The City of Ottawa voted in March of this year to consider banning fossil fuel (oil, natural gas) advertisements in city facilities. Why would they do this, I wondered.
Banning advertisements from gas companies? What are Ottawa city councillors concerned about?
Are they troubled about arguments that might break out in bus shelters over the ads? No, I suspect most citizens are more concerned about getting to work on time.
So, who does care enough about these ads to show up at a city environment and climate change committee meeting to speak out against them?
I watched a recording of the public committee meeting online and discovered that the outrage is coming from green activists. Not the hundreds of thousands of Ottawa taxpayers, but a handful of green activists. Their agenda, as always, is to stop the use of hydrocarbons (gasoline for your car, natural gas for your home, propane for your barbecue, any hydrocarbon to generate electricity, etc.) Achieving the green agenda, at the municipal level at least, starts with a ban on oil and natural gas advertising.
Clearly, Ottawa city councillors are listening and taking the issue seriously, and the green “narrative” very seriously. In response to the demands of the green activists, Ottawa city council declared a “climate emergency” in 2019 and, in 2020, unanimously adopted a 35-page “Climate Change Master Plan” which contained within it an 86-page implementation plan called “Energy Evolution.” The former plan, it’s important to note, included the now ubiquitous slogan, “Net Zero by 2050.”
In the simplest terms, “net zero” – by whatever year – means that GHGs are reduced to an absolute minimum. In case there was any doubt that Ottawa city councillors were fully on board, one only needs to read the Energy Evolution implementation framework which states clearly and succinctly on page 2 that “All fossil fuels will have to be phased out.”
It’s right there, in black and white. Ottawa city councillors mean business. It’s an emergency!
So now, five years into the “climate emergency,” Ottawa’s elected officials have decided to finally “take action” on their commitment to “phase out” oil and gas in Ottawa. Their first steps? Go to the people and shout “no more oil and gas” from the rooftops? Develop a detailed campaign to inform residents about the implications of taking out of common usage the fuels and technologies on which our society depends for virtually everything we do? Hold public meetings to promote the plan and invite feedback?
None of the above. Seemingly, this is a sort of “non-urgent” emergency.
It seems they decided to take a different approach, one that would lead to much less debate, controversy or feedback.
They decided instead to consider a ban advertisements promoting oil and gas usage as good for the economy.
Why this micro-action instead of going to the people directly with the details of their ambitious plan to completely phase out fossil fuels? Surely, Ottawa residents should hear all about this. Don’t they deserve a detailed debate about the viability of this ambitious goal and a detailed roll-out of how it will be accomplished.
Is it feasible?
Was it ever feasible?
How will residents be affected? When do the residents get to weigh in? Will they hear both sides?
How can both sides of this debate be heard when Ottawa city councillors’ commitment to the democratic process is such that their first step is to ban the oil and natural gas industry from defending its existence and the merits of its product?
Whether or not you believe that banning all fossil fuels is realistic or achievable is worthy of debate, and many (including myself) would argue that we are entering fantasyland here, that debate won’t even get started if city councillors effectively bar the other side – i.e. anyone who disagrees with them – from making its case.
But this is the green agenda, and, seemingly, the City of Ottawa’s agenda. It isn’t about having a public debate. It isn’t about weighing the options. It is about snuffing out one side completely. It makes one wonder what Ottawa City Council would do if they had the power to compel social media platforms like, oh, maybe X, formerly Twitter, from allowing pro-oil and gas tweets. Hmmmm!
Municipalities for too long have gotten away with this kind of conduct.
At Municipal Watch, we intend to shine a light on this – because it hurts us as taxpayers. It hurts us as Canadians. Instead of attending to the proper business of representing their constituents and prudently managing their cities, these local politicians are chasing green rainbows and hurting Canada.
In my next piece, I will expose the green activists: their motives, their plan, and how they are persuading municipal councillors like the ones in Ottawa to commit to such far-reaching, ambitious and extreme goals and why the first action item they chose is a ban on advertisements.
