The extremists at the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation have spent millions of dollars trying to shut down Canada's oilsands.

Their Canadian branch plant, the Tides Canada Foundation, has too.

Abusing Canadian charities law, they've bankrolled dozens of front groups to jam up our country's courts and environmental reviews.

All this, while passing off their political activity as "charitable" work.

And it almost worked. They managed to delay the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal that would ship oilsands oil from Alberta to the B.C. port of Kitimat.

They convinced their anti-oil president, Barack Obama, to delay the Keystone XL pipeline that would have shipped oilsands oil down to the Gulf Coast of Texas.

But there's one loose end: A pipeline built

60 years ago, from Edmonton, across the Rocky Mountains, straight to the Port of Vancouver.

In fact, the oil doesn't stop at the end of the pipe. There's a tanker facility right there in the rivers of Vancouver. Been doing it for decades. Fits right in with the rest of the port - the biggest in Canada.

And now Kinder Morgan, the company that owns the Trans Mountain pipeline, wants to expand the pipe's capacity.

The expansion is a slam dunk - no need to negotiate land claims, no environmental questions unanswered. The thing's been working since 1953. They just want to make it bigger.

You'd think the mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, would be delighted - more work in Vancouver, more wealth for the port, more success for Canada.

But the thing about Robertson is that while he is the mayor of Vancouver in name, he's the mayor of the Tides Foundation in fact.

He was a director of their Canadian branch plant before running for office.

And, when Robertson finally ran to be mayor of Vancouver, his Vision Vancouver party spending a staggering $2 million to win a vote in a city of just 600,000 people, it was his radical environmentalist friends who gave him his campaign cash - $330,000 to his municipal party from Tides officials or their associates. Including thousands of dollars from

U.S. donors. Hang on: U.S. donors to a Canadian mayor's campaign? Yes.

So the Tides Foundation called in their marker last week. And Robertson came out against the pipeline expansion. Here's what he wrote in a local newspaper: "For Kinder Morgan, the benefits are obvious: A dramatic increase in the amount of oil they can move to market from the Alberta oilsands project. But for Vancouver, it's hard to find any upside."

But Vancouver needs oil, too - more than a million cars, a busy airport. Without Trans Mountain, Vancouver grinds to a halt. Let alone lost jobs. But note the subtle xenophobia: Those Alberta rednecks will benefit, but not us. Let's close our port to them.

Robertson wants to build a provincial firewall. A trade barrier. Because his San Francisco bosses want one. Imagine if Alberta took the same view: No imports from the Port of Vancouver may pass through Alberta by truck or rail if some Alberta mayor's donors say so.

It doesn't make any sense for the mayor of Vancouver to oppose shipping raw materials through the port. It doesn't make sense for Canadian interests. It doesn't make sense for B.C. jobs. But this isn't about Canada, or B.C., or even Vancouver.

This is about a Manchurian candidate, put in place by extremist millionaires in the U.S., being activated. Tides doesn't want the pipeline expansion; Vancouver's mayor will ensure it doesn't happen.

ezra.levant@sunmedia.ca