Dear Mayors, City Councillors, and UBCM Members:
The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), along with the undersigned partner organizations, are writing to ask you to support resolution NR97 being brought forward by the City of Vernon to eliminate fossil fuel sponsorship of the UBCM Convention.
The World Health Organization, medical associations from around the world and the world’s leading medical journals all agree that climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity.
Consensus research published in leading peer-reviewed journals synthesized by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is clear that climate change is human caused. Burning fossil fuels, such as oil and “natural” fossil gas, releases harmful gases into the air, causing carbon pollution that is driving climate change and harms health. In a climate emergency, companies promoting the expansion of fossil fuels should not be sponsoring a meeting such as the UBCM Convention, given the evidence that corporate sponsorship influences decision-making.
Just as tobacco companies should not sponsor and influence physicians’ conferences, so too should fossil fuel companies not sponsor political gatherings and conventions, where decisions could be made that influence policy around “natural” fossil gas and other fossil fuels which drive climate change.
As physicians tasked with protecting the health and wellbeing of your communities, we are asking municipal elected officials to join us in our call to eliminate the influence of fossil fuel companies in BC politics.
Climate change and health
The 2021 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report has made it devastatingly clear: If we do not rapidly reduce our emissions now, every child born today will face a world over 4°C warmer within their lifetime, causing severe heat waves, drought, floods, wildfires, spread of infectious diseases and mass migration.
Fossil fuel air pollution is responsible for 8.1 million deaths per year worldwide, including 1 in 5 premature deaths globally and 1 in 7 premature deaths in Canada. If global emissions are reduced to meet the Paris commitments of 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels, over 5000 premature deaths could be avoided annually in Canada from air pollution alone between 2030 and 2100.
Wildfire smoke has also long been associated with health risks, including increased risk of premature deaths related to respiratory causes. In wildfire smoke, particulate matter (PM) is a major concern for human health, and the smallest particles, wildfire-PM2.5,can travel deep into the lungs, heart and bloodstream to cause disease. A recent study assessed Canadian health impacts attributable to wildfire-PM2.5 smoke and their associated economic valuation. It found that both short- and long-term exposure to wildfire-PM2.5 smoke increased premature mortality, as well as many non-fatal cardiorespiratory health outcomes. The economic valuation of the population health impacts was also extensive, at billions of CDN$.
Climate change and municipalities
Our BC municipalities are on the frontlines of climate change, directly facing the health costs and financial burden created by this crisis. In 2023 BC and Canada experienced their worst wildfire seasons in recorded history, blanketing communities with smoke, evacuating tens of thousands of people, harming infrastructure and economies, and disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities.
In 2021, virtually the entire town of Lytton was burned to the ground, and three years later they have yet to re-build. Communities in Kamloops were repeatedly on evacuation alert from 2021 until 2024, causing substantial psychological stress in local inhabitants. The Prince George Fire District experienced 61 evacuation orders and 91 evacuation alerts in 2023. Among Indigenous Nations, the fire season in 2023 was the worst evacuation year on record. This is only a snapshot of the widespread impact of wildfires on municipalities across BC in the past few years.
The 2021 heat dome killed 619 people in BC—the worst weather-related mass casualty event in Canada’s history. The heat dome was a 1-in-1000-year event that was made 150 times more likely due to climate change. The 2021 atmospheric river and flooding in BC was the most expensive extreme weather event in BC’s history, costing over $450 million, interrupting healthcare supply chains and cutting patients off from essential medical care. Some municipalities in the Lower Mainland are still waiting for disaster aid from the federal government.
Drought has also become a major challenge, with less than a tenth of British Columbia now having enough water to supply municipal water systems and other essential sectors. Vancouver Island and part of northern BC are facing especially severe levels of drought.
Research is clear that reducing methane emissions is one of the most effective options for slowing runaway climate change today, and preventing tipping points leading to more deadly wildfires, smoke events, heat waves and flooding. This is because “natural” fossil gas causes 80 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the twenty years after its release. Substantial decreases in “natural” fossil gas production and distribution would reduce methane leakage into the atmosphere. Decreased burning of “natural” fossil gas in municipal buildings would also decrease related carbon dioxide production.
Despite the urgency of the problem, BC municipalities are not taking decisive enough action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Although the communities of Nanaimo, Nelson, and the Township of Langley, along with 26 other communities across BC, are modernizing their building policies to end “natural” fossil gas hookups in new buildings, the city of Vancouver recently proposed to reverse its city-wide prohibition on the use of fossil fuel heating in new homes without public consultation. The provincial gas utility – FortisBC – has been relentlessly lobbying municipal city councils across our province with the intent of delaying and reversing healthy gas policy.
Greenwashing and its detrimental effects on climate action
Greenwashing means making exaggerated, misleading, or false claims that minimize a product’s, service’s, or company’s impact on the environment. This might include claims around being “clean,” “climate friendly,” “green,” having “lower emissions,” or using images of nature, the planet, and the like to convey an image of being environmentally friendly.
Fossil fuel companies greenwash to encourage consumers to choose their products or services over others. This misleads consumers, who may be tricked into buying something based on false information, and in some cases may also expose themselves and others to dangerous pollutants from a product they believe is “clean.” It also creates unfair competition for companies producing truly climate-friendly products. This is a hurdle our communities should not have to face when we are trying to find true climate solutions and transition away from fossil fuels.
The Big Switch report from the Canadian Climate Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation’s Shifting Power report show that in Canada it is completely possible to switch to 100% wind, water and solar energy combined with new and improved energy storage techniques. So why do we continue to allow fossil fuel companies unfettered access to politicians and the public through sponsorship of the Union of BC Municipalities meeting, frequent meetings with our municipally elected officials, and through fossil fuel advertising?
Municipal leaders may believe they are not swayed by advertising and misinformation from fossil fuel companies, yet evidence from elsewhere suggests otherwise. A recent review of physicians’ prescribing practices confirmed that physician–pharmaceutical sales representative interactions affect physicians’ prescribing behaviours and are likely to contribute to irrational prescribing of the company’s drug.
Thankfully, though cigarette companies sponsored medical conferences from the 1940s until well into the 1960s, the physician community led the charge to end cigarette smoking advertising in Canada in the 1980s after decades of research made it clear that cigarettes cause cancer and lung disease.
Similarly, fossil fuel companies bear the brunt of responsibility for the health impacts of climate change and for the deadly air pollution that kills 8.1 million deaths per year worldwide annually, the combined effects of which sicken far more people than tobacco. If it is illegal for cigarette companies to influence doctors and patients through sponsorship and advertising, it should also be illegal for fossil fuel companies to influence municipally elected officials through sponsorship and advertising.
Multiple jurisdictions around the world have enacted limits on fossil fuel advertising and fossil fuel sponsorship of events. France, for example, enacted a ban on all fossil fuel advertisements in 2021. Edinburgh, Scotland followed suit in May 2024. Many cities in Australia are implementing bans on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship. In June of 2024, UN Chief Antonio Guterres called for fossil fuel ads to be banned like cigarette ads. Countries across the world are considering and implementing fossil fuel ad bans. We all need to be bold to create real climate action.
The Canadian government recently amended the Competition Act to prevent companies from greenwashing themselves and their products, and will consider passing a Bill to ban fossil fuel advertising this fall. Our elected municipal officials in BC, who make important decisions every day about transitioning away from polluting fossil fuels towards clean energy, should follow their lead.
Therefore, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), along with the undersigned organizations, call upon the UBCM to do the following:
1. End fossil fuel sponsorship of the UBCM convention.
2. Create a robust regulatory response to address false and misleading environmental claims by fossil fuel companies and lobbyists to municipal and regional governments.
3. End fossil fuel sponsorship of all municipal events in BC.
4. Enact a comprehensive ban in all BC municipalities on advertising by fossil fuel industries, products and services (such as gasoline, gas utilities, and LNG exports) and internal combustion engine vehicles.
Sincerely,
Signatories
Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE)
Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment (CANE)
Dogwood
My Sea to Sky
Stand.earth
Climate Emergency Unit
East Kootenay Climate Hub
Nanaimo Climate Action Hub
West Kootenay Climate Hub
Okanagan Climate Hub
New Westminster Climate Action Hub
Victoria Climate Action Team
Esquimalt Climate Organizers
Citizens Environment Network in Colwood
View Royal Climate Coalition
Chase Environmental Action Society
Fraser Valley Climate Action
For Our Kids National Network
For Our Kids Vancouver
For Our Kids Burnaby
Force of Nature Alliance
Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI)
West Coast Climate Action Network (WE-CAN)
United Church Earth Stewards – Mid-Fraser Cluster
South Island Climate Action Network
Oak Bay Climate Force
Metchosin Climate Action Team
Transition Sooke
First Things First Okanagan
Shuswap Climate Action Society
Sierra Club BC
350 Canada
Climate Convergence
Doctors for Planetary Health – West Coast
Wilderness Committee
Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health – Kootenay Boundary