Canadian government: Please stop greenwashing tar sands pipelines

This past June, the Canadian Parliament amended the Competition Act to crack down on corporate greenwashing. These amendments prohibit — for the first time, believe it or not — companies from making groundless claims about their environmental impacts. 

 "[W]ithin minutes", a group of tar sands companies called the Pathways Alliance "removed its entire online presence.” All six members of the group — Canadian Natural Resources, Suncor, Cenovus, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and ConocoPhillips — "deleted their corporate sustainability reports from their own websites."

The federal government's small but important move to protect society against fossil fuel propaganda came as a welcome surprise to us. At the same time, however, it brings into stark relief the question of how to stop the government itself from greenwashing.  

Recently, the Canadian government dumped a bucketload of greenwash and other disinformation on a growing international campaign to shut down a 71-year-old pipeline carrying tar sands oil through the heart of the Great Lakes: Enbridge Line 5.

More than 5,000 individuals and 300 organizations have called on the Canadian government to stop engaging in diplomatic shenanigans that interfere with tribal, state and federal actions in the U.S. against Line 5. MP Mike Morrice presented our petition to this effect in the House of Commons. Pam Damoff, parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs (consular affairs), issued a response on behalf of the government.

The Canadian government's so-called response ignores all the "whereas" clauses in our petition, and offers a litany of easily-refutable falsehoods instead.  

For example, it does not address any of the following: the imminent threat Line 5 poses to Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron; the wildlife species, 40 million people's drinking water, properties, businesses and jobs depending on these Great Lakes; the inherent and treaty rights of Indigenous Nations throughout the watershed, to protect their ways of life against pipelines; or the resulting call by the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to decommission Line 5.

Failing to even mention these or many of our other points, the government's response instead serves up environmental and economic platitudes that are demonstrably false.  

For example, the government touts the federal "price on pollution" (carbon tax) as a success in "significantly cutting pollution across the country." In truth, Canadian greenhouse gas pollution has been rising in most years since the Liberals came to power in 2015, including the three most recent years for which estimates are available.  Though taxes and/or caps can help reduce emissions, Canada's carbon tax has failed to do the trick by itself.

Besides being untrue, the government's claim about the carbon tax also changes the subject. Our petition concerns a pipeline, which serves primarily to facilitate Canadian production of fossil fuel.  

In contrast, the carbon tax relates exclusively to Canadian consumption of fossil fuel. The distinction is important, not least because the fossil fuel produced in this country does more than twice as much damage to the global climate as the fossil fuel consumed here does.  

This calamity is getting worse, mostly due to accelerating rates of oil extraction from the Alberta tar sands. Rather than aggravating this by permitting, defending, or buying new tar sands pipelines — all of which the Liberals have done — the government should heed the call by the International Energy Agency to prevent construction of any new fossil fuel infrastructure.

Besides greenwashing Canada's greenhouse gas pollution, the government's response also stoops to at least nine other points of disinformation.  

For instance, they cite a paper commissioned by a front group for the oil industry, claiming that shutting down Enbridge Line 5 would risk job loss. In truth, fossil fuel creates fewer jobs per dollar invested than just about any other industry.  

Indeed, the fossil fuel industry has been shedding jobs even while ramping up production. In contrast, ecologically sound investment tends to boost employment.  Meanwhile, over a million jobs around the Great Lakes are threatened by the spills that continued use of Line 5 would make inevitable.

Federal law now prohibits corporations from making statements about the environment that fly in the face of the evidence. But we also need ways to stop the federal government from greenwashing and otherwise misinforming the public about tar sands pipelines.  

Constituents in Secretary Damoff's riding recently met with her in Oakville (through which runs another aging tar sands pipeline, Enbridge Line 9). Their plea was to stop spreading disinformation about tar sands pipelines, start telling the truth to Canadians and the world and help get the government to cease and desist from spurious diplomatic maneuvers to keep decrepit carbon bomb Enbridge Line 5 going.

Gregory M. Mikkelson, Cross Border Organizing Working Group; Arlene Slocombe, Water Watchers; Jessica Murray, Sierra Club Canada