It seems NDP MP Charlie Angus has hit a nerve.
Last week, heeding the call of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), Angus tabled a private member’s bill in the House of Commons to prohibit fossil fuel advertising. As doctors and other health professionals across the country have been saying, “Fossil fuel ads make us sick.”
It’s long been my view that if you are looking for a shorthand heuristic to judge the strength and merit of a climate policy, look at the reaction of the fossil fuel companies. If a climate policy is announced and fossil fuel companies are on the stage claiming they can get behind the plan, then friends, you do not have a climate emergency plan. If on the other hand, the oil and gas companies are protesting loudly and you can see panic in their eyes, then you have a plan with real potential impact.
Which is all well and fine, until you realize the way you learn about new innovations tends to be through advertisement of some sort - word of mouth is a form of advertisement, and, if you can make it work for you: It is by far the most effective.
Thing is: Companies are out to make money, people want to provide affordable access to their product, and when you combine these two desires together - you get advertisements.
The key to making sure it is fine is, regulate and enforce - stop false advertising in it’s tracks. When an advertisement makes a claim: Make them back it up, or face severe economic sanctions such as fines, requirement to spend the same money and time on putting out a recall of the message in the advertisement, and so on. Do that a few times and allow for automatic re-voting on issues where false advertisement was used to oppose a bill and you will quickly see all of that scummy behavior go away.
The problem right now, is companies aren’t really penalized sufficiently for false information spread and other behavior: So, the fine is just a cost of doing business. Just look at cities with “Catch and Release” policies regarding crime - and it is starting to go through the roof. And it’s not the criminals being impacted negatively: It’s the law abiding citizens who are finding their amenities locked up, their grociery stores barring entrance, box stores closing down. This is the same issue so many people have with gun control laws: Law abiding citizens are NOT the ones causing headaches - it’s the people willing to go to a sketchy alley at 2 in the morning willing to pay extra to skip the background check who are absolutely causing problems. It’s the organized crime syndicates that can get their hands on a CNC mill and a machinist who will make the firearms for them - and they will pay.
Unless Law Breakers face real consequences: Nothing changes, and the problem perpetuates or even worse: Gets worse.