Toronto Politician Moves to Ban Misleading Fossil Fuel Ads on Transit

Oil and gas greenwashing is a major obstacle to climate action, city councillor Dianne Saxe tells DeSmog.
Geoff Dembicki
Geoff Dembicki
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A full-wrap Canada Action ad appears on a Toronto streetcar. Credit: OilsandsAction / Twitter
A full-wrap Canada Action ad appears on a Toronto streetcar. Credit: OilsandsAction / Twitter

A Toronto city councillor today published a motion proposing to restrict false and misleading advertising from oil and gas lobby groups on public transit, DeSmog can report. 

The motion recommends that the Toronto Transit Commission, more commonly known as TTC, decline any new ads from the Pathways Alliance and Canada Action, two of Canadaโ€™s most prominent fossil fuel marketing organizations. 

That would include ads such as the full bus wrap purchased last year by Pathways Alliance, which lists Canadaโ€™s top six oil and gas producers โ€” Suncor, MEG, Imperial, ConocoPhillips, Cenovus and Canadian Natural โ€” with the text โ€œour net-zero plan is in motion.โ€

The Pathways ad doesnโ€™t mention that crude oil production in Canada, one of the main obstacles to achieving the countryโ€™s net-zero climate targets, is currently at record highs

Toronto City Councillor Dianne Saxe introduced the anti-greenwashing motion on Sept. 10. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

โ€œFossil fuel greenwashing is a major obstacle to appropriate and essential climate policies,โ€ the motionโ€™s sponsor, city councillor Dianne Saxe, told DeSmog. โ€œFor the TTC to carry misleading fossil fuel ads worsens the greenwashing by implicitly lending the TTCโ€™s brand and credibility to the contents of those ads.โ€

Canada Action founder Cody Battershill disputed the characterization in an email response to DeSmog. โ€œThe language of this motion misrepresents the work that we have done and the details surrounding the ad standards process,โ€ he said. โ€œAll of our messaging on advertising in Ontario is for the betterment of Canadians and our quality of life.โ€

The Pathways Alliance didnโ€™t respond to DeSmogโ€™s request for comment. 

Introducing the motion is just the first step. It now has to be passed by the TTC Board, a process that will require producing a report, Saxe said. She also plans to put forward a second motion to Toronto City Council restricting fossil fuel ads on city-owned property. 

โ€œItโ€™s incredibly significant,โ€ Melissa Aronczyk, a communications professor at Rutgers University who studies oil and gas greenwashing strategies, told DeSmog. โ€œPeople are increasingly lodging complaints with municipal organizations and public transit agencies saying โ€˜I donโ€™t want to see advocacy for fossil fuels when weโ€™re in a climate crisis.โ€™โ€ 

Aronczyk co-authored a peer-reviewed study in the journal Energy Research & Social Science earlier this year that found โ€œnumerous indicators of greenwashing in Pathways Alliance’s public communication.โ€ The organization, which is comprised of companies responsible for 95 percent of Canadian oil sands production, for years has loudly advertised a plan to achieve โ€œnet-zeroโ€ in its operations while quietly accelerating expansion of the fossil fuels at the heart of the climate crisis, the study found. 

That study was cited in the new Toronto motion, along with recent changes to Canadaโ€™s Competition Act which prohibit companies from making misleading environmental claims to Canadians. As those changes were passed this summer, the Pathways Alliance and its members including Imperial Oil removed mentions of net-zero claims from their websites. Canadaโ€™s advertising regulator meanwhile has determined that pro-natural gas ads from Canada Action contain inaccurate and misleading claims. 

โ€œGiven the urgency of the climate crisis, and the documented greenwashing by fossil fuel companies, the TTC should no longer accept fossil fuel advocacy advertising,โ€ the Toronto motion reads.

The motion comes after a Montreal bike share company pulled ads from the Pathways Alliance and as environmental advocates demand the city of Ottawa prohibit fossil fuel advertising in public spaces. 

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called in June for governments around the world to ban oil and gas ads, saying that โ€œmany in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action โ€” with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns.โ€

Nevertheless, the oil and gas advocacy group Canada Action paid for ads wrapping Toronto streetcars this summer reading โ€œAs long as the world needs oil & gas, it should be Canadian.โ€ 

Messages like this are a potentially potent form of climate obstruction, because they aim to convince the public and policymakers that the massive and growing greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas producers shouldnโ€™t be regulated, Aronczyk argued. 

She said the new Toronto motion is part of a global movement pushing back against the fossil fuel industryโ€™s delay strategies. โ€œItโ€™s really heartening to feel that thereโ€™s this groundswell of people who are less and less willing to put up with this advertising,โ€ she said. 

Geoff Dembicki
Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate journalist based in New York City. He is author of The Petroleum Papers and Are We Screwed?

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