Toronto city council has taken a step toward banning misleading fossil-fuel advertising on city property, building on federal anti-greenwashing rules and a similar proposal approved by the city’s transit agency.
It’s the latest in a series of city-level moves across Canada, including in Ottawa and Montreal, that seek to target greenwashing, The Canadian Press reports.
Toronto councillors passed a motion last Thursday that directs city staff to report back next year on a possible draft ban.
Though it stopped short of asking for a full prohibition on ads that advocate for fossil fuels, environmental groups that have been lobbying for a crackdown say it’s a welcome first step.
“This is an incredibly important mechanism, essentially, to stop deceptive advertising practices that really mislead the public and have contributed to delaying and derailing our urgent need to transition off fossil fuels,” said Dr. Mili Roy, spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.
The motion suggests an ad could still be accepted if it’s consistent with the city’s net-zero emission plan and complies with new federal rules. The anti-greenwashing rules added to the Competition Act in late June put the onus on advertisers to back up their environmental claims.
Oil and gas groups have long faced accusations that they use advertising to mislead the public about documented climate effects and environmental risks of producing and burning fossil fuels.
The preamble to Toronto’s council motion said companies have used their influence to undermine emissions reduction policies.
Pathways Alliance, one of two fossil-fuel advocacy groups called out in the motion, said it has a role to play in “important conversations about the environment and resource development.” The group is a consortium of Canada’s major oilsands companies.
“We remain committed to communicating, including use of advertising, on behalf of the oilsands industry and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians working in our industry,” President Kendall Dilling said in a statement.
The Toronto Transit Commission voted last month to bring in a new pre-screening policy for ads from Pathways and an industry front group, Canada Action, to ensure they comply with federal rules. Like the city council motion, it asked staff to report back next year with a ban proposal.
Coun. Dianne Saxe, who tabled both motions, suggested the ads are a tiny slice of the advertising pie, telling staff they comprised just 0.6% of TTC ad revenue.
Canada Action said such motions “continue to mislead the public” about how energy and natural resources “make life more affordable” in Canada.
“Efforts to restrict public conversations about our natural resources puts our economy at further risk and only makes these issues more polarizing,” the group said in a statement. “All of our advertising has always been, and always will be sourced, cited, and accurate.”
Earlier this year, an Ottawa city committee also singled out fossil fuel advocacy in directing staff to review possible changes to the city’s advertising policy.
In Montreal, the transit agency’s advertising subsidiary is looking into the issue, too.
“We don’t like when our buses or Métro are used to [promote] fossil fuel,s” said Coun. Éric Alan Caldwell, board chair with the Société de transport de Montréal.
“We don’t like it, we don’t want it, and we want to be (the) flagship for sustainable mobility.”
Cities are looking at bringing policies into line with new federal requirements rather than banning all fossil fuel ads outright, which could result in stiffer legal challenges.
Advertisers in Canada already faced penalties for false or misleading ads under the Competition Act, but the anti-greenwashing provisions added earlier this year go further. The law now requires advertisers to produce evidence backing up any environmental or climate change-related claims “based on internationally recognized methodology.”
The federal Competition Bureau has opened consultations on how it plans to enforce the new provisions.
Oilsands groups say the new language is too vague and could leave them vulnerable to legal action. But environmental groups have argued that the international standards in question have already been developed by the United Nations and the International Energy Agency (and shouldn’t be a problem for the companies if they’re, y’know, telling the truth—Ed.).
Research has suggested greenwashing is a pervasive issue. A 2021 sweep by European authorities of hundreds of online claims from various business sectors found nearly half were either false or deceptive.
France has banned most fossil fuel ads, and Amsterdam barred them on its subway system. Picking up on longstanding comparisons by climate advocates, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged all countries to enact bans similar to those that prohibit tobacco ads.
Even before the recent federal changes, environmental groups used Competition Bureau complaint mechanisms to call out alleged greenwashing.
Last year, the bureau launched a formal inquiry into the Pathways Alliance’s “Let’s Clear the Air” campaign after a complaint from Greenpeace Canada.
The oilsands industry was promoting its claim that it could achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with a plan that includes spending C$16.5 billion to build a massive carbon capture and storage project. The industry has since made it clear it won’t proceed with the plan without further, lavish subsidies from federal and provincial taxpayers, and CCS developers have admitted their technology won’t be ready for widespread deployment in time to meet national and global climate targets.
In its landmark synthesis report in March, 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change pinpointed CCS as one of the most expensive, least effective ways to reduce climate pollution by 2030, delivering about one-tenth the benefit of the most affordable, effective options at far higher cost. Even based on peer-reviewed science that was nearly 18 months old by the time the synthesis was published, the IPCC said solar, wind, and methane reductions could deliver “large contributions” to emission reductions this decade, largely at a cost below US$20 per tonne of carbon dioxide or equivalent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2024.
