Think We Don't Have a Petro-Parliament? Think Again.

The outfit behind the Northern Gateway pipeline/tanker venture, Enbridge, successfully lobbied (code for "ordered") the Harper government regime to scuttle an agreement with a charity that supports inconvenient environmental causes.  We're not talking about cutting funding here.  It was the charity that was putting up the cash.

The federal Fisheries Department said last September it would no longer use an $8.3-million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a U.S.-based environmental trust. The foundation donated the money through charity Tides Canada, which was to distribute the funds with federal oversight to support a departmental marine-planning initiative.

The reversal came almost a year after Ottawa accepted the deal, and scrapping the arrangement went against the advice of public servants, documents show.

The grant was to provide the bulk of funding for consultations launched by the department, paying for scientific research and to gather advice from stakeholders on balancing conservation with economic use of ocean waters on British Columbia's north coast.

In a healthy democracy, this sort of corporatist connivance would spark outrage.  Government would be leery about being caught out.  But Canada is no longer a healthy democracy.  It's an authoritarian state run by a secretive, dissembling despot in the grip of superstitious beliefs and more than a bit of megalomania.