Abbott’s environment attacks are straight out of the Canadian playbook

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott met in Ottawa in 2014. Photo: Reuters

It started with an open letter from the federal minister responsible for natural resources touting the country’s need to focus on energy markets and cut regulations to advance the national economic interest.

The minister went on to say that environmental and other “radical groups” were trying to block opportunities to create jobs and stimulate economic growth. He claimed these groups threatened to hijack the regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda and kill off jobs.

Sound familiar? You might be excused for thinking this came from the Tony Abbott government, but it didn’t.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks to supporters during a rally in Montreal. The sign in the background reads: “Justin (Trudeau) not ready”. Photo: Christinne Muschi

It was a January 2012 letter from one of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ministers. The now infamous “foreign-funded radical environmentalists” letter was the first salvo in an ongoing barrage of government tactics to stifle organisations and individuals from speaking out about legitimate environmental concerns.

Over the winter of 2012, the rhetoric grew progressively worse. The environment minister spoke about offshore funds being laundered through Canadian charities, and the public safety minister spuriously implied that environmental groups could be involved in terrorist activities.

The reason for these out-of-the-blue attacks on environmental organisations soon became clear: it was all to justify the Omnibus Bill introduced in the House of Commons in March 2012.

The bill introduced sweeping changes to environmental laws, gutting much of the protection that had been carefully crafted over decades, and which Canadians had come to depend on for clean air, water and soil.

Again, does this sound familiar? What Tony Abbott is trying to do now in Australia appears to be straight out of the Stephen Harper playbook. But the moves in Australia to strip away environmental rights may just be the beginning.

In Canada they kept going even further. In the 2012 federal budget, the Conservatives gave an additional $8 million to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to increase monitoring of Canadian charities that engage in political activities. This at a time when most other government agencies were being cut back in the aftermath of the 2009 recession.

Under Canadian law, charitable organisations are able to conduct political activities