Fort McMurray Forum

Key promotional materials for the Northern Gateway pipeline have omitted more than 1,000 square km of coastal islands.

The misleading map, featured on the Enbridge website, has gone viral since Graphic designer and Vancouver Island resident, Lori Waters sounded the alarm on Facebook.

Waters says the images are posted on a website designed to inform residents about the proposed tanker route.

"The way Enbridge has portrayed it, is they've essentially taken out all of the islands so that all you're left with is the exterior coast line so it looks like an enormous wide-open channel," Waters says. "They even took off South Moresby, one of the Queen Charlotte Islands, to make it look like it was just open sea once the tankers had left the coast."

"People would go to that website, thinking they could get accurate project details to find out more about the project," said Waters. "And my belief is that if they were to view that video as it was, they would come away thinking 'You know, what's the problem? It's a wide open channel that goes strait out to sea, why is everybody getting upset about this?' The fact is, it's a really convoluted channel with tonnes of islands."

For Waters, it is one thing to mislead the public, but misleading the public when there is so much at stake is taking it to a new level.

"It's unacceptable for a company to be putting out misleading advertising," Waters stated. "And particularly when the thing they're advertising, the pipeline in this case, has such a great potential for risk on our coast. For those videos, the most important part was how that channel was portrayed, because that's where the tankers are going to go."

Concerned over Enbridge's false advertising, Ms. Waters has lodged formal complaints with the Competition Bureau and Advertising Standards Canada.

More info: http://www.watersbiomedical.com/islands/jrp.html