A national climate resilience charity based in Canmore, Alberta is speaking up after the Suncor Energy Foundation withdrew more than half of a three-year, $900,000 donation pledge with no notice, even though a lawyer warned the organization it would be “flying too close to the sun” if it told the story out loud.
As The Energy Mix Weekender reported Sunday, the sudden, unexplained loss of $500,000 in confirmed funding has left The Resilience Institute (TRI) scrambling to decide which front-line projects and staff jobs will be affected.
“We’re going to have to back out of several relationships. We have commitments to communities. We have commitments to staff,” Laura S. Lynes, TRI’s president and CEO, told The Energy Mix. “We have at least four multi-partner initiatives where we have committed to coming to the table with staff, and in some cases with funding, to do multi-year project work in small, rural, and Indigenous communities across Canada. That’s the work that is at risk.”
We don’t just take money from anybody. We enter into relationships very consciously. And this has thrown us.
– Laura S. Lynes, president and CEO of The Resilience Institute
Some of those projects involve front-line research with Indigenous communities in Treaty 7 territory in southern Alberta, and in the heart of oil sands extraction in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. Lynes said she’s heard of several other charities that received similar treatment, but their boards are afraid to speak up.
TRI’s programming portfolio includes:
• Stories of Resilience, a “thematic learning program” to collect stories of climate resilience that can “change our hearts and minds” and “if shared, have the potential to change futures”;
• Front-line, multi-year climate resilience initiatives with several Indigenous communities and groups across Canada, including many in Alberta such as Fort McKay First Nation, in Wood Buffalo where Suncor operates and Piikani Nation in Treaty 7, where Suncor’s head office is located, as well as coastal communities in Atlantic Canada;
• Roots for Resilience, a national partnership with the Canadian Red Cross to reduce vulnerability to climate disasters in small, rural, and Indigenous communities by bringing climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies together;
• A review of community housing, poverty, and insurance in a changing climate that is partly supported by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation;
• A program on nature-based climate solutions that uses the ecologically and culturally significant plant, sweetgrass, “as a connector between partners”.
The chronology of a breakup
When the Canada’s Clean50 newsletter brought the story to a wider audience earlier Friday, executive director Gavin Pitchford wrote that TRI – recipient of the Clean50’s 2025 Project of the Year award – “has been ghosted by Suncor Energy, their substantial multi-year promised funding cancelled without any warning.”
Suncor Energy Foundation (SEF) cancelled the pledge “after it was due and without an explanation,” Pitchford added, and “with some not-so-veiled threats from Suncor’s lawyers who suggested that complaining publicly would be ‘flying too close to the sun.’”
Lynes traced the chronology of the breakup in a LinkedIn post last week, and in a more detailed interview Friday evening.
“I had hoped not to have to share this information, but our charity has experienced an unexpected setback that we have been unable to resolve,” she began. “The intent in sharing this information is to ensure that the consequences of this setback do not reflect on our good reputation with Indigenous and rural communities, or with the many academic, corporate, and other institutional partners that we have the privilege to collaborate with.”
More than five years ago, The Resilience Institute began accepting funding from SEF, a separate legal entity set up by Calgary-based Suncor Energy, Canada’s second-biggest oil sands company.
At the time, TRI thought it was working with a like-minded partner. “We don’t just take money from anybody. We enter into relationships very consciously. And this has thrown us,” she told The Mix.
Following a strategic review in early 2024, shortly after fossil industry veteran Rich Kruger took over as Suncor Energy CEO, SEF “assured us that our work aligned fully with their updated funding priorities,” Lynes wrote on LinkedIn.
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Several past grant recipients saw their relationships with the foundation end at that point, but The Resilience Institute was invited “to submit a renewal for a three-year term and a total of $900,000, emphasizing the importance of long-term planning.” That pledge was approved in March 2024, and TRI received a first instalment of $400,000 shortly afterwards.
TRI was supposed to meet with its Suncor Foundation representative in December. After multiple attempts to reach them, the charity sent in its annual written update, then got back “this very strange request for more information, but it was almost like a form,” Lynes recalled. “It didn’t have anything to do with our update … it just seemed like a witch hunt, to be honest.”
Among the questions on the form, shared with The Energy Mix, Suncor asked whether any TRI senior leadership or board members received consulting or professional fees from the organization, and whether any current or former SEF staff had received “any personal benefit” from the charity.
“The question was not did we contact any SEF staff. It was whether there was any direct or indirect benefit to any Suncor Energy staff,” Lynes said. “And of course it was no. Of course not. We’re a national, registered charity. We follow the rules.”
After TRI filled out and returned the questionnaire, SEF cut ties. Weeks after a second installment on the pledge was due in April 2025, “we were informed that our work no longer aligned with SEF’s strategy and no further funding would be provided,” Lynes wrote. “We had not received any explanation for this abrupt shift from full alignment to none. While we understand that things change and relationships break up, we also believe that how you break up matters.”
Suncor’s reputation for ‘trust-based’ philanthropy
Before long, the Resilience Institute learned that other charities and post-secondary institutions, not all of them working in the climate space, had received similar treatment.
“The concern is, quite honestly, that it’s not just about us,” Lynes said. “Suncor was known for its trust-based philanthropy. They were leaders in it. And the way they’re behaving? Corporations don’t do that.”
Even if Suncor’s strategy changed that quickly and drastically, “why not just pay out the charities?” she asked. “$500,000 for them is a rounding error, and it was a commitment. So I don’t see how they could get in trouble for paying that out.”
TRI has no legal recourse because the funding was a pledge, not a contract. The purpose of that legal distinction, Lynes explained, is to protect individual donors or small businesses that make commitments in good faith, but legitimately can’t follow through when circumstances change.
We are in the business to make money and as much of it as possible, and everybody starting with me needs to see how they do that.
– Richard Kruger, CEO of Suncor Energy
“It is not there to protect billion-dollar corporations that can pay a pledge,” she said. “They’ve used that clause to get out of [their commitment], and that affects others.”
Sources have told The Energy Mix that Suncor has fired all the foundation’s former staff except for one administrator. The senior advisor responsible for TRI’s funding, Dani DeBoice, announced on LinkedIn in November 2024 that her 10-year stint at Suncor had come to an end.
A warning not to fly ‘too close to the sun’
After receiving only minimal responses to two lawyer’s letters to SEF, the second one “maybe a bit nicer than a demand letter,” Lynes said she issued two LinkedIn posts – one on the TRI page, the other on her own professional profile – that explained the situation without calling Suncor out by name.
“We are shocked to learn that one of our major donors has informed us of a decision to renege on a multi-year pledge,” she wrote. “We had no advanced warning, no chance to prepare. It is our understanding that many other charities across Canada are suddenly experiencing the same circumstance from this same donor. The corporation is known for its integrity and business ethic so, we are hoping that they will do the right thing.”
The two posts received just a handful of responses.
“It is not ok to turn your back on commitments, period. Especially with charities and even more appalling is with a charity that works with communities (Indigenous and non-Indigenous),” wrote TRI board member Justin Bourque, president and founder of Fort McMurray-based Âsokan Generational Developments. “I hope they realize this and do the right thing.”
“A poignant analogy and reminder, Laura,” wrote former SEF executive director Laurie Hewson, in response to Lynes’ personal post on the situation. “How to transition well, and with minimal impact to others, is something for all of us to be reminded of.”
“This is appalling, Richard Kruger,” added communications consultant Sofi Papamarko. “Do the right thing and donate $900,000 of your nearly $40-million annual salary to The Resilience Institute to make good on your promises.”
That’s when things got heated.
“Within 24 hours, their lawyer called our lawyer,” expressing concern about the Institute’s social media activity, Lynes recounted. “Our lawyer said, ‘Are you talking about two posts that don’t even mention Suncor or SEF?’ And their lawyer said it’s a small community, and people can make inferences.”
When TRI responded that Suncor was fretting over its reputation when this was a matter of integrity, “the lawyer said we want you to know that your client is on our radar and they’re flying too close to the sun. End of conversation.”
“We were very clear in our messaging that we do not have any interest in making them look bad,” Lynes told The Energy Mix. “We have an interest in making sure this circumstance does not reflect poorly on our reputation and on us financially. What I would really love to see is for Suncor to say, ‘we made a mistake, we’re sorry, here’s the funding, and we all move forward in good ways.’ Maybe somebody made a mistake. But to double down on that and be defensive… who does this to charities?’”
A month after he took over as CEO in April 2023, Kruger made it clear that Suncor’s operating philosophy was about to change.
“I consider myself to be reasonably decisive and very competitive,” and “I play to win,” Kruger told analysts in May. “We are in the business to make money and as much of it as possible, and everybody starting with me needs to see how they do that.”
Suncor, which reported $1.6 billion in profits on record production for the first three months of this year, has not responded to a Friday afternoon email and voicemails to its media team from The Energy Mix, requesting comment for this story. Suncor Energy Foundation sent an auto-reply indicating it can’t reply to all queries.
Suncor’s website still brags about the more than $24 million SEF distributed in 2023, and the more than $284 million it handed out in the 25+ years since its inception.
“The Suncor Energy Foundation (SEF) believes in connecting business and community strengths to make a positive difference in society,” the website states. “Through partnerships and relationships with those who are seeking solutions, we aim to spark change and propel progress for generations ahead.”
But a link to the foundation’s 2023 contributions report no longer points to the actual document. A link to its voluntary employee donations program, SunCares, states that “due to changes to the Competition Act, pending regulatory guidance, this document is provided for historical information purposes only and does not constitute an active or current representation of Suncor Energy Inc. Suncor fully disclaims any liability for the use of such information for any purpose.”
That was a reference to new anti-greenwashing provisions that prompted the Pathways Alliance, of which Suncor is a member, to scrub all messaging from its website after legislation passed Parliament in June 2024. Lawyers representing anti-greenwashing organizations have repeatedly responded that companies won’t face any pushback if they just tell the truth about their activities, and the federal Competition Bureau confirmed last month the legislation allows any marketing claims that aren’t false.
Mitchell Beer is the founding publisher of The Energy Mix.
This article was first published by The Energy Mix. Read the original story here.
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