Sponsored Content and Greenwashing: MLive provides a platform for Enbridge to promote themselves as sustainable

On Friday, January 29th, one of the first items that showed up on MLive’s newsfeed was this item from the Enbridge Corporation, shown here below.

Now this item does say Sponsored Content, yet it is in the normal newsfeed line up. Everything that runs as an advertisement on Live, states that it is an advertisement. In addition, the ads on MLive are stand alone, often to the side and in now way could be confused as part of their regular newsfeed. 

It is also instructive that the item from Enbridge is identified as Sponsored Content. Why not just call it an ad, since that is exactly what it is. The so-called Sponsored content from Enbridge is paid for, just like ads are, so why confused readers or blur the lines with the deceptive term sponsored content. All ads are content and all ads are paid for, just like the Enbridge sponsored content that appeared last Friday on MLive. 

The Sponsored Content is a Lie

If one were to click on the Sponsored Content that the Enbridge Corporation paid for on MLive, you would go to this link.

The sponsored content from Enbridge is simply a propaganda piece talking about how the company will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their production process. The paid content by Enbridge also wants you to believe that their involvement in the One Future coalition demonstrates their commitment to sustainability.

While some people might welcome the Enbridge Corporation’s claim to work towards sustainability, their claims should be called out as nothing more than a lie. The Enbridge Corporation’s very existence is to extra and transport fossil fuels, like nature gas and oil. How is it even possible for a company that makes billions off the trafficking of fossil fuels to in any way at all be sustainable? It can’t, but that doesn’t stop the company from engaging in the fraudulent practice of Greenwashing.

Enbridge is the primary transporter of Alberta Tar Sands oil, which many environmental groups and climate justice groups have identified as the most polluting/greenhouse gas emitting project on the planet.

It’s bad enough that MLive takes money from the Enbridge Corporation, but it is even more insidious to allow them to promote themselves as practicing sustainability. The only way for the Enbridge Corporation to actually practice sustainability, would be to shut down every operation they current are involved in and to undo the harm they have caused for decades, particularly with Indigenous communities all across North America.