Manning Foundation for Democratic Education

Background

The Manning Foundation for Democratic Education was founded in 2007 by Preston Manning, who founded the Reform Party of Canada, which would later become the Canadian Alliance Party and merge with the Progressive Conservatives to create the new Conservative Party of Canada.¹

Preston Manning formed both the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy with the stated goals of:²

“The generation of democratic and conservative intellectual capital through the support of think tanks and idea generators;

“The development of human resources for democratic political institutions and processes through education and training; and

“Networking and relationship building among the various components of the conservative movement through communications and conferencing, including organization of the Manning Networking Conference held each year in Ottawa.”

According to its website, the mission of the Manning Foundation “is to advance democracy through education and communications – in particular, by delivering courses and communications that teach students of all ages about the values, ethics, principles, opportunities, and tools of participatory democracy.”³

While not listed on its website, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) filings list the most recent directors as Clifford Fryers, Gwyn Morgan, and Pat Trottier. According to CRA data, the Gwyn Morgan and Patricia Trottier Foundation has been the largest donor to the Manning Foundation, having donated more than $1.6 million since 2012.⁴

Preston Manning also founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, now the Canada Strong and Free Network. This group advertises its goal “to support Canada’s conservative movement by networking best practices and ideas about limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility, and a more robust civil society.”⁵

C2C Journal

As of December 2018, C2C Journal reported it “has been operating as part of the Manning Foundation for over four years” and “publishing continuously for over 11 years.”⁷

In 2017, the journal’s editor, Paul Brenner, wrote:⁸

“In 2015, after the Journal became part of the Manning Centre, we began printing a thousand copies of the spring edition for distribution at the annual Manning Centre Conference in Ottawa.”

The publication notes that its “unabashed bias favors free markets, democratic governance, and individual liberty.”⁹

Its list of authors includes Gwyn Morgan, also a Manning Foundation director, whose 2023 articles include one opposing Net Zero where he claimed the goal “has empowered a despicable despot named Vladimir Putin” and emphasized that “Canada simply must turn off the net-zero path or we will eventually experience a similar crisis as Europe.”¹⁰

Morgan also advanced Vivian Krause‘s claims of a conspiracy among “foreign-funded” environmental groups to oppose fossil fuel production in Canada to the benefit of the US that led to a $3.5 million public inquiry into “anti-Alberta” energy campaigns launched by former Alberta premier Jason Kenney.¹¹

Morgan described Krause as a “true Canadian patriot” for her work advancing the story that US foreign-funded environmental groups supposedly influenced Canadian environmentalism.¹²

See a complete list of C2C Journal articles as of March 2023 below. The list can be searched or sorted by title, authors, category, and date:

Stance on Climate Change

Note that while the Manning Foundation does not publicly list its stance on climate change or the other topics below, it has sponsored and run the C2C Journal, which has published a variety of opinions from its authors as below:

January 14, 2020

“Traumatizing young children by telling them the world is about to end crosses the line from eco-activism to emotional eco-terrorism,” former oil industry executive Gwyn Morgan said about efforts by Greta Thunberg to educate youths about the dangers of climate change. His article in C2C Journal was titled “Canada’s ‘Climate Crisis’ is Entirely Political.”¹³

In his conclusion, Morgan claimed, “No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. And yet for all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change.”

May 16, 2019

“The clearest answer to the question of what we should do about climate change was offered by a man in hip waders who was filling sandbags to help with the flooding in Central Canada: adapt and mitigate,” read a pullout quote from Gwyn Morgan’s article “Choosing between Trudeau’s Election Propaganda and the Truth” in C2C Journal.¹⁴

February 16, 2019

Former philosophy professor Grant A. Brown wrote the following in the Manning Foundation’s C2C Journal. The Journal describes Brown as “a climate change skeptic and borderline heretic”:¹⁵

“Climate alarmism has little to do with the radiative properties of CO2. Rather, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) scary projections derive from conjectured ‘positive feedbacks,’ mostly from water vapour, that are presumed to dangerously amplify the otherwise welcome effects of radiative warming by atmospheric CO2. But again there is no proven correlation between higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations and these hypothetical feedbacks, including moist vaporous ones.”

[…]

“I’m trained in philosophy and law, not science. But further scientific support is easily obtainable using simple key-word searches coupled with the names of prominent climate scientists such as Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr., Roy Spencer, John Christy, Patrick Moore, Don Easterbrook, Bjorn Lomborg, Bob Carter, Richard Lindzen or Matt Ridley.” (Hyperlinks to DeSmog profiles have been added to the names of these individuals, many of whom do not have backgrounds in climate science).

Publications on Covid

The Manning Foundation’s C2C Journal published an article opposing mandatory vaccination and promoting theories that suggested “deploying vaccines on a population-wide basis at a time when infections are running high makes the situation worse.”¹⁶

“Universal vaccination may have seemed a reasonable response at the outset but its continued application over two years doesn’t make sense,” Margret Kopala claimed in the article.

The Manning Foundation’s C2C Journal also cited the Great Barrington Declaration, put forward by the conservative think tank American Institute for Economic Research, that promoted herd immunity as a COVID response. The Guardian reported that the declaration also included fake signatures.¹⁷,¹⁸

“According to The Great Barrington Declaration, authored by distinguished scholars in infectious diseases and public health, protection of the vulnerable should be the priority. We now know that these include the frail elderly with comorbidities, but also the obese, including obese children, the immunocompromised and the racialized, whose needs for vitamin D are particularly high.”¹⁹

Preston Manning wrote an article in C2C Journal questioning the “role of science in shaping public policy,” including Covid response:²⁰

Manning, who Alberta premier Danielle Smith later appointed to lead an “inquiry” into the province’s Covid response,²¹

“[D]oes clear and abundant evidence exist that our health authorities thoroughly tested and verified the hypotheses that wearing of masks, social distancing and related ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions,’ followed by the mandating of specified vaccinations, would as claimed protect Canadians from Covid-19?”

“Apparently, very little evidence of this kind exists, but the explanation offered by our governments and health authorities is that they were responding to an urgent and immediate crisis and that there was no time for the direct and time-consuming application of the scientific method to verify the efficacy of the health protection measures proposed.”

“[W]here is the scientific evidence that the health benefits resulting from the adoption of these measures would outweigh the psychological, social, economic and medical harms created by them?” Manning added, criticizing the government’s choice of “the life sciences – biology, microbiology and especially the medical sciences such as virology, epidemiology, immunology and genetics.”

“But what about other highly relevant scientific disciplines such as psychology, sociology and economics?” he asked (emphasis in original).

“Were economists specifically asked what might be the consequences of business and workplace lockdowns on employment, incomes, supply chains and GDP? And where is the scientific evidence that the health benefits resulting from the adoption of these measures would outweigh the psychological, social, economic and medical harms created by them?”

“[U]pon deeper examination, might it not be found that this focus on the medical sciences was too narrow? While there is evidence that the authorities consulted experts in virology, epidemiology, immunology, and to some extent genetics with respect to the mRNA vaccines, little evidence appears to exist that advice from the broader range of medical science was sought.”

In the article, Manning refers to an imaginary “panel of our most distinguished scientists” who would evaluate COVID-19 actions.

“It would therefore not be surprising if our scientific panel identifying the minimal requirements for a public policy to be truly science-based added the requirement that such a policy must respect and enhance individual freedom to the maximum extent possible. In other words, limiting people’s liberties in the name of science cannot be ‘following science.'”

In a final point, Manning concluded: “Our politicians, civil servants, media communicators and legislative caucuses must be better equipped to more ably and effectively ‘bring science to bear’ on public policy, while also appreciating the limitations of science as an exclusive guide to policy development and implementation.”

Manning Foundation board member Gwyn Morgan also wrote several articles opposing COVID restrictions in C2C Journal:

“Governments must immediately declare that the lockdowns will not be reinstated,” Morgan wrote in a set of suggestions in a June 2020 article titled “The Lockdown Contrarians Were Right.”²²

“Open the secondary schools. There have been zero deaths of children under age 16 in Canada,” he added. “Don’t leave pandemic response measures solely in the hands of Chief Medical Officers.”

“There’s little point to sweeping measures that over-protect the entire population against a single virus if the resulting damage is so severe that the nation in its weakened state can’t cope with future crises, whether those are health-related or otherwise. For such crises will surely occur,” he concluded.

Peter Shawn Taylor commented in 2020 at C2C Journal: “[W]e should be prepared to lock down public health officials whenever they start acting in ways that threaten the economy, society or our freedoms as democratic citizens. After all, they didn’t hesitate to do the same thing to us.”²³

Publications on Environmentalism

March 2, 2022

C2C Journal has produced several articles critical of the environmental movement. For example, author Martin Grünn wrote in a piece titled “A Darker Shade of Green: What’s Behind the Inexorable Rise of Environmentalism”: ²⁴

“Calling environmentalism an ersatz religion may be overdone these days. But only because it’s such an accurate observation about a movement that demands absolute faith, expounds ineffable mysteries and warns of a terrifying Apocalypse,” the article’s description noted.

Author Martin Grünn described the goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels as “concerning”:

“Equally concerning is the movement’s apparent natural immunity to facts, such as the unswerving commitment to ‘renewable’ energy despite its clear inability to replace traditional sources. Numerous multi-billion-dollar failures in the ‘transition’ away from traditional power supplies – from Spain to Ontario to South Australia – are simply shrugged off, tax- and rate-payers be damned. Damned to sit in the cold and dark that is,” he wrote.

Grünn described the label of “watermelon” for environmentalists as “apt,” using Germany as an example:

“German environmentalism and even nature worship was prevalent on both the political left and right, but German Greens (as elsewhere) are leftists. The label ‘watermelon party’ – green on the outside, red on the inside – is apt.”

Grünn also promoted Vivian Krause’s research and suggested her claims deserved more coverage. Still, he did not mention the conclusion of the report that there was no evidence of wrongdoing:²⁵

“When it comes to foreign funding of green activism and opposition to our resource development, however, there’s been little coverage, let alone media sleuthing. Alberta’s investigation into foreign interference was relentlessly criticized and derided and called a waste of money. Yet the recent Allan Report, despite its low-key language and various caveats, confirmed the central charge of foreign meddling on the scale reported by Krause and Lyman, concluding that ‘there are large amounts of foreign funding flowing into Canada’ with the goal of influencing public policy on resource development.”²⁶

Publications on Residential Schools & First Nations Issues

C2C Journal has published several articles on residential schools. One article, for example, claims “the current narrative to be sorely lacking in facts and other reliable evidence.”²⁷

“Subjecting allegations of gravesites, serendipitous jawbones or accusations of murder by poisoned milk to the unblinking rigour of science, logic and archival proof is not ‘heartless cynicism,’ as some critics claim. It is a necessary process to ensure Canadian public policy and opinion based on the basis of facts and reliable evidence, rather than rumour and hearsay,” Hymie Rubenstein and Tom Flanagan wrote in C2C Journal.

They concluded, “There is a more complete, balanced and fact-filled story waiting to be told about Canada’s residential schools. But it will take plenty of research and hard work to uncover amid the current preference for obfuscation, innuendo and slander.”

University of Calgary professor emeritus Tom Flanagan, one of the co-authors of that piece, also co-wrote an article in The Dorchester Review titled “The False Narrative of Residential School Burials.”²⁸

He also wrote a book published by the Fraser Institute titled The Wealth of First Nations.²⁹

Below are some additional articles on First Nations issues at C2C Journal with sample quotes:

Hymie Rubenstein. “What Really Caused the James Smith Cree Nation Stabbings?,” C2C Journal, December 15, 2022.³⁰

“What caused the killings at James Smith Cree Nation wasn’t centuries-old trauma. It was a criminal justice system that puts Indigenous communities at risk by failing to sentence violent criminals appropriately and then releasing them too soon.”

Hymie Rubenstein. “Digging for the Truth about Canada’s Residential School Graves: Part One,” C2C Journal, August 7, 2021.³¹

“Victims can never be allowed to control any criminal investigation, regardless of how much sympathy they may engender. All Canadians deserve to participate in the search for truth, particular given the serious allegations of genocide and other misdeeds made against our whole society.”

Hymie Rubenstein. “Digging for the Truth about Canada’s Residential Schools Graves: Part Two,” C2C Journal, August 25, 2021.³²

“Part One of this three-part series considered the evidence supporting horrific claims made about the unmarked graves recently found at former Indian Residential Schools across Canada. Upon closer investigation, many of these allegations turned out to be exaggerated, unproven or simply wrong.”

Hymie Rubenstein. “The myth of indigenous utopia,” November 8, 2017.³³

“Warts and all, no country has ever done more for its indigenous people. And Professor [Niigaan] Sinclair’s haughty claims to aboriginal moral superiority over European savagery have no foundation in Canadian history.”

Gwyn Morgan. “Where’s the Veto for Common Sense?” C2C Journal, February 4, 2020.³⁴

“The melodrama of endless litigation must not be allowed to continue. But what is the Trudeau government doing to improve the process of gaining Aboriginal consent? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it has compounded the problem by adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP). UNDRIP requires ‘free, prior and informed consent’ regarding ‘legislative or administrative measures that may affect Indigenous peoples, including approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources.’

“If followed, this amounts to an aboriginal veto over nearly any development, and an at-times-tiny minority-within-a-minority would be able to nix projects that other Indigenous groups favoured.”

Brian Giesbrecht. “An Endless Cyc le of Despair,” C2C Journal, January 31, 2020.³⁵

“[B]laming colonialism or other past injustices is a triumph of the victim narrative that will put more Indigenous children at risk.”

Brian Giesbrecht. “The Battle for the Bruce,” C2C Journal, July 13, 2019.³⁶

“As difficult as it may be to conceive, however, the prospect of handing over a massive swath of popular public lands along with a fabulous sum of money to a local Indigenous population of approximately 1,500 is not the greatest threat this case poses to Canada. At the risk of running out of superlatives, this particular land claim threatens far greater damage by striking at the very foundation of the Canadian system of private property ownership.”

Hymie Rubenstein. “What’s in a Word?” C2C Journal, June 17, 2019.³⁷

The following is from C2C Journal‘s article summary: “Precision of language is critical in government documents. Take the report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), which claimed “Indigenous women and girls now make up almost 25 percent of homicide victims.” It turns out the Statistics Canada report on which this claim was based indicates that 25 percent of female homicide victims were Indigenous women, a much smaller number. If the MMIW report’s authors can’t even transcribe a simple government statistic, what business have they bandying about the charge of ‘genocide?'”

Rubenstein wrote in the article:

“As immeasurably tragic as every single murder is, the numbers in question are orders of magnitude smaller than any genocide ever documented.”

[…]

“[R]adical genocide scholars, influenced by both anti-scientific post-modernism and person-centred victimology studies, have so expanded the notion of genocide as to include any real or alleged action that its presumed targets claim qualify as such.”

“The MMIWG inquiry’s expansion of genocide to cover the tragic murder and disappearance of 1,200 Indigenous women and girls is not merely a canard; it is a falsehood. An outrageous and disingenuous falsehood. One could almost describe it as an Indigenous-style blood libel. Why, then, was it employed by the Inquiry’s commissioners? Given that the Final Report adds nothing to what was learned from 98 previous reports since at least 1907 about the extent, nature, and causes of the issue, it seems likely there was a need for a shock-and-awe doublespeak term to grab public attention while demanding more public money for, among other things, more public inquiries.

“This wasteful $92 million Inquiry and the enormous ‘Indian Industry’ it is part of has surely done the former and will continue to press for the latter. The Supplementary Report’s legal opinion makes the financial motivation crystal-clear: ‘Under international law, Canada has a duty to redress the [genocidal] harm it caused and to provide restitution, compensation and satisfaction to Indigenous peoples.'”

Peter Shawn Taylor. “Adam Smith Meets Big Bear,” C2C Journal, April 6, 2019.³⁸

“First Nations such as Fort McKay have been able to effect real, positive change in the lives of their people by fully engaging with the outside economy. As such, every obstructed pipeline, mine or coastal terminal represents a lost opportunity for other native communities to improve their living standards. This is why forward-thinking native leaders are now speaking out about the dangers of obstructionism and the importance of own-source revenues. Engagement with the broader economy is far more rewarding that attempting to hold it at bay.”

Peter Shawn Taylor. “The Teepee of Babel,” C2C Journal, December 30, 2018.³⁹

“That the normally pragmatic and frugal-minded [Don] Drummond accepts the need to spend enormous sums in perpetuity pursuing a wholly undefined and unbounded effort to revive dozens of already-abandoned native languages may be seen as evidence of how sentiment, rather than science or evidence, has taken control of the Indigenous language debate.”

[…]

“In fact, there is good academic evidence that cataloguing and recording for archival purposes may be the best that can be hoped for the majority of Canada’s Indigenous languages.”

[…]

“Accepting the utility of a modern dominant language is not an exercise in cultural homogenization or linguistic colonialism. It is simply recognition of the tremendous benefits arising from barrier-free communication via a common language.”

[…]

“Attempting to fulfil the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action on Indigenous languages by permitting a host of new quasi-official languages few people can speak or by embarking on a doomed experiment to revive dying languages on reserves may be the latest attempt at expiating white guilt over the legacy of the residential schools system. But that doesn’t mean it’s a wise use of resources, time or effort.”

Josh Dehaas. “You Call This ‘Healing’?” C2C Journal, December 3, 2018.⁴⁰

“The increasingly disproportionate representation of Aboriginal Canadians in crime and the penal system is a social tragedy and a serious public safety issue. The solutions attempted to date appear to be exacerbating the problem, yet Ottawa seems determined to double down on them. The McClintic story and controversy should give politicians and Corrections officials pause to reconsider the path they’re on.”

Rodney A. Clifton. “My Life in Two Indian Residential Schools,” C2C Journal, September 5, 2022.⁴¹

“As a result of my experience and personal observation, I have great difficulty believing that hundreds, let alone thousands, of children died at residential schools and were buried in schoolyards without proper funerals or official documentation. (I remain prepared to change my mind if shown compelling evidence.)”

Rodney A. Clifton’s profile at the Fraser Institute describes him as a “Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Manitoba.”⁴²

Robert McBain and Peter Shawn Taylor. “The Real Cost of Bad History,” C2C Journal, May 28, 2019.⁴³

“The notion that historical treaties should not be read as written − as clear and final land surrender agreements – but instead as opportunities to explore new and inventive forms of ‘land-sharing’ among natives and settlers has become a popular political narrative. It has no basis in fact or history,” authors Robert MacBain and Peter Shawn Taylor wrote.

In a video introducing the article, Peter Shawn Taylor commented:

“Canadians have had to put up with a lot of bad history lately. We’ve seen statues ripped down, buildings renamed, and historical reputations destroyed as the resulted of a biased and misleading view of Canada’s colonial past.

“Although such smears against our history entail a significant cultural loss in terms of understanding who we are and where we’ve come from, a recent court case threatens to do much greater damage to Canadian society at large.”⁴⁴

Funding

Below are the top nonprofit donors to the Manning Foundation, based on data from the CRA, with the most recent data reviewed by DeSmog as 2021.

View the attached spreadsheet for additional details on Manning Foundation funding by year (.xlsx).

Key People

The following is based on data from the CRA, reviewed by DeSmog.

Dates are based on the best available information: Where “appointed date” or “ceased date” was unavailable, the CRA displayed directors based on the fiscal year appearing in the filings.

View the attached spreadsheet for additional information on Manning Foundation directors year over year (.xlsx).

Clifford H Fryers

According to his profile at Manning’s other nonprofit, the Canada Strong & Free Network, Clifford (Cliff) Fryers “played an active role in the creation and development of the Reform Party of Canada, serving in a variety of national organizational and fundraising capacities.”⁴⁵

He was chief of staff to Preston Manning while Manning was Leader of the Official Opposition from June 1997 to June 2000. Fryers is chairman of the board of the Manning Foundation and a director at the Canada Strong and Free Network (formerly Manning Centre), which he helped found.⁴⁶

Gwyn Morgan

Gwyn Morgan is a retired oil executive. He founded EnCana corporation and served as its CEO from April 2002 to December 2005 and then as its executive vice chairman until 2006. His wife, Patricia Trottier, also serves on the Manning Foundation board.⁴⁷

EnCana was the largest energy company in Canada⁴⁸ before it moved most of its operations to the U.S. in 2020 and rebranded as Ovintiv.⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ A merger of PanCanadian Energy Corporation and Alberta Energy Company Ltd. created EnCana in 2002.⁵¹

Morgan served as a director and chairman of SNC-Lavalin⁵² when the company faced a corruption scandal.⁵³

He has also served as a director of several other groups, including the American Petroleum Institute,⁵⁴ Fraser Institute, HSBC⁵⁵ Rio Tinto, PanCanadian Energy, Alberta Energy, Lafarge North America, and others.⁵⁶

In 2005, he was described as the “loudest voice in the oil patch trying to shout down the Kyoto Accord.”⁵⁷

Pat Trottier

Patricia (Pat) Trottier is married to Gwyn Morgan and serves as the president of the Gwyn Morgan and Patricia Trottier Foundation, while Morgan serves as its CEO and chairperson. Their foundation has provided millions to various conservative groups in Canada.⁵⁸

Preston E Manning

Preston Manning founded the Reform Party of Canada, which would later become the Canadian Alliance Party and merge with the Progressive Conservatives to create the new Conservative Party of Canada.⁵⁹

He also founded the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, now the Canada Strong and Free Network. This group advertises its goal “to support Canada’s conservative movement by networking best practices and ideas pertaining to limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility and a more robust civil society.”⁶⁰

Manning is a fellow of the Fraser Institute and the Canada West Foundation, among other groups.⁶¹

Michael Binnion

Michael Binnion is the president and founding shareholder of the oil and gas production company Questerre Energy, based in Quebec. He is also the board chair of the Canada Strong and Free Network.⁶²

He has held positions with several other oil and energy companies. He was president and CEO of Flowing Energy Corp and later its chairman. He was a founder and director of Magnus Energy Inc. until 2007. He also serves as chairman of High Arctic Energy Services, Inc.⁶³

Nigel Wright

Canada Strong & Free Network’s website lists Nigel S. Wright as a “Partner.” According to that profile, Wright “served as the thirteenth Chief of Staff of the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, from September 2010 to May 2013, and is a Managing Director in the London office of Onex Corporation.”⁶⁴

According to his profile at Onex, Wright is also a director of the Fraser Institute, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and has served as a director of Policy Exchange among other groups.⁶⁵

Rick M Anderson

Earnscliffe Strategies previously listed Rick Anderson as principal, where his since-removed profile noted he has “served on several boards of directors, including directorships of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Manning Centre for Building Democracy, Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation, and the Federation of Mutual Fund Dealers. He is a director of the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association and NationalNewswatch.com and a member of C.D. Howe Institute’s Energy Policy Council and the Public Policy Forum’s Canadian Commission on Democratic Expression.”⁶⁶

In a June 2022 interview, the host introduced Anderson as a former chief of staff to Preston Manning.⁶⁷ He headed the Reform Party in the 1990s.⁶⁸

Nicholas Offord

Nicholas Offord is president and founder of the Offord Group, “a strategic advisory alternative to charities with a focus on capacity building.”⁶⁹

Michel Kelly-Gagnon

Michel Kelly-Gagnon is president, CEO, and director of the Montreal Economic Institute (MEI),⁷⁰ a group described as a “kind of Fraser Institute in Quebec.”⁷¹

He is a senior fellow with the Atlas Network, which once listed MEI as a partner.⁷²

SourceWatch describes the Atlas Network as “the Johnny Appleseed of antiregulation groups” that is “on a mission to populate the world with new ‘free market’ voices” and “litter the world with free-market think-tanks.”⁷³

He has also been a board member of the John Dobson Foundation, “which supports the teaching of entrepreneurial and free enterprise thinking to the general public.”⁷⁴

Leah Costello

Leah Costello is the founder of the Curious Mind Group of Companies, and her profile describes her as an “event host, writer, and media commentator based in West Vancouver.”⁷⁵

Ken Carter

A Ken Carter has sat on the Manning Centre board; however, Manning Centre staff have declined to answer whether it is the same Ken Carter who previously rented out a building to the Manning Centre.⁷⁶

A wealthy Calgary businessman named Ken Carter who is worth an estimated $80M,⁷⁷ was convicted in a corruption scheme⁷⁸ involving a custody battle and handed a three-year prison sentence.⁷⁹ DeSmog has not confirmed this is the same Ken Carter who sat on the Manning Foundation board.

Andrea Manning-Kroon

Andrea Manning-Kroon is the granddaughter of Muriel Aileen Manning. According to her obituary initially published in the Edmonton Journal, Preston Manning was Muriel’s youngest son.⁸⁰ The Canadian Law List listed Andrea Manning-Kroon as the president and senior research lawyer for Westerlea Research Corporation in Calgary, Alberta.⁸¹ According to her LinkedIn, she was previously a lawyer for Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP.⁸²

Ken Craig

DeSmog has not verified a Ken Craig with direct connections to the Manning Foundation or Centre.

Mark McKenna

A person named Mark McKenna has served as president of Walton Global Investments, a real estate development company that has had developments in Calgary, Alberta. DeSmog has not verified this is the same Mark McKenna who served on the Manning Foundation board.⁸³ Note that Blair Nixon below, who has served as executive vice president at Walton Global Investments, also lists himself as a director of the Manning Foundation.

Blair Nixon

Blair Nixon, executive vice president at Walton Global Investments, has also listed himself as a director of the Manning Foundation since 2008 on his LinkedIn. Nixon also lists himself as a partner of Felesky Flynn LLP.⁸⁴

Thompson MacDonald

The press in Canada has described Thompson MacDonald as “former premier Ralph Klein’s one-time media strategist”⁸⁵ and as a “former television journalist and public relations consultant who had advised Alberta Premier Ralph Klein in the past.”⁸⁶

Reginald L Peterson

DeSmog has not verified a Reginald Peterson with direct connections to the Manning Foundation or Centre.

Michael Gibney

DeSmog has not verified a Michael Gibney with direct connections to the Manning Foundation or Centre.

Glen Murray

Pending further investigation.

Actions

October 28, 2021

While the $3.5 million public inquiry into “anti-Alberta” energy campaigns⁸⁷ found no evidence of wrongdoing⁸⁸ by environmental groups, accounting firm Deloitte also identified 11 of Canada’s largest conservative/market-oriented organizations as part of the investigation.⁸⁹

The public inquiry redacted the names in the main report and outlined 11 groups in the appendix. The Manning Foundation appeared on the list.⁹⁰

May 2015

The C2C Journal, with the Manning Foundation listed as a sponsor, reportedly released an e-mail blast comparing the Alberta election to “a refugee camp in Ethiopia,” PressProgress reported.⁹¹

Canada Strong and Free Network (Former Manning Centre)

C2C Journal — An online publication listed as a “partner” of the Manning Foundation.⁹²

Partners

The Manning Foundation lists the following groups on its website on a page titled “Partners.” Apart from their listing on the website, the nature of the Manning Foundation’s association with these groups is not detailed:⁹³