Update (May 19):

Thanks to everyone who has signed the petition calling for an investigation into Imperial Oil for their climate change deceit. While the campaign isn’t over, we’re waiting for new opportunities and will respond when they arise. If you haven’t already done so and want to keep updated with the campaign, sign the petition.

Recently unearthed internal reports by Imperial Oil — known for operating Esso gas stations in Canada — show that the company has had “no doubt” about the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change since at least 1980. [1]

Yet, they’ve been spreading doubt and misinformation about climate change for decades.Imperial Oil placed CO2 on its list of pollutants as far back as 1970, in an internal report stating: “Since pollution means disaster… the only satisfactory course of action is to prevent it – to protect man’s environment from man.”[2]

Rather than heed its own warnings, the company did a complete 180, and published a 1998 report stating that “carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but an essential ingredient of life on this planet.” In 2002, they sponsored an event full of climate skeptics in a last-ditch effort to delay Canada’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.[3]

They orchestrated a campaign of doubt and deception, then carried on with business as usual.

We don’t know the full extent of Imperial Oil’s complicity in concealing and denying climate science. We don’t know what exactly they knew, when exactly they knew it, if and to what extent they’ve been lobbying the government against climate action, or what exactly their role has been funding anti-climate science.

But we have a right to know. And so do its shareholders, consumers, industry regulators, government, as well as the millions of people already suffering the effects of climate change as dirty energy companies rake in the billions.

Sign the petition calling on the Environment Committee to launch hearings into Imperial Oil.

Sound familiar? This comes on the heels of Imperial Oil’s parent company, Exxon, currently being investigated by 17 different attorneys general in the US, due to similar allegations that the company concealed what it knew about climate change. Without public pressure demanding Exxon be held accountable, these allegations could have been swept under the rug.

Add your name today. 

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