The third time the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) got involved, I started thinking to myself – someone’s got to be funding this. JCCF is a Calgary-based legal advocacy group founded and run by John Carpay, a former lawyer who was disbarred in both Manitoba and Alberta for spying on a judge back in 2021.
Their first time dabbling in Powell River politics was in June 2024, when Diane Sparks (a local realtor) booked a library space to host an anti-name-change event. The library hesitated, saying they would need consent from city council before confirming her booking. Suspicious that the library might be considering cancelling Sparks’ booking, the JCCF sent the chief librarian a warning, “urging the Library to respect citizens’ Charter rights.”
Two months later, JCCF followed up with a strange, exhaustive fifty-six-page legal letter to the city.
It was a serious escalation, accusing council members of silencing dissent and violating citizens’ Charter rights. It claims “that Council appears to have largely lost its legal jurisdiction in connection with the name change.” Amazingly, it claims that four of Powell River’s six councillors are “irredeemably biased” and “must recuse themselves from further debate and decision-making in connection with the name change.”
The Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t require charities to disclose where their funding comes from. So, unless they get audited, it’s next to impossible to figure out who’s donating to the Justice Centre. But there are clues. JCCF has disclosed to the CRA that it received donations valued at $10,000 or more from donors outside of Canada. At least some of that (and likely more) is coming from the American-based think tank that creates think tanks - the Atlas Network.
The Atlas Network, the big boys behind it all, have a long list of powerful backers that you can read about here. To summarise, it’s all the usual suspects: fossil fuel magnates, finance bros, hedge fund managers, and big tobacco. Prominent donors include Exxon Mobil, Philip Morris, and the Koch family.
The Atlas Network isn’t secretive about what it wants. Limited government and unregulated industry. They dream of a world where corporations can do what they like, unencumbered by Indigenous rights, labour laws, or environmental protections
The BC Prosperity Project is BC’s chapter of the Alberta Prosperity Project, a group trying to get Alberta to secede from Canada. Their vision is for Alberta (and also BC and Saskatchewan?) to become “the least governed, least regulated and lowest taxed nation in the world.”
The controversy around Powell River’s name change is being used as a building block in a narrative that’s becoming increasingly mainstream. The idea is that Indigenous rights are being used as a smokescreen by a global Marxist elite. Powell River being forced to adopt an Indigenous name is another step down a slippery slope that’s leading us toward authoritarianism, the abolition of private property, and the end of representative democracy.
The Atlas Network's aggravation of the name change debate is a small part of a broader strategy to create, seek out, and amplify division across the province. Their goal is to destabilize government and give extractive industry unrestricted access to our resources.