Bob Neubauer, a researcher with a Canadian oil and gas watchdog organization known as the Corporate Mapping Project, said Atlas includes “a very significant number of the most influential rightwing thinktanks and advocacy organizations on the planet”.
The report is no longer accessible on the Atlas Network website but was recovered by DeSmog on an internet archive called the Wayback Machine. The report claims that this project was started “at the behest of the Assembly of First Nations”, a national advocacy group for Canada’s Indigenous peoples, which “saw potential in the natural resource economy as a major driver of transformation in Indigenous opportunity”. The Assembly didn’t respond to a media request asking if this is accurate.
“This provision, while well-intended, would have allowed even the most fringe groups to veto improvement projects at the expense of whole communities,” Atlas argued.