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As this year’s United Nations climate summit hits the halfway mark, newly obtained documents show how the Liberal government gave Canada’s oil and gas lobbyists a platform to polish the sector’s reputation at the same event in 2022. Days later, the same government began a process of cracking down on misleading environmental messaging.
Internal correspondence obtained by The Narwhal shows the Pathways Alliance, a group of Canadian oilsands companies, proposing to Environment and Climate Change Canada that it host a special event at the United Nations climate summit in 2022, aiming “to begin to change the international narrative of [the] oilsands.”
The companies told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government one of their “desired outcomes” of the event at the Canada Pavilion at the COP27 conference in Egypt was an “improved perception of the oilsands among international audiences.”
And, documents show, their “first choice” of when to hold the event was during a day of the climate summit devoted to the theme of “decarbonization.”
The lobbyists wanted to demonstrate “alignment” with Canada on emissions reduction, “showcase” their desire to achieve net-zero emissions and convey “Canada’s role in global energy security,” they told the government.
COP is regularly criticized for being overly deferential to fossil fuel industries and oil-producing countries. The London-based non-profit InfluenceMap says less than a fifth of companies at this year’s COP29 in Azerbaijan have policies that align with climate science. And anti-corruption non-profit Global Witness accused the host country of facilitating fossil fuel deals, to which its president — who recently called oil and gas a “gift of God” — shot back about “Western fake news.”
In a response to The Narwhal’s questions about the non-profit’s allegations, a spokesperson for Azerbaijan’s embassy in Canada quoted from a statement by a presidential advisor. The country is “not ashamed of its role in industry,” the statement said, and while oil and gas revenues are key to Azerbaijan’s economy, it’s also working to build up wind and solar power.
“We should ask ourselves what these summits are for — virtue-signalling or making possible this different future? Climate purity is inimical to the latter,” it said.
Around the time of the oilsands lobby’s event at the 2022 summit, dozens of civil society organizations called on Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault to reverse course, arguing the industry was greenwashing. But Guilbeault defended the influx of oil lobbyists, saying they “can have their voices heard just like everyone else.”
Just days after the event, however, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada launched consultations that would eventually lead to new provisions in competition law, putting the onus on companies to have evidence for environmental claims they make about their businesses or their products.
Shortly after these anti-greenwashing provisions became law this past summer, through Bill C-59, Pathways Alliance deleted content off its website and social media.
The documents raise questions about why the Environment Department allowed the oilsands lobby to control the message during the event in 2022, immediately before the Industry Department started the ball rolling on what would become anti-greenwashing rules that the oilsands companies said silenced them.
“Clearly there was a move here, yes. Something shifted,” said Mark Winfield, a co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative at York University and a professor in environmental and urban change.
“There’s clearly a shift in direction here, from saying this was okay, to saying ‘No, actually we’ve got a serious problem with this and we’re prepared to enact legislation or regulations to try and contain it.”
Asked if Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne agreed there was a shift in the government’s thinking on oilsands messaging around the time of the 2022 climate summit, spokesperson Audrey Milette said the rationale behind Bill C-59 was that “Canadians expect transparency and honesty from all industries, including the oil and gas sector.”
“The amendments in C-59 are designed to hold all businesses to the same high standard — ensuring that sustainability claims are not only credible, but verifiable. This is about fostering trust in the marketplace and giving consumers the confidence to make informed choices,” said Milette.
Pathways Alliance did not respond to questions sent by The Narwhal before publication.
The oil industry has tried to fight an international reputation for being “dirty,” such as when former United States president Barack Obama referred to oil from Alberta, the home of the oilsands, as “dirtier crude oil” in 2015. The viscous, sulphuric crude oil characteristic of the oilsands requires more energy and equipment to process than some other crude oil sources around the world.
The industry has taken steps to address the carbon pollution that goes into producing each barrel of oil, including with its latest proposal to cut emissions using carbon capture technology. But the oilsands remains the largest contributor to Canada’s oil and gas emissions, and it presents serious health risks to people living downstream.
At 87 million tonnes in 2022, the oilsands emitted more than the entire province of Quebec that year. The oilsands is the source of the majority of oil that Canada produces.
And that’s just from production. There’s also carbon pollution created when Canada’s crude oil, most of which is exported, is turned into products like gasoline and combusted for energy. The heating effects of excess greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes climate change, which carries its own set of health risks.
The public description of the oilsands lobby’s 2022 event at the Canada Pavilion, which was called “Collaborating on Solutions in the Oil Sands,” made no mention of the industry’s explicit intent to use the event to boost its reputation.
It did discuss “collaboration and partnerships” with government and Indigenous communities, and some details of its carbon capture plan.
Executives from Pathways Alliance and member company Cenovus wound up participating in the event. Canada’s delegation to COP27 that year also included high-ranking staff from two other members of Pathways: Suncor and ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil.
According to a description posted on the government’s website, the pavilion is supposed to be a space that “reflects Canada’s determination to advance ambitious climate action at all levels in this critical decade.”
The oilsands lobby’s application to host the event followed a series of emails from a Pathways Alliance representative to senior Canadian public servants asking to join the delegation.
The representative, whose name is redacted in the documents, emailed Environment Canada’s chief negotiator on climate issues at the time, Catherine Stewart, saying the group was “very interested in being part of the Canadian business delegation to COP27.”
They added they thought Canada “may be looking for speakers or other programming” for the pavilion in Egypt “and I’m sure Pathways would be very interested in helping there as well.”
A few weeks later, Stewart, who is now Canada’s ambassador for climate change, connected the group with officials planning both the delegation and the pavilion.
The Narwhal reached out to Stewart for an interview. Environment and Climate Change Canada spokesperson Nicole Allen sent a statement in response.
National pavilions at climate summits are “high-visibility spaces that provide countries and organizations with a unique opportunity to showcase their climate efforts, host events and offer a central networking hub for key partners and stakeholders,” Allen wrote.
“The Canada Pavilion at COP27 provided a venue for Canada to convene key partners and stakeholders to advance global actions on climate change through the lenses of ambition, partnership and implementation.”
In a report published in August, Environmental Defence said it examined 1,255 meetings between fossil fuel lobbyists and government that appeared in the federal lobbying registry. It found if the Pathways Alliance and its members’ activity were taken together, it represented the most active lobbying collective in the country in 2023.
“The access to COP delegations is incredibly concerning. Canada showcasing oil and gas companies at their pavilion is incredibly hypocritical at climate negotiations,” said associate director of national climate Julia Levin.
“These companies are the very reason we’re in a climate crisis.”
The UN’s preliminary list of delegates to the climate summit happening now shows two Pathways Alliance officials registered to attend, as well as representatives from most of the group’s member companies. Registered delegates do not necessarily end up attending. The lobby group does not appear to have been granted any official Canada event space this year.
The Narwhal asked Environment and Climate Change Canada if it could confirm the country’s delegation to COP29. The department said it would not release the list of delegates until after the conference was over.
The decarbonization-focused “collaboration and partnerships” with the government and Indigenous communities touted by oilsands lobbyists at the climate summit two years ago are now in question.
For one, Pathways Alliance is now criticizing the government over its proposal to cap emissions from the oil and gas sector.
Despite the government’s insistence that the emissions cap will allow almost as much oil and gas growth as without it, the oilsands lobby calls it a “misguided proposal that will drive cuts in oil and gas production and have a significant, negative impact on Canada’s economy.”
And a new federal tax break for carbon capture technology is not good enough, according to Alex Pourbaix, the executive chair of Cenovus. Writing in the Calgary Herald on Nov. 12, Pourbaix said the industry wants more public subsidies before it will move forward on its major emissions reduction plans.
As well, a provincial regulator’s decision not to carry out an environmental assessment of the group’s carbon capture proposal has soured relations with Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta, where many members already worry about the impact of oilsands tailings ponds on their water quality and health.
“There’s a reason the [Alberta Energy Regulator] doesn’t want to put the Pathways project through an environmental assessment,” Athabasca Chipewyan Chief Allan Adam said in a statement, reacting to the regulator’s decision not to require an assessment of Pathways’ plan for a 400-kilometre pipeline to transport oilsands carbon pollution underground.
“It is because it will expose the environmental impacts, the poor economic viability and the risks to human health.”
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