My understanding, to the best of my knowledge, is that Tides Canada has essentially two entities. In Canada there are two registered charities; one is called the Tides Canada Foundation and one is called the Tides Canada Initiative Society. The Tides Canada Foundation has equivalency status in the U.S. They file tax returns with the IRS. So American charitable foundations can make grants to Tides Canada Foundation. Tides Canada Foundation then regrants a part of that money to itself, to the Tides Canada Initiative Society. Then, when Tides Canada Foundation makes grants in Canada, they're made in the name of Tides Canada. So you don't know, for instance, where the grants originated.
I think it's really important to look at what some of the grants were actually for. For instance, $700,000, and I quote, “to slow the expansion of tar sands production by stopping new infrastructure development”. I'd like to know.... For example, the water quality research that was done on the impact of the oil sands on the Athabasca River was done at the same university, funded by the same organization, Tides, published in the same journal, and publicized in the same journal as another set of research that has been used to thwart the salmon farming industry. It's important to know: Is that research funded as part and parcel of a demarketing campaign?