CALGARY — Splashed across billboards and city buses, onnewspaper spreads and Facebook feeds, the "Let's Clear the Air" ad campaign by the Pathways Alliance group of oilsands companies is a multi-million-dollar public relations blitz by an industry keen to show it's committed to helping fight climate change.
Under Canada's Competition Act, it only takes six signatories to a deceptive advertising complaint to compel the bureau to launch an investigation. But environmentalists argue the ads are misleading because they don't make it clear that oilsands firms are actually planning to increase oil output overall — their net-zero goals only apply to the actual extraction process, not the product they produce.
"To get a complaint to the Competition Bureau, I think it did surprise us initially because we sort of feel we’re listening and responding to what’s being asked of industry," said Kendall Dilling, Pathways Alliance president. But Leah Temper with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment — a group that has backed three Competition Bureau complaints — said Canada lags behind many other countries on this issue.