There is a particular kind of corporate silence that speaks more clearly than any press release. In mid-2024, as Canada’s new anti-greenwashing legislation was approaching its enforcement date, the Pathways Alliance — the public face of Canada’s six largest oilsands producers, a coalition that had spent three years and considerable resources running advertisements promising net-zero emissions by 2050 — scrubbed its website clean. The climate commitments, the “Let’s Clear the Air” campaign materials, the pledges about carbon capture investment: gone. The group did not announce the decision or explain it publicly. Legal experts at Ecojustice noted the timing without ambiguity. The website had been the vehicle for claims that were now required, under federal law, to be substantiated using internationally recognized methodology. The website disappeared instead.
The oilsands industry’s relationship with climate disclosure has been contentious for decades, but the legal dimension of that relationship has been escalating in ways that suggest the period of strategic ambiguity is narrowing. The most consequential early case came from outside Canada entirely. In 2019, the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts filed separate fraud suits against ExxonMobil, targeting the company’s oilsands operations through its Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil. The core allegation was specific: ExxonMobil had told investors it was evaluating projects using a robust internal carbon price — the kind that would reflect anticipated regulatory costs — while actually running investment decisions using a much lower number, applied to a much smaller fraction of emissions, held flat indefinitely into the future. Alberta rules at the time imposed a cost of roughly $15 per tonne on emissions intensity. The company, according to court documents, applied something close to that to its oilsands calculations while publicly describing a far more conservative carbon risk framework. The gap between the stated risk methodology and the actual one, the lawsuits argued, constituted investor fraud.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Key Case: ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil | New York and Massachusetts attorneys general filed fraud suits alleging ExxonMobil misrepresented the carbon price risks applied to Alberta oilsands projects — claiming the company used a much higher internal carbon cost in public statements than in actual investment decisions |
| Pathways Alliance | Coalition of Canada’s six largest oilsands producers (Canadian Natural, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil, MEG, Suncor) — ran “Let’s Clear the Air” net-zero marketing campaign; scrubbed entire website of climate content days before Canada’s anti-greenwashing law took effect in 2024 |
| Competition Bureau Investigation | Competition Bureau of Canada opened investigation into Pathways Alliance greenwashing allegations, following complaints by Greenpeace Canada, CAPE, and Environmental Defence — focused on net-zero claims that omit downstream emissions from fossil fuel use |
| Canada Anti-Greenwashing Law (C-59) | Passed 2024 — requires companies to substantiate environmental claims using recognized methodology; Alberta Premier Danielle Smith opposed it; two Alberta business groups filed constitutional challenge citing free speech |
| Alberta Securities Commission Complaint | Environmental organizations asked the ASC to enforce securities law requiring transparent GHG disclosures; complaint against Enbridge over claimed 22% emissions reduction that omits expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and downstream scope 3 emissions |
| Global Lawsuit Trend | At least 86 climate cases filed against fossil fuel producers since 2015; annual filings against major producers have nearly tripled since Paris Agreement; defendants include Shell, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil |
| NYC Big Oil Lawsuit (2025) | New York City’s consumer protection suit against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and API dismissed January 14, 2025 — judge ruled NYC failed to demonstrate consumer deception; case highlights legal difficulty of proving consumer fraud vs. investor fraud |
| “Greenhushing” Trend | Following C-59, many Canadian firms — including RBC (which dropped its $500 billion sustainable finance commitment) — stopped making environmental claims entirely rather than substantiate them |
Imperial Oil declined to comment on the cases at the time, referring questions to its parent company. ExxonMobil denied the allegations. The New York case went to trial in late 2019 and ExxonMobil ultimately prevailed — the judge found the state had not proved its fraud theory beyond a preponderance of the evidence. But the trial produced a documentary record that legal scholars found significant regardless of the outcome. Internal communications cited in the case showed Imperial employees flagging that applying the company’s stated carbon price to actual project calculations would produce large asset writedowns. The gap between the internal analysis and the external disclosure was, at minimum, a management story. At maximum, it was a template for how companies in extractive industries were thinking about climate risk communication.
The domestic Canadian legal environment has since caught up, at least partially. The Competition Bureau of Canada opened an investigation into the Pathways Alliance after complaints by Greenpeace Canada, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Environmental Defence. The Bureau’s inquiry focused on the “Let’s Clear the Air” campaign — specifically on whether the net-zero messaging adequately accounted for the downstream emissions generated when customers actually burn the oil sands’ products. The companies’ operational emissions, the argument went, were only a fraction of the total climate impact of their products, and presenting operational targets as climate leadership was misleading in a way that mattered to consumers making decisions about energy companies. Whether that argument survives legal scrutiny is a different question, but the investigation itself sent a message that the Bureau was prepared to apply existing consumer protection law to climate communications in ways it had not previously done.
The broader trend is documented in a 2025 report from Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics: at least 86 climate cases have been filed against fossil fuel producers since 2015, and the annual filing rate has nearly tripled since the Paris Agreement was adopted. Not all of these cases succeed. New York City’s consumer protection lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute was dismissed in January 2025 when a state judge found the city had not demonstrated consumer deception — a decision that illustrated the ongoing legal difficulty of converting documented discrepancy into actionable fraud. The theory of the case matters: investor fraud claims, which require showing that shareholders were misled about material risks, have historically been more fertile legal territory than consumer protection claims, which require showing that ordinary customers were deceived.
There’s a sense, watching this litigation landscape accumulate, that the industry’s decades-long strategy of managing climate communication as a public relations problem — rather than a legal liability — has been running out of room. Canada’s anti-greenwashing law, even in its amended form where the “internationally recognized methodology” requirement has been softened, creates a substantiation obligation that did not exist before. Alberta’s provincial business groups have filed a constitutional challenge on free speech grounds, which reflects the oil patch’s genuine belief that it is being silenced rather than held accountable. That argument will work its way through the courts on its own timeline. In the meantime, the website is still empty.
