The Energy Probe Research Foundation has five divisions.

Probe International is an independent environmental advocacy group that fights to stop ill-conceived aid, trade projects, and foreign investments. But more importantly, we work to give citizens the tools they need to stop these projects – the rule of law, democratic processes, and honest and transparent accounting.

Probe International goes where few others tread. We resurrected the doctrine of odious debts to challenge the enforceability of today’s Third World debts; we argue that markets can work to improve people’s living standards and protect their environment when they are decentralized, competitive, and governed by the rule of law; we maintain that state-to-state aid has undermined political accountability and promoted a culture of corruption in both the donor and receiving nation and should be abolished; we have warned for the past decade that carbon credit schemes will threaten Third World environments; and we think the best way to protect the environment is to entrench and enforce the individual and collective property rights of citizens.

Energy Probe is the consumer and energy research team at EPRF, active in the fight against nuclear power, and dedicated to resource conservation, economic efficiency, and effective utility regulation. Most recently, with Lawrence Solomon’s blockbuster book, The Deniers, Energy Probe has led the charge that the science of man-made global warming is not settled and defended those scientists who work to enlighten and inform the debate.

The Urban Renaissance Institute is dedicated to helping cities and their regions flourish by removing the many impediments to their proper functioning. To accomplish this, URI does research to measure and reveal the wealth that cities generate, to examine the organized complexity of cities, their parts and their features, to promote diversity of uses within cities, to investigate policies that foster thriving, sustainable city regions, and to demonstrate why sound urban policies are indispensable to wilderness and farmland protection.

Environment Probe

Environment Probe works to expose government policies that harm not only Canada’s forests, fisheries, waterways, and other natural resources but also the economy. It is committed to developing and promoting alternative resource policies that are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.

Environment Probe advocates using market mechanisms, including pricing, to protect the environment. Central to its policies is the promotion of property rights and decentralized decision making to empower individuals and communities to protect natural resources. It is also a sharp critic of subsidies to resource industries.

Where markets cannot be relied on to protect the environment and public health – where property rights cannot be assigned or enforced, or where natural monopolies exist – Environment Probe advocates the strict enforcement of statutes and regulations. The organization works for regulatory processes that internalize risks and costs, enhance efficiency, and promote accountability and transparency.

The Environmental Bureau of Investigation is dedicated to the protection of public resources through the application and enforcement of environmental laws: investigating and prosecuting environmental crime, assisting individuals and groups in their fight against polluters, developing public education tools to empower citizens to stop pollution, and publishing and publicizing information on pollution sources and sites. In recent years, EBI has focussed on maintaining its on-line Citizens Guide to Environmental Investigation and Prosecution, providing the public with invaluable advice on researching and documenting pollution in their communities, on determining whether the contaminants violate a law or regulation, on pressuring governments to take action, and on starting legal proceedings if governments refuse to act.

Past Projects