EthicalOil.org's Unethical Campaign

An oil sands PR campaign would be much better served if it didn't resort to name-calling and false dichotomies.

Recently departed Tory communications whiz kid Alykhan Velshi, all of 27 years old, has launched an ad campaign highlighting the merits of Canada's “ethical oil,” claiming that Alberta's oil sands are morally a better option for Western consumers than oil from the Middle East and elsewhere. The editorialists of The Globe and Mail herald the campaign as a means of counteracting all the spin coming out from environmentalists who see Fort McMurray as an engine for climactic disaster. “It's a necessary and direct response to the salvos of some environmental groups,” says the Globe, calling Velshi's project a “welcome effort to level the playing field.” We'll admit that the dialogue over the oil sands has been pretty lopsided, but fighting spin with even more egregious spin (Velshi can't help but call all countries with oil besides Canada “bastards”) will probably just end up handicapping the whole project in the long run.

EthicalOil.org hasn't gone unnoticed across the pond, where The Guardian's Leo Hickman wonders if the oil sands ought to be called “conflict oil” as well, given the depths of Chinese involvement in the fields' development. (We'll add that Canadian energy companies, such as Suncor, have extensive interests in such "bastard" lands as Libya and Syria, too, which kind of undermines the whole ethical argument). Hickman notes the duplicity in Velshi's methods, as the ads put the oil sands “in the binary context of goodies and baddies, whereby Canada gets to play the good guy and any 'conflict oil'-producing nation that isn't a 'liberal democracy' gets to play the baddie.” Reducing complex environmental, geopolitical, and economic concerns to a yes/no answer is simple and effective messaging, no doubt. But it also ignores the complicity that Canadian energy companies have had in helping out the so-called bastards remain afloat.

While still essentially proselytizing for oil interests, Peter Burn takes to iPolitics.ca to show that making a case for using oil sands doesn't have to resort to juvenile name calling. Burn, writing as Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird sits down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss, among much else, the proposed TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline, suggests Baird to pull out all the stops to make sure the pipeline is as environmentally safe as possible, as well as further measures to integrate American and Canadian energy standards. Among Burn's propositions are new performance standards for oil refineries and tougher emissions standards for oil sands facilities, and while those are unlikely to happen overnight, they would be a small price to pay for energy companies to have their crude flowing throughout the U.S. Good public relations doesn't seek to paper over the faults of what the spinner is trying to sell. Velshi would be wise to remember that offering solutions to problems earns a lot more credibility than simply whitewashing them.