By Hilary White
CALGARY, March 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Licia Corbella, a columnist in the Edmonton Sun, took environmentalist guru David Suzuki to task for attacking the federal Conservatives in front of a group of sixth graders at a speaking engagement in Calgary.
“The only thing (Harper) cares about is getting re-elected with a majority government,” Suzuki told the kids. “I don’t believe there is a green bone in Harper’s body,” he continued. “(Harper) has never, ever indicated he cares about the environment.”
Corbella points out, however that Suzuki is providing Revenue Canada with an unprecedented opportunity to prove that it has no political biases.
“Suzuki,” Corbella writes, “was essentially urging those listening not to vote Conservative. That makes his message partisan and should exempt the David Suzuki Foundation from receiving tax deductible status.”
She points out that in 2004, Revenue Canada had threatened Calgary’s Catholic bishop, Fred Henry, with loss of the Church’s charitable tax status unless he stopped his “partisan” political activities. Henry had denounced the “moral incoherence” of then-Prime Minister Paul Martin – repeatedly called a “devout Catholic”– for his support of “gay marriage.” Henry refused to accede to Revenue Canada’s threats.
Bishop Henry is Canada’s most outspoken episcopal critic of politicians in any party who have used membership in the Church to gain voter support in order to install legalized abortion, no-fault divorce and “gay marriage.” After he published a letter reiterating Catholic teaching on these issues, the bishop received the call from a Revenue Canada official that he described as a “veiled threat.”
The Suzuki Foundation, one of the foremost endorsers of the environmentalist doctrine of population control, is also a tax-free charitable organization and as such is obliged to refrain from partisan political activism. Suzuki’s Calgary school talk brought the Foundation $835 and is part of a nation-wide tour of sold-out engagements.
The “climate change” issue is being touted in the media as the most pressing one facing the Harper government that faces a possible spring election. Environmental activists like Suzuki have been at pains to paint the federal Conservatives as irresponsible enemies of the environment and the Kyoto agreement. For the first time in recent Canadian political history, the environment has eclipsed health care as Canada’s most talked-about political issue.
His Calgary elementary school stop was part of Suzuki’s national tour, called, “If YOU were Prime Minister…” He is travelling the country in a large diesel-fuelled tour bus covered with climate change and environmentalist posters.
With former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, hard-left political éminence grise Maurice Strong, and former Clinton Vice President Al Gore, David Suzuki, a geneticist by training, has been a major player in the international “climate change” news for decades and is an enthusiastic devotee of the UN’s population control policies.
Suzuki was denounced last week by Judi McLeod, founding editor of Canada Free Press, after an interrupted radio interview on Toronto AM640. When the interviewer, John Oakley, questioned the facts behind Suzuki’s claims of global environmental catastrophe, the scientist angrily stormed out. “Why are global warming crusaders becoming increasingly intolerant of global warming skeptics?… Why would Suzuki fly into a rage if he were only telling the truth?” McLeod asks.
Suzuki’s antics elicited negative comment even from the Globe and Mail, whose columnist, Barbara Kay wrote that Canadians are being asked to endorse “environmental orthodoxies,” a “demoralizing and divisive” project. “Tantrums by self-anointed prophets do not help the situation. Whatever the eventual outcome on the global warming front, we could all use a little non-partisanship, maturity and attitudinal cooling on the behavioural front.”
Read Corbella’s column in the Edmonton Sun:
https://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/02/28/3676134-sun.html
ProudToBeCanadian blogger Joel Johannesen first raised the issue of Suzuki’s violating Canadian tax laws Saturday here:
https://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/blog/index/weblog/6371/
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Canada Tax Authority Warns Calgary Bishop to Avoid “Partisan” Rhetoric during Elections
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/sep/04092902.html
David Suzuki’s gloomy world of nothingness
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1999/dec/991215a.html