The Fraser Institute
A family member recently told me that if I want to have her read my articles, I’d have to make them shorter. That was good feedback. I’ve been targeting 2000 to 3000 words for my essays, and based on the feedback received, I’ll see if I can cut it down a bit. It’s hard to do – once I get spouting off, it’s hard to stop!
A recent article I wrote was on the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer. I have to admit that it has shaken my world view quite badly. While I was in the process of reading the book and writing that article, I read a story in the Economist which referenced some data as having come from The Peterson Institute, a think tank. When I saw the term “think tank” my radar went on, because I’d just finished reading how the conservative extremists are funding think tanks to develop their propaganda. So, I looked up the Peterson Institute and saw large contributions from the Peterson Foundation. Then I looked those guys up, and found that the Peterson Foundation is donating huge sums to a number of the organizations that have been named directly by Jane Mayer as fronting organizations for the billionaire conspirators – The Heritage Fund, the Economic Policy Institute and Center for American Progress, for example. Do I trust information coming from that apparently public-spirited institute? Not now I don’t.
Now, I do trust the Economist. The Economist is rated as a very unbiased news organization, with an excellent record for fact checking. And as I recall, the data that they quoted was just data – no argument, no conclusion. But the bottom line is that the Mayer documentation leads me to become very careful indeed about what I choose to believe. It is not enough for me to find a source that has information and conclusions to offer about things in which I have an interest. Now I find myself questioning the organization that made the statement or did the research. Have I any reason to believe them? Why should I trust them? Where does their funding come from? Forget American Institutions. Should I trust the CD Howe Institute? What about other Canadian think tanks?
I think it’s important to understand where Canada’s billionaires are putting their money, and I think it’s even more important to understand where money from foreign sources is filtering into Canada’s policy development. I decided to see what I could find out about Canadian institutions. I did a search for Canadian Think Tanks, and I found a listing of 16 institutions. I set out to check them out to determine whether we can rely on the studies that get quoted in our news sources. I now plan to continue this as a series – every now and again I will dig into the background, the funding and the products of various Canadian think tanks and provide an opinion.
The first one I checked out was the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute was rated 18th in the ranking of non-American think tanks by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the University of Pennsylvania for the year 2020. Inexplicably, in the same report, (the Global Go To Report) the Fraser Institute was ranked 14th in a combined listing of non-American and American think tanks. How could they move up four places in a bigger grouping you ask? All I can tell you is to look up inexplicable. Maybe the judging criteria changed, I don’t know.
Either way, 18th or 14th in the world is an impressive sounding achievement, isn’t it? But then I looked for flies in the ointment. The first thing I found was that the Fraser Institute got 14th in a listing in which has the Heritage Foundation, a prime target for right wing funding, in 13th place. And in 11th place is the Center for American Progress, another institution identified in Dark Money as a child of the Freedom Partner billionaires. So, while that doesn’t show that the Lauder Institute is selecting right wing fronts, it does show that they’re not applying any kind of neutrality filters to their selections, doesn’t it?
Then I dug into the funding of the University of Pennsylvania program that provided those rankings. The rankings come out of a program in the Lauder Institute under the university umbrella. The Joseph H Lauder Institute of International Studies was founded in 1983 by Ronald and Leonard Lauder, heirs to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortunes. Ronald Lauder recently committed $11m to the election campaign of right wing republican governor candidate Lee Zeldin in New York State, and he also donated a million dollars to a committee of the Republican party supporting several election denier Trumpian candidates. I took a look at the top donors (>$50K) on the Lauder Institute annual report, and the first named person was Sergey Burnell, who is listed as an officer of S&P Global Ratings, an American Credit Rating Agency. A little more googling revealed that there is an S&P Global PAC which donated more than $300K to Republican party and individual candidates like Kevin McCarthy. The first page of big donors to that PAC is absolutely filled with people who work at S&P Global.
I’m quite convinced from the timing (1983), and the target (an educational institution buried within a major university), and the founder (a billionaire worth about $27B with openly expressed support for right wing causes) that the Lauder Institute of International Affairs is a product of the Freedom Partner billionaires’ strategy to re-educate America along the lines of their right wing thinking. Based on that, would I trust information coming out of the Lauder Institute? No, I would not.
What about the Fraser Institute? Does that fact that the Lauder group likes it imply that the Fraser Institute is not to be trusted? My instinct is to say that it’s not a great thing to get a gold star from the Lauder Institute. So, I looked up the funding for the Fraser Institute and I found that they’ve received $1.7M from Charles Koch over the last 30 years. And then I dug into some of their publications and I find that they’re producing climate change skepticism documents completely in line with the billionaire agenda.
Finally, I decide to query Mediabiasfactcheck.com, my go to information source about reliability of news sources. And surprise, surprise, it says “Overall, we rate Fraser Institute as strongly Right-Center biased based on policy positions that favor business and Mixed for factual reporting due to false and misleading claims regarding global warming.”
Prior to becoming a blogger, I wouldn’t likely have challenged the Fraser Institute at all. And if I did, I would have been sufficiently impressed by an 18th world-wide ranking that I’d have accepted what they said as fact or solid opinion. But now, I think the Fraser institute is crap and I wouldn’t trust them to tell me today’s weather. You can be your own judge.
13 responses to “Are Canadian Think Tanks Trustworthy?”
Hi Dennis: I have never put a lot of faith in the so-called “Think Tanks”. Always figured their members were pseudo intellectuals who never did have touch with reality. Or perhaps their musings are beyond my intellectual capacity.
Here’s a thought for you. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it? There are many factors contributing to it at present-political,climate,social decay etc.
What is just as important is-see you for golf in a couple months!
Hi George. Thanks for the comments. I hope you didn’t seriously think that I was going to risk a response on the question of your intellectual capacity?
Now, as to the bigger question about the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it… I’ve just been reading a document called the democracy index for 2022. It’s published by a subsidiary of The Economist magazine. It has rated countries for the quality of their democracy using about five major categories starting in 2006. On a scale of 10, the world average has declined from 5.52 to 5.29 since 2006. Given that this is a fairly subjective evaluation, I’m not sure whether that slow erosion is significant. However, it is noteworthy that four of the largest, most powerful, and most populous regions of the world are experiencing significant declines in their democracy in recent years. Those regions are, of course, China, Russia, India, and the United States. If you think about “civilization as we know it“ as being the 20th century post World War II civilization led by the United States of America, then, yes, there are disturbing signs that civilization “as we know it“ is at risk. The United States continues to scare me.
FYI, Canada is ranked 12th in the world, with a score of 8.88. The United States has been demoted to “flawed democracy” status and is 30th in the world with a score of 7.85. Anything below 8.0 is rated as a flawed democracy.
I’m enjoying your fact-checking. And glad you followed the money trail for the Fraser bastards! I’m not biased, though!
About “just data, no interpretation”: study design can be biased to collect skewed data. So I don’t trust data collection unless it’s been vetted by a research ethics board, or a peer-reviewed academic journal. And even then….it’s really difficult to escape bias.
I’ll bet most “think tanks” fail on this, regardless of their ideology.
The Fraser Institute leans as hard to the right as the Centre for Policy Alternatives does to the left. One approach may be to read both and try to filter for biases. For there is sometimes truth in both. Nothing is as simple as black and white – despite the totally human wish to have it so.
Hi Dorothy. Thanks for the comments. Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an article about finding trustworthy news sources in the age of Donald Trump, and in that article I made exactly your point – that peer reviewed academic journals rank high as trustworthy sources. And yes, I recognize that data can be skewed. I seem to recall some joke about “lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
The problem with reading, Fraser Institute documents and contrasting them against Centre for Policy Alternatives documents is that it takes a lot of reading. And there may not always be a countervailing document available. But worst of all is that new sources- trusted news, sources like CBC and CTV – pick up data and stories from these think tanks and present them as credible news. And sometimes they may be credible news stories. However, sometimes they may not. So, I just find myself trying to be vigilant, even about understanding the ultimate source of news in the best and most trustworthy reporting.
Very good information – thank you for doing this in depth research.
Is it actually possible to be bias free?
Hi Dietmar. That’s a very interesting question. I think since writers are human, it’s probably not possible to be totally bias-free. However, I think the best publications recognize their own biases and strive to neutralize them. The media bias fact, check website that I use has an interesting approach. They rate not just the factual content of an article, but the emotional content as well. You will see them suggest that a publication has a leaning to left or right based on the use of words or phrases that are “loaded” and are attempting to appeal to emotions or stereotypes. Good sources don’t do that.
Good work. I always mistrust the Fraser Institute. How many think tanks are there in Canada?
My first searches came up with a list of 16 think tanks in Canada. I’m not sure if they’d all qualify as big policy drivers. I need to check them out some. Also, there may be more that I didn’t find in my first search.
Back in 1934, T.S.Eliot wrote, “Where the the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” We are drowning in information; struggle to translate it into knowledge; and starve for wisdom.” Notice how addicted today’s society is to numbers and rankings and ratings? If you can give it a number, it begins to look more like science and science has long masqueraded as objective truth. I believe it was Benjamin Disraeli who is usually said to have made the comment about “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Thanks for the comment Ed. There is no question that the information explosion is overwhelming and confusing. And I suppose that people do need numbers… measures and evaluations… to determine which bits of information are really relevant. However, as a scientist, I must take issue with your statement that science has long masqueraded as objective truth. Bad science masquerades as objective truth. Good science reveals objective truth. The trick is to be able to determine, which is which.
That’s it Dennis – you’ve pretty much destroyed my interest in trying to follow policy discussions and the news in general. When you start publishing a weekly bulletin I’ll read that – and The Economist!
Your exposé is a real eye-opener.
I don’t doubt that some useful and accurate information comes out of the Fraser Institute. I just think that a questioning attitude is probably needed if that’s the ultimate source of any report.
Perhaps they should all be re-named as “Think Lagoons”