Published December 7, 2011

by iris_author

My friend Andrew Crane, a leading York University business ethics professor and director of the Schulich School of Business's Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business, provided a very thoughtful and incisive counterpoint to oil industry spokesperson Kathryn Marshall on CBC Radio's The Current program on December 6, 2011. The two debated "Ethical Oil," a slick oil industry marketing campaign dressed up to look like grassroots activism. Building on right-wing commentator Ezra Levant's 2009 book of the same name, the central ploy of this campaign is to portray tar sands oil from Canada as a more ethical choice than oil from, say, Russia, the Sudan, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, because it is produced in a liberal democracy with robust protections for human rights and the rule of law.  While the Canadian oil patch may have a better human rights record than those in some repressive regimes, Andy pointed out that branding tar sands petroleum as "Ethical Oil" is unhelpful for several reasons.

Andrew Crane, George R. Gardiner Professor of Business Ethics, Schulich School of Business

For one thing, its narrow focus on human rights and the rule of law distracts attention from the massive environmental damage  and energy consumption involved in extraction and processing of tar sands oil. For another, the claim that tar sands operations fully respect human rights is debatable, with numerous First Nations claiming that these operations impair their rights to clean water and a healthful environment.

It is also hard to miss the xenophobic undertones of the Ethical Oil message--it is no coincidence that most of the countries targeted by the campaign are ethnically, culturally or religiously distinct from the white Canadian majority, and the dangerous "otherness" of the foreigner is a central trope of Levant's book.

Most importantly, as Andy argued forcefully, Canada cannot credibly portray itself as an energy policy leader simply by claiming that the status quo in the Alberta oil patch is preferable to the status quo in certain other oil-producing nations.

Rather, to be a real leader Canada would have to show that it is genuinely committed to progress toward a post-carbon economy and improvement of the human rights records of Canadian companies overseas. This would include holding Canadian oil companies to the same high standards wherever they do business in the world. It is disingenuous to say that oil companies in Canada are ethical leaders if those very same companies are busily pumping oil and propping up those same repressive foreign regimes that the Ethical Oil campaign vilifies.

Way to go Andy! Thanks for bringing some much needed clarity to the "Ethical Oil" campaign's effort to obfuscate the ethical issues surrounding the tar sands.

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