Pathways Alliance knows it can’t back up its claims

It hasn’t even been signed into law yet, but an anti-greenwashing provision in a federal omnibus bill making its way through the House of Commons is already having an impact on how the fossil fuel industry and its boosters conduct themselves.

Through an amendment to the Competition Act contained in Bill C-59, which implements aspects of the government’s fall economic statement, the Canadian government will force companies to provide evidence for any claim they make about their product protecting the environment or mitigating climate change — an entirely reasonable request.

It’s absolutely damning that the Pathways Alliance, a coalition of the six largest oil and gas companies in Canada formed to extract subsidies from federal and provincial governments for unproven carbon capture technology, responded to this impending regulation by wiping its entire internet presence.

As of June 19, visitors to the alliance’s website are greeted with three paragraphs in English and French warning that Bill C-59 “will create significant uncertainty for Canadian companies that want to communicate publicly about the work they are doing to improve their environmental performance, including to address climate change.”

The alliance promises that this temporary measure “is a direct consequence of the new legislation and is not related to our belief in the truth and accuracy of our environmental communications.” But that doesn’t hold up, given that Pathways is explicitly responding to legislation that deals with the “truth and accuracy” of environmental claims.

Pathways’ entire business model, as this outlet recently reported, is based on opposing concrete measures to reduce emissions, such as the upcoming oil and gas emissions cap, while supporting technology that, despite its shoddy track record, will allow fossil fuel companies to drill to the last drop at the public’s expense, all while claiming to be part of the solution to climate change.

The lobby group’s response was mimicked less drastically by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which announced on its website that it “has chosen to reduce the amount of information it makes available on its website and other digital platforms.”

This is simply not how an industry confident in its public standing behaves. These groups’ responses, Keith Brooks of Environmental Defence Canada told the CBC, essentially amount to “an admission of guilt.”

The Changing Face of Climate Denial

Now that the old climate denial has fallen out of fashion in mainstream circles, the industry has adjusted how it goes about denying its products’ climate impact.

Instead of explicitly denying the connection between fossil fuel extraction and climate change, which they’ve been aware of since the 1950s, fossil fuel interests are making the preposterous claim that they can increase oil production while reducing emissions, if only the public will provide them billions of dollars for labyrinthine carbon capture and storage projects on stolen Indigenous land.

This is precisely why Canada’s six biggest oil companies pooled their resources to create Pathways: they regard greenwashing as the industry's last chance to continue maximizing shareholder profits in a world that’s increasingly aware of the devastating climate future awaiting us without drastic action.

Remove Pathways’ ability to freely pollute the airwaves and transit hubs with unsubstantiated claims about their commitment to fighting climate change, their entire house of cards collapses and with it, industry’s latest delay tactic.

Pathways has been under investigation by the Competition Bureau since March 2023 after Greenpeace Canada called into question the accuracy of its claim that members are actively reducing emissions in pursuit of the internationally recognized goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

The greenwashing provision of Bill C-59 will no doubt bolster Greenpeace’s case, placing the burden on fossil fuel companies to demonstrate that they’re helping achieve net zero, rather than simply taking their word for it.

Naturally, the oil and gas industry and its wholly owned subsidiary in the Alberta government claim that they’re being silenced through an unjust “gag order.”

Premier Danielle Smith, who has a long track record of weaponizing the language of free speech to legitimize scientific misinformation, accused the feds of “attempting to make the promotion of Alberta’s energy industry illegal,” which is of course only true if that promotion is rooted in deception.

Susan Wright, a Calgary-based political blogger and seasoned corporate lawyer, noted that proposed regulation is precisely the opposite of a gag order, as it “requires companies to say more, not less, about how they’re going to achieve their climate mitigation objectives.”

Rather than elucidate how they plan to achieve net zero, fossil fuel companies and their advocacy organization chose to gag themselves, running away from the unproven claims they’ve been permitted to make with impunity thus far.

Evidently, Bill C-59’s anti-greenwashing provision is already having its intended effect. The real question, as with so many of the federal Liberals’ recent encouraging climate policies, from proposing to cap oil and gas emissions to clean electricity regulations, is what took them so long?