and information gained would reduce the risk of a future accident. …
… To bring negotiations to a conclusion, the Conservation Board called representatives of the 11 producing companies in the Leduc field to meet in its Calgary office … There, with McKinnon; Goodall; the Board’s senior engineer, G. Liesemer; the Board’s legal adviser, C.E. Smith; and Alberta’s deputy attorney general, [and] the oil company delegates pounded out an agreement.
… The agreement reached at the January 26 meeting was then confirmed and reinforced by a special act of the Alberta legislature. … the Atlantic Claims Act assured the Conservation Board of whatever additional powers it might need to carry the terms and the intent of the agreement. More important, the Act shut off the possibility of legal challenge by forbidding anyone who remained dissatisfied from taking legal action against Atlantic or the Conservation Board “unless such a person [had] first obtained the consent in writing of the Attorney General.”
The Atlantic Claims Act brought to a close what had been a long ordeal for the Alberta government and for Board Chairman [1948-1962] Ian McKinnon. (pp. 286-87)
24. Boychuk 2022a Regan Boychuk “The ‘no-lookback’ deal: Alberta’s Rockefeller coups (pt1)” York University Capital-As-Power blog (2 December 2022)
Boychuk 2022b Regan Boychuk “American style democracy: Alberta’s Rockefeller coups (pt2)” York University Capital-As-Power blog (4 December 2022)
ALDP 2021 Regan Boychuk, Mark Anielski, John Snow Jr., and Brad Stelfox “The Big Cleanup: How enforcing the Polluter Pay principle can unlock Alberta’s next great jobs boom” Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project (June 2021): 40pp↩︎
25. CAPP 2020 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers “Statistical handbook for Canada’s upstream petroleum industry” Technical Report #2019-9999 (February 2020): 204pp (cumulative Royalties / cumulative Value of Production, 1947-2018)↩︎
26. RMA 2022a Rural Municipalities of Alberta “As the industry booms, rural municipalities continue to face mounting unpaid property tax bills from oil and gas companies” (8 March 2022)
RMA 2022b Rural Municipalities of Alberta “Unpaid oil and gas tax survey” (March 2022): 7pp
RMA 2023 Rural Municipalities of Alberta “Another year, another mountain of unpaid property taxes: As oil and gas industry booms, municipalities seek accountability” (7 March 2023): 2pp↩︎
27. GER 5/5/23 Ben Norton “Mexico’s AMLO sent Biden letter blasting US ‘interventionism’ and funding of opposition groups: Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, such as USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize his elected government” Geopolitical Economy Report (5 May 2023):
’Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent US leader Joe Biden a letter criticizing Washington for meddling in his country’s internal affairs.
The document condemned funding that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has given to right-wing opposition groups that have organized protests against Mexico’s elected government, seeking to destabilize it.
USAID is a notorious CIA cutout that has been used to finance opposition groups and regime-change attempts in countries that challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests.
López Obrador, who is popularly referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades.
AMLO came into office in December 2018 vowing to end the “long and dark neoliberal night”.
He has nationalized the country’s lithium reserves and electrical grid, reversed the partial privatization of the oil industry, boosted social spending, and significantly increased the minimum wage.
On May 2, AMLO sent a letter to Biden. The Mexican president’s office made the document public on its official website.
“For a while, the government of the United States, in particular the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded groups openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government that I represent, which is without a doubt an act of interventionism, violating international law and the respect that there should be between free and sovereign states”, AMLO wrote.
“Moreover, a few days ago it was announced that said agency will increase the budget given to organizations opposed to our government, as appears published on the official website of the State Department”, he added.
The Mexican president read out the letter in his morning press conference on May 3. His office’s official YouTube channel even made a special video with the clip.
“I feel that it is very arrogant, very offensive, and I can’t remain quiet”, AMLO commented, in reference to the US meddling.
USAID and other US government organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have funded numerous right-wing opposition groups in Mexico, particularly media outlets and so-called “civil society” organizations.
… US foundations like Ford and Rockefeller have historically played a similar role, working closely with the CIA to fund anti-communist groups, including violent ones.
In her book The Cultural Cold War, journalist Frances Stonor Saunders showed how the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations “were conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence”.’
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass this February. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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