Dark money is poisoning Canada with pro-oil propaganda

Mar. 7, 2025

In recent years Canadians have been regularly bombarded by a very specific kind of advertisement that claims to represent grassroots interests and opposes any government effort to enforce environmental regulations. They’re the creations of third party advertisers, often little more than an arm's length away from conservative parties and the fossil fuel sector, and are perhaps the single biggest direct source of environmental disinformation in Canada.

These ads exist in a kind of legal grey zone. Because they’re not created by political parties, political advertising regulations don’t apply. And because they’re not directly tied to Big Oil or selling a product or service, false advertising laws don’t apply either. Anyone — including people who work for political parties or in the fossil fuel sector — can claim to be the “concerned citizens” ostensibly behind the sophisticated astroturf campaigns that are gaining influence over vital public debates.

All of this is possible because of Canada’s lax laws on transparency in advertising. 

A recent investigation by Canada’s National Observer shed more light on a problem that environmentalists and investigative reporters have been following for quite some time: the investigation traced several distinct-seeming campaigns back to a single PR firm with deep ties to both conservative parties across Canada and the oil industry. The campaigns, with no obvious connections between them, all used different tactics to push the same anti-regulation, pro-oil message across social media platforms using disinformation and misleading statements. 

Despite no clear sources of income, they spent $153,000 on pro-oil and anti-regulation social media advertising, focused on eight postal code regions in just one month. This is an amount far greater than most genuine grassroots environmental causes have to spend on operations in a given year, let alone advertising.

Most of the ads include false or misleading statements, or promote false and misleading ideas, though they’re often vague enough to escape scrutiny. 

Of the examples traced back to One Persuasion Inc., “government regulation is making you poorer by stifling investment in Canada's oil and gas sector” is a good demonstration of both false information and a misleading idea all in one. Environmental Defence estimated federal subsidies to the fossil fuel sector between 2019 and 2023 amounted to $65 billion. A 2019 study from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) estimated Ontario provides the fossil fuel sector about $700 million annually. Irrespective of the level of government or which party’s in power, Canada’s fossil fuel sector benefits from considerable public investment. 

Big Oil already has plenty of direct and immediate access to the government: someone working for the oil and gas sector lobbies the federal government about five times every working day. And yet, despite the excessive — and effective — lobbying, it’s this further entrenching of fossil fuels that worsens the affordability crisis, and not regulations stifling investment.

It is an overt act of deception to hide the provenance of the pro-oil propaganda appearing on your social media feeds. While Big Oil may have unfettered access to government officials (and pipelines of public money), communities like Thorold still have a degree of local autonomy and can veto major projects. Undermining this autonomy with sophisticated, well-funded astroturfing campaigns is a common denominator linking several similar efforts that are taking place in Canada right now. Recent investigations have revealed a pattern of astroturf organizations, directed by individuals connected to conservative parties and/or the oil and gas sector, running “concerned citizens campaigns” in Regina, in Saskatoon and in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta.

These campaigns poison public discourse by flooding the proverbial “marketplace of ideas” with false and misleading information, to the point that it becomes effectively impossible to have a meaningful public conversation. 

In this case the medium is as deceptive as the message, and in communities lacking adequate local news media, what is in essence nothing more than propaganda might be the sum total of coverage an important issue gets. If you’re wondering how it is that Canadians seem to be leaning into fossil fuels amidst the clear and present danger of the climate crisis, these astroturfing campaigns seem to offer a clear explanation.

There is some hope. When new federal anti-greenwashing laws came into effect last summer, major Canadian oil companies and oil lobbyists scrubbed their websites of their environmental claims. NDP MP Charlie Angus and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) have introduced legislation that would ban fossil fuel advertising in Canada — much in the same way that tobacco advertising has been banned — though the Liberals haven’t indicated they’ll support it. These are positive steps forward.

But more is needed to curb third party advertisers operating in legal grey zones, advancing the interests of Big Oil and the political parties that have made fossil fuels part of their identity. A national inquiry may be the only way to fully expose the dark money web connecting these astroturfing groups with the fossil fuel sector, their lobbyists, and the conservative movement in Canada. Doing so in turn would then allow new laws to be tailored specifically to address this problem.

Canadians have the right to be well informed in advance of critical policy choices made during election season. If political parties and fossil fuel companies are expected to be transparent and not deliberately deceptive, it stands to reason the people running propaganda campaigns on their behalf should be held to the same standard.

[Top: Ads delivered in St. Catharines and Thorold, Ont. on Meta platforms. Images compiled by Rory White.]