Business group calls for an Avon-free Canadian Christmas

December 1, 2010

EDMONTON: Alberta Enterprise Group is urging all Albertans and Canadians to boycott Fortune 500 cosmetics giant Avon this Christmas in light of their recent announcement that they plan to boycott fuel derived from Canada’s oil sands. 

Canadian companies Concord Transportation and Lush Cosmetics also announced their participation in the boycott organized by San Francisco-based Forest Ethics. 

"The reality is that energy derived from the Canadian oil sands is high quality, conflict free, heavily regulated and transparent," said AEG President Tim Shipton. “Turning your back Canadian oil means more barrels of oil produced by the likes of Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. A company like Avon, which has marketed itself as a force for gender equality around the world for decades, ought to know better.” 

In August Forest Ethics announced several major companies had entered into a “boycott” of oil sands energy. After several days of public outrage, The Gap, Timberland and Levi Strauss issued public statements indicating they had not intended to single out the Canadian oil sands and were not boycotting any energy sources. 

Oil sands crude is 50 per cent of the crude oil supply in western Canada, mixing with conventional sources -- all of which is refined into liquid transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel. 

The US Midwest is also highly dependent on western Canadian crude with one-third of the crude supply in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin coming from western  Canada. 

In 2009-10 the oil sands industry had $11.5 billion impact on the United States economy and created 172,000 person years of employment. Across Canada, some 112,000 jobs are directly or indirectly supported by the oil sands industry. In 2009 Oil Sands companies contracted $810 million in goods and services from aboriginal-owned businesses. 

“Avon, Concord Transportation and Lush should educate themselves about global energy supply and the Canadian Oil Sands,” said Shipton. “Greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands crude is comparable to other sources and are steadily improving as are other key environmental benchmarks. Until these companies get up to speed on the facts, Canadians should take their business elsewhere.”