Enbridge is spending nearly $5 million on an ad campaign in support of its Northern Gateway pipeline project.
The campaign is targeting major print, radio and television media - including The Citizen - and stresses the economic benefits and the "word-class" safety and environmental standards the company says will be used to build and operate the pipeline.
It comes with the tagline "It's more than a pipeline. It's a path to our future" and concludes by inviting the audience to visit a website detailing the project from Enbridge's point of view.
It will run until at least the end of this year, company spokesman Paul Stanway said.
"It's the biggest campaign of this kind that we've done and we thought the timing was right," said Stanway.
Public debate on the project, which would transport bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to Kitimat for shipment to Asia, has grown in the rest of the province, said Stanway. The NDP has come out against the project . Enbridge will make its case before the review panel starting in September and taking three to four months.
Stanway called the promotion an "educational campaign" meant to build on an online campaign that began when the website, northerngateway.ca, was rebuilt last fall.
"It's been fairly successful," Stanway said. "We've had several thousand people that have taken part in that and from our perspective it's an opportunity to get the facts out about the Northern Gateway project.
"But one thing we've noticed is that most of the people online taking part in that conversation are already fairly well informed whereas a lot of people in B.C., they want to know the facts about the project but they're not sure where to go to find them, so this campaign is geared towards that."
He claimed the more people know about the project, the more they're in favour and pointed to polls suggesting as many as 55 per cent of those living along the route support the project with that number dropping off as the distance increases.
"You often hear the claim that there are no benefits, that it's all risk as far as British Columbia is concerned, and that's very far from the truth," Stanway said.
Emma Gilchrist of the Dogwood Initiative, a Victoria-based environmental advocacy group, disputed Stanway's numbers.
"Our polling from March shows differently, with 69 per cent in the northwest being opposed, including 64 per cent strongly opposed," Gilchrist said.
She suggested the campaign is being launched because the project is facing more opposition than Enbridge expected and they need "social licence" to build the project.
"What they don't understand is that they can't buy social licence," Gilchrist said. "More than 100 First Nations have said no, and the majority of British Columbians are saying no. They'd be much better off to accept no means no and save themselves some money."
Enbridge claims it has support from 40 per cent of the First Nations along the route. An offer to First Nations of a a 10-per-cent equity stake route closes Thursday and Enbridge will release the number of First Nations on board early in June.
Gilchrist said the Dogwood Initiative is relying on "people power" to get its side of the story out.
"There's no way Dogwood could launch a campaign like this -- $5 million is more than our total budgets from our entire 13 years of existence," she said.
Lush Cosmetics announced on Tuesday that it is working with the Dogwood Initiative to urge customers to sign anti-pipeline petitions in its 44 shops --including its Pine Centre location in Prince George -- online or by phone texting, "NOTankers" and is selling a limited-edition product with all proceeds going to the organization.