Anti-Oil Sands Activists - Grassroots Environmentalists Or Paid Lobbyists?

According to this article by Ezra Levant - the answer is the latter:

It’s pretty tough to like Saudi sheiks, Iranian ayatollahs and Russian former KGB agents. Which is why you don’t usually see those folks attacking the oilsands in public. Prince Al-Waleed’s comments were a rare Saudi public criticism of the West. Normally, they leave that sort of thing to their allies — professional environmental lobbyists.

There are about 100 professional anti-oilsands activists in Canada, who do nothing but attack Canada’s oil industry. Typically they pose as grassroots environmentalists. But the facts are different.

Most environmental activists are actually paid professionals. And most work for foreign lobbyists.

Greenpeace, for example, is a $200-million multinational corporation based in Europe. If they don’t raise a million bucks a day in fundraising, they’d have to shut down.
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It may not be funded directly by Saudi Arabia — we have no evidence of that.

But every time a Canadian oil company is slowed down or our pipeline projects are delayed, it is another day the OPEC near-monopoly continues.

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And by the way - nobody says that oil sands developer just don't care about the environment. In fact - one of the reasons those 1.7 trillion barrels can't be recovered - is because doing so would be too environmentally damaging. But try explaining that to the tree-hugging zealots out there, especially those whose major source of funding turns out to be the OPEC money.