Barry Cooper (political scientist)

Canadian political scientist (born 1943)

Fraser Barry Cooper (born 1943) is a Canadian political scientist at the University of Calgary. Before coming to Calgary, he taught at Bishop's University (1968–1970), McGill University, and York University (1970–1981). The winner of a Killam Research Fellowship, he is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1991, Cooper wrote Action into Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Technology and he co authored Deconfederation: Canada without Quebec, in which he argued that Canada would benefit from Quebec separation. He is also the author of the 1999 publication Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science. He is a fellow at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and a senior research fellow at the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. As a regular columnist for the Calgary Herald, Cooper is a frequent commentator on Canadian political issues. He attended high school at Shawnigan Lake School, on Vancouver Island, and received degrees from the University of British Columbia and Duke University. Cooper is an advocate of climate denialism, with Alberta as an independent, sovereign jurisdiction within Canada.

Cooper is a member of a group of conservative political scientists, the Calgary School, which also includes Tom Flanagan, Rainer Knopff, Ted Morton, and David Bercuson. The group's focus has been to influence public affairs over the long term. Cooper, like other members of the Calgary School, strongly advocate against First Nations rights to land and special privilege. In his arguments in a January 2013 article, he cites controversial publication, First Nations? Second Thoughts, in which he countered arguments presented in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People(1996). Both this publication and Cooper's article argue against these statements by the RCAP: "(1) Aboriginals are privileged because they were here first; (2) there are no significant differences between European and Indian civilizations so that (3) Indians are sovereign nations; accordingly (4) treaties were nation to nation agreements that (5) affirmed aboriginal sovereignty and ownership of the land."

During his tenure as the director of the Calgary branch of the Fraser Institute from 1999 to 2005, Cooper began to focus on climate change. He invited to Calgary Bjørn Lomborg, a Danish climate change denier who also worked with the Friends of Science to provide arguments against climate change. The Friends of Science opposes the Kyoto Protocol and claims to offer "critical evidence that challenges the premises of the Kyoto Protocol and presents alternative causes for climate change." By 2004, Cooper set up the Science Education Fund which could accept donations through the Calgary Foundation. The Calgary Foundation administers charitable giving in the Calgary area and had "a policy of guarding donors' identities." Albert Jacobs, a geologist and retired oil explorations manager and member of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists who formed the Friends of Science, described how donations from oil and gas industry donors were passed on to the Science Education Fund set up by Barry Cooper, which in turn supported the activities of the Friends of Science. In 2004, Talisman Energy, a Calgary based, global oil and gas exploration and production company, one of Canada's largest independent oil and gas companies, donated $175,000 to fund a University of Calgary based "public relations project designed to cast doubt on scientific evidence linking human activity to global warming." Journalist Mike De Souza published the list of significant donations to the Friends of Science which had been received by the press, in an article published in the Vancouver Sun in 2011. Sydney Kahanoff, a Calgary oil and gas executive and philanthropist donated $50,000 through his Kahanoff Foundation, a charity he established in 1979. Murphy Oil matched one of its employees $1,050 donations. Douglas Leahey defended the donations to the Friends of Science from the then CEO of Talisman Energy, James Buckee, who shared the Friends' views on climate change. Cooper's involvement in the funding of that group was called into question in 2006, when it was reported he helped start a University of Calgary fund the Science Education Fund, which accepted monies from Alberta oil and gas companies, foundations, and individuals and then used some of that charitable donation in the Friends of Science group to produce a video, which is available at friendsofscience. org. The video featured consultant Tim Ball, Sallie L. Baliunas, Tim Patterson, Ross McKitrick, and Cooper, all of whom are known for climate change denial. A second edition was release ond 13 September 2007. In 2014, Friends of Science released a billboard in Calgary, Alberta, claiming that the sun, not human activity, is the primary driver of global warming. In 2020, Cooper submitted a 28 page report, "Background Report on Changes in the Organization and Ideology of Philanthropic Foundations with a Focus on Environmental Issues as Reflected in Contemporary Social Science Research." Also called the "Cooper Report," it had been commissioned by the government of Jason Kenney's Public Inquiry into Anti Alberta Energy Campaigns.

Cooper is an advocate of Western Canadian separatism, Cooper co authored the September 2021 "Free Alberta Strategy" with lawyers, Rob Anderson and Derek From in which they called for Alberta's recognition as a sovereign jurisdiction within Canada. The initiative was supported by United Conservative Party MLAs, Angela Pitt, Jason Stephan, Drew Barnes, and Todd Loewen.