Van Geest: City of Ottawa must stop accepting fossil-fuel advertising

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It’s time for the City of Ottawa to ban fossil-fuel promotion in city facilities. Whether advertisements in city facilities or sponsorship of city assets and activities, conducting business with fossil-fuel promoters directly contradicts the city’s values and commitments.

Advertisements promoting fossil fuels currently appear in Brewer and McNabb arenas and in several OC Transpo facilities, including bus shelters and buses. These ads mislead about fossil fuels, with messages such as “Canadian oil and natural gas is part of the solution” to climate change.

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We know, however, that fossil fuels are the problem, not the solution. In fact, fossil fuels are the primary human cause of climate change, according to the American Environmental Protection Agency. How could they be “part of the solution”?

Another ad from the same group reads, “Canadian LNG (liquified natural gas) exports will reduce global emissions.” We know they won’t. What the industry calls “natural gas” is predominantly methane, which traps heat in the atmosphere 25 times more than carbon dioxide.

Yet another ad cynically states that “global oil and natural gas demand is growing,” implying that we should profit from this demand. One ad states this outright: “as long as the world needs oil and natural gas, shouldn’t it be Canadian?”

These ads urge our complicity, even our co-operation, with our planet’s deadly trajectory toward climate disaster. And yet they’re currently displayed in city facilities, visible to the many children who enjoy these facilities and are forming their opinions.

These ads also seem to contradict the city’s own sponsorship and advertising policy. This policy currently reads:

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“All sponsorships and advertising shall be consistent with the City of Ottawa’s vision, mission and values and will not compromise or contradict any by-law or policy of the City, or reflect negatively on the City’s public image.

“The City will not solicit or accept sponsorship or advertising from companies whose reputation could prove detrimental to the City’s public image and/or whose main business is derived from … the support of, or involvement in the production, distribution, and sale of … life-threatening products.”

Accepting advertising money from fossil-fuel promoters certainly reflects negatively on the city’s public image; and fossil fuel products put the city’s assets at risk and threaten lives. As the Supreme Court of Canada observed, “climate change is an existential challenge. It is a threat of the highest order to the country, and indeed to the world.”

We’ve felt climate change’s life-threatening effects in Ottawa too.

Last year, we — and particularly our children, and those with respiratory difficulties — struggled under smoke from wildfires exacerbated by climate change. We also experienced three tornadoes last year, one damaging 125 homes. The 2022 derecho cost the city $50 million and a family their father and husband.

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The less than $13,000 of revenue that fossil fuel ads generate for the city don’t compare to this destruction.

Continuing to permit fossil-fuel promotion contradicts the city’s own approach on climate, which includes declaring a climate emergency in 2019; its Energy Evolution strategy, which calls for a full phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050; and its signing of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2022.

In light of these commitments, promoting fossil fuels is clearly inconsistent “with the City of Ottawa’s vision, mission and values” and does indeed “compromise or contradict (a) by-law or policy of the City.”

That’s why we joined numerous environmental organizations and concerned residents recently to call on Ottawa to prohibit fossil fuel promotion in city facilities.

Fossil fuel promotion has no place in our city, and we urge city council to end it as the city reviews its sponsorship and advertising policy. This is an opportunity for Ottawa to show leadership and realize its values and commitments.

William van Geest is program coordinator for Ecology Ottawa. @EcologyOttawa

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