Description
Buses, trams, rental bikes, and bus shelters in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal have featured ads promoting the Pathways Alliance, a coalition of Canada’s six largest oil sands companies, for several months. On August 15 2023, Montreal’s public bike-rental agency, Bixi, announced that it had asked Outfront, an advertising company, to remove all Pathways advertising from its system.
While the oil and gas industry lobby group is under investigation for allegations of greenwashing, it has been marketing its members as leaders on the road to net zero on public transit agencies in Canada.
A Pathways’ advertisement on a Bixi docking station read “Le captage du carbone est une étape importante vers des activités d’exploitation carboneutre,” or “Carbon capture is an important step towards carbon neutral resource extraction.”
Canada’s Competition Bureau launched an inquiry into Pathways Alliance in April over allegations of false or misleading advertising that may have misled the public. The Pathways Alliance includes Canadian Natural, Cenovus, Imperial, and Suncor, and represents 95 percent of Canada’s oil sands production. DeSmog previously investigated the organization and found it had bought ads that distorted search engine results on Google.
Ads with similar messages disappeared from Montreal transit agency bus shelters the same day as Bixi’s announcement. Manuel Lopez, director of operations and commercial projects with Transgesco, the Montreal transit agency’s business subsidiary, told DeSmog that this was purely coincidental.
Bixi’s communications service told DeSmog that while advertising throughout its system is handled by Outfront, “Bixi is an organization that promotes environmentally friendly active transportation,” and, as such, “Bixi has asked Outfront to remove this advertisement, and they are complying with this request.”