Fraser Institute - Controversies

Controversies

According to an article published in CBC News Online, some people allege that Michael Walker helped set up the Institute after he received financial backing from forestry giant MacMillan Bloedel, largely to counter British Columbia's NDP government then led by premier Dave Barrett. The CEO of MacMillian-Bloedel at the time supported wage and price controls. The Institute has been criticized by trade unions for its recommendations to abolish minimum wage.

In late 1997, the Institute set up a research program emulating the UK's Social Affairs Unit, called the Social Affairs Centre. Its founding Director was Patrick Basham. The program's funding came from Rothmans International and Philip Morris. When Rothmans was bought by British American Tobacco (BAT) in 1999, its funding ended, and in 2000 the Institute wrote to BAT asking for $50,000 per year, to be split between the Social Affairs Centre and the Centre for Risk and Regulation. The letter highlighted the Institute's 1999 publication Passive Smoke: The EPA's Betrayal of Science and Policy, "which highlighted the absence of any scientific evidence for linking cancer with second-hand smoke received widespread media coverage both in Canada and the United States". At this time the CEO of BAT's Canadian subsidiary, Imasco, was also on the Fraser Institute's Board of Trustees. The Fraser Institute ceased disclosing its sources of corporate funding in the 1980s. In 2000 the Institute published another industry-friendly paper, a History of Tobacco Regulation by Filip Palda.

In 1999, the Fraser Institute was criticized by health professionals and scientists for sponsoring two conferences on the tobacco industry entitled Junk Science, Junk Policy? Managing Risk and Regulation and Should Government Butt Out? The Pros and Cons of Tobacco Regulation. Critics charged the Institute was associating itself with the tobacco industry's many attempts to discredit authentic scientific work.

In 2002, a study by legal scholar Neil Brooks of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives concluded that the Fraser Institute's widely promoted Tax Freedom Day (described as the date each year when the average Canadian's income no longer goes to paying government taxes) included flawed accounting. According to Brooks' study, the Fraser Institute's methods of accounting excluded several important forms of income and inflated tax figures, moving the date nearly two months later in the year.

In 2004, the Fraser Institute issued a statement of support for the legalization of cannabis and its sale on the market.

A report released by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2007 stated the Fraser Institute received $120 000 in funding from Exxon Mobil.