The David Suzuki Foundation is a non-profit environmental group that uses science to help protect the environment. It is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and has offices in Montreal and Toronto. The organization was created as a Canadian charity registered by the federal government on January 1, 1991. By 2007, it had 40,000 donors. Its goal is to protect nature while meeting people's needs. The Foundation is funded entirely by grants and donations. By 2012, 90% of its donors were from Canada. In 2007, the Foundation had about seventy-five employees.
Overview
In 1989, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a radio series created by David Suzuki, titled It's a Matter of Survival. This series was later published in a book with the same name in 1990, co-authored by Suzuki. In the series and book, Suzuki explained that a global scientific agreement had formed in June 1988 at the Toronto Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, which was led by Stephen Lewis and attended by 300 scientists worldwide. This meeting marked the first time scientists globally agreed that the world was entering a time of major climate change.
The foundation was created in response to a 1989 meeting organized by David Suzuki and Tara Cullis, along with about a dozen guests who wanted to address climate change. The foundation was officially registered on September 14, 1990. In April 2012, Suzuki left the foundation’s board of directors. His wife, Tara Cullis, now serves as the board’s president.
According to the foundation’s website, its goal is to study, share, and support efforts that balance human needs with the planet’s ability to support all life. While it focuses on Canada and Canadians, its work includes four regions: Ontario and the Northern Region, Quebec/Francophone, British Columbia, and the Western Region. Key areas of focus include protecting the climate, changing the economy, helping people connect with nature, and building stronger communities.
The foundation shares information about its work through newsletters, scientific studies, research reports, books, guides, brochures, and news updates. Major projects include the Trottier Energy Futures Project, Healthy Oceans and Sustainable Seafood (which ranked seafood choices on SeaChoice.org), The Saint Lawrence: Our Living River, the Natural Capital Evaluation, Habitat Protection and Endangered Species, Connecting Youth with Nature, and Living Green (formerly “Queen of Green”).
The foundation was officially established on January 1, 1991, as a Canadian charity registered by the federal government. It is supported only by donations and grants, not by government funding except from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. It does not provide money to other organizations.
All financial and donor details are publicly available on the foundation’s website and in its annual reports. In 2006, the foundation reported that about 75% of its 40,000 supporters gave less than $500. In fiscal year 2012, 59% of its funding came from individual donors, 25% from foundations, and 13% from businesses. More than 95% of its donors were Canadian.
According to its 2005–2006 annual report, the foundation had 40,000 donors, including 52 corporations such as Bell Canada, Toyota, IBM, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Scotia Capital, Warner Bros., Canon, and the Bank of Montreal.
After the foundation introduced its Ethical Gift Acceptance Policy, it no longer accepted donations from companies in the fossil fuel industry, as it had done before. Before this policy, the foundation received support from EnCana Corporation (a major natural gas and oil sands company), ATCO Gas (Alberta’s main natural gas distributor), and OPG (a large electricity provider with fossil fuel and nuclear plants).
The foundation also partners with the Taylor Mitchell Legacy Trust, created by Emily Mitchell after her daughter, Taylor Mitchell, died in a coyote attack in 2009. The trust helps people manage conflicts with wildlife.
Activities
The David Suzuki Foundation started a campaign called "Farmed and Dangerous" to highlight environmental issues linked to the farmed fish industry, with a focus on Nutreco Aquaculture, the world’s largest farmed salmon producer. Vivian Krause, who joined Nutreco Aquaculture in 2002 as their manager for business growth in North America, worked to address criticisms of the company raised by The David Suzuki Foundation and other environmental groups. Krause used publicly available online information about tax revenue to create spreadsheets listing donors who supported environmental organizations in Canada. She shared her findings on her blog called "Fair Questions," including the fact that The David Suzuki Foundation received $44 million in tax-deductible donations between 2000 and 2010.
In February 2004, David Suzuki met with Canada’s Prime Minister, Paul Martin, to share the foundation’s report titled "Canada vs the OECD: An Environmental Comparison." This 2001 report, written by David R. Boyd, an environmental lawyer and researcher, compared Canada’s environmental performance with 28 other countries in the OECD group. The report ranked Canada 28th out of 29 nations based on 25 environmental indicators. The foundation and Boyd later created another report, "Sustainability within a Generation," which outlined ways Canada could improve sustainability by reducing waste, pollution, and promoting efficient practices, as well as building more environmentally friendly cities.
In the 2000s, the David Suzuki Foundation launched the Nature Challenge with the help of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The program encouraged Canadians to reduce home energy use by using energy-efficient appliances and vehicles, taking public transit, biking, or walking, living closer to work or school, buying locally grown food, eating more vegetarian meals, and avoiding pesticides. By November 2007, more than 500,000 people in Canada had joined the challenge. Many well-known Canadians, including Nelly Furtado, Sam Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Robert Munsch, Larry Campbell, and David Miller, participated.
On October 25, 2019, The David Suzuki Foundation, along with the Our Children’s Trust and 15 youth activists, including Cecilia La Rose, Sierra Robinson, and Sáj Gray-Starcevich, filed a lawsuit against the Canadian government. The lawsuit claimed the government violated the youth’s rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by not taking immediate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address the effects of climate change.
Criticism
By the early 2010s, scientists agreed that genetically modified (GM) food was as safe as non-GM food. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that each new GM food needed to be tested individually to ensure safety.
In 2012, the Foundation’s website reportedly had a page titled "Understanding GMO" that claimed the safety of GM foods was "unproven" and that an increasing amount of research had linked these foods to health concerns. This page is no longer available on their website.
Tax emptions status and political activities
Since 2007, people have worried about whether charities with tax benefits can take part in political activities. Columnist Licia Corbella, who once wrote for The Calgary Sun, has criticized the David Suzuki Foundation for a long time. She has claimed that human-caused climate change is not real. She wrote about David Suzuki speaking to Calgary elementary school students, saying his message encouraged listeners not to vote for the Conservative Party. She argued that this made his message support one political group and suggested the David Suzuki Foundation should lose its tax benefits. In 2007, Suzuki explained that his personal opinions differ from the official positions of the foundation. He once said Ottawa’s plan to fight global warming was a "national embarrassment" and called the federal government’s energy policy "not a strategy" but a "shame." According to a 2007 article in Treehugger, Canadian law allows charities to discuss political topics, as long as they do not support specific political parties or candidates. Charities can use up to 10% of their resources for non-partisan political activities, such as influencing laws, holding meetings with officials, or organizing events to share information.
In 2012, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized environmental activists and charities. The 2012 federal budget gave $8 million to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to audit certain charities, including seven environmental groups. Later, the CRA’s budget for these audits increased to $13 million per year, allowing audits of other charities, such as those focused on anti-poverty, foreign aid, and human rights, including Amnesty International, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the United Church of Canada. A 2014 investigation by the Canadian Press, reported in Maclean’s, found that most of the audits between 2012 and 2013 focused on environmental groups that opposed the Harper government’s energy policies, including the David Suzuki Foundation. In 2015, a journalist named Mike De Souza, writing for The Narwhal, reported that a senator interested in research about environmental groups helped promote a researcher named Krause by connecting her with important people in Canada’s political and energy sectors.