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 Canada’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 Canada’s top six oil and gas producers — Suncor, MEG, Imperial, ConocoPhillips, Cenovus and Canadian Natural — with the text “our net-zero plan is in motion.”

The Pathways ad doesn’t mention that crude oil production in Canada, one of the main obstacles to achieving the country’s net-zero climate targets, is currently at record highs. 

“Fossil fuel greenwashing is a major obstacle to appropriate and essential climate policies,” the motion’s sponsor, city councillor Dianne Saxe, told DeSmog. “For the TTC to carry misleading fossil fuel ads worsens the greenwashing by implicitly lending the TTC’s brand and credibility to the contents of those ads.”

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

The Pathways Alliance didn’t respond to DeSmog’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. 

“It’s incredibly significant,” Melissa Aronczyk, a communications professor at Rutgers University who studies oil and gas greenwashing strategies, told DeSmog. “People are increasingly lodging complaints with municipal organizations and public transit agencies saying ‘I don’t want to see advocacy for fossil fuels when we’re in a climate crisis.’” 

Aronczyk co-authored a peer-reviewed study in the journal Energy Research & Social Science earlier this year that found “numerous indicators of greenwashing in Pathways Alliance’s public communication.” 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 “net-zero” 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 Canada’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. Canada’s advertising regulator meanwhile has determined that pro-natural gas ads from Canada Action contain inaccurate and misleading claims. 

“Given the urgency of the climate crisis, and the documented greenwashing by fossil fuel companies, the TTC should no longer accept fossil fuel advocacy advertising,” 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 “many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action — with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns.”

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

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 shouldn’t be regulated, Aronczyk argued. 

She said the new Toronto motion is part of a global movement pushing back against the fossil fuel industry’s delay strategies. “It’s really heartening to feel that there’s this groundswell of people who are less and less willing to put up with this advertising,” she said.