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existed at the confluence of social and economic conservatism—and Stephen Harper immediately grasped the potential for similar alliance-building in Canada. Reverend LaHaye was a true believer who enjoyed spreading the word. He claimed that his books about Armageddon and the Rapture had sold fifty-five million copies. He believed that there would be a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity during the “end times.” LaHaye was so certain of the gospel that he even tried to convert the Dalai Lama when he bumped into him in a hotel corridor in Israel.
    When the CNP meets, a lot of money is on the table. One of the original directors of the organization gave $4.5 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that played a key role in sinking the presidential ambitions of John Kerry. The same director donated $3 million to the Progress for America Voter Fund, which backed President George W. Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. Seed money was also given by Nelson Baker Hunt, the billionaire son of oilman Howard L. Hunt. Ronald Reagan addressed the CNP’s tenth anniversary celebration and had this to say: “A handful of men and women, individuals of character, had a vision. A vision to see the return of righteousness, justice, andtruth to our great nation.” Besides the vision, the CNP also had tax-exempt status.
    Past members of the group include Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, former US attorneys general Ed Meese and John Ashcroft, gun rights activist Colonel Oliver North, and the mother of Erik Princep, founder of the private security company Blackwater, which later ran amok in the Iraq War. Their common enemy was political and philosophical liberalism. Their agenda was cleaving to Christian heritage, unqualified support of Israel, a strong military, gun rights, traditional values, and small government—things Canada’s NCC would not find objectionable.
    The CNP commands the elite of US Republican potentates. Vice-President Dick Cheney flew in on Air Force 2 to address the group at one of their meetings. Mitt Romney gave an address to the CNP in Salt Lake City, Utah. When he made his first run for president, George W. Bush gave a speech to the CNP in San Antonio, Texas, that helped him gain the support of the conservatives in the 2000 presidential election. In accordance with CNP practice, Bush’s speech was never released. In the same year that the future president addressed the group, the CNP gave Charles G. Koch the Free Enterprise Award. Koch and his brother preside over the secondlargest private company in the United States, Koch Industries, based in Wichita, Kansas. Oil is the basis of their enormous wealth, and the family has been involved in the Alberta tar sands for over fifty years. As reported in The Washington Post , the Koch brothers are one of the biggest leaseholders in the enormous development, controlling over half a million hectares. Koch Industries also concentrates on shipping and refining heavy oil. The company has upgraded its Corpus Christi refinery to handle heavy bitumen.
    “Canada is one of the cheapest places in the world for Big Oil to do business,” according to Mitchell Anderson, who is writing a book, The Oil Vikings , about Norway’s wise resource use. In2012, Canada produced over two billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE, which includes crude oil, natural gas, and other petroleum liquids) and collected $18 billion in provincial and federal taxes, and royalties. Taxpayers realized a benefit of $9 per BOE. Of that total, Alberta produced 1.5 billion BOE in 2012 and collected $6.13 billion in non-renewable royalties. By charging the oil companies higher taxes and investing equity ownership in production, the Norwegian government paid $46.29 BOE to their taxpayers for their oil in 2012—over five times what Canadians received. Norway has an $ 850-billion sovereign wealth fund for its population of about five million people. 4
    So when Stephen Harper gave a speech to